[TriLUG] Machine Swap-out: preserving users

[Brian Henning]

Hi Y'all,
   As soon as parts come in, I'm going to be swapping out a server.  I 
want the usernames/passwords to all be the same, so could I do something 
like copy /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and /etc/shadow to the replacement 
and have things work?  I want it to be as seamless as possible, so 
having username/uid pairs remain constant would be a big plus; that way 
I won't have to fool around with ownerships when I copy the user data 
over; just preserve it and it should be smooth.  Right? ...

Thanks again for the sage advice!

~Brian