Backup / restore machines on "blue"

Hi guys,
first of all: I wanna say hallo to the community! I am new to this forum, so I am going to tell some things about myself:
I am administrating a german school with nearly 900 students. All our machines we use for education are Linux :grinning:
Since september 2019 we feature a campus wide student wifi. This wifi is separated using VLAN and connects to the blue interface of our IPFire. Every student tablet / smartphone has to be added in IPFire to get internet, just as the configuration of the blue interface of IPFire is intended.
The list got really long now and here comes my problem:
I have to reinstall IPFire completely. The reason is rather stupid: ssh login is not working anymore, either I got the wrong password or some failure at the machine, I do not know. Sorry for that.
Is there a way to export the registered machines on blue (without working ssh - connection) and to re-import after fresh installation?
Or: what exactly happens when I do a backup, reinstall and restore the backup? Are all firewall rules, registered machines and so on being restored but the new set passwords for admin / root are kept as set at the new installation? Or are passwords when doing a restore of a backup also being restored?

I hope I made everything clear and you can understand my problem.

Thanks for any help!
Pegasus.

Hi @pegasus

DonĀ“t worry for passwords. In the new installation, you must be define new passwords. The passwords are not saved in the backup.

Other option ist if you save the backup, you can descompress it and catch the configuration file. I think the configuration file is in ā€œ/var/ipfire/wireless/configā€. After, when the fresh install ist Ok, copy and paste this file in same location.

Tell us something.

Regards.

Roberto,
thanks for your fast and excellent answer.
One more question: if I install IPFire and restore a backup, are all configurations of all interfaces completely restored? DHCP-config, firewall rules and all stuff like that?
So is it safe to say: if I do a fresh install and do a restore, everything is exactly like before, only the passwords of root/admin are reset? Is that correct? And the settings of the interfaces from the backup are ported to the new interfaces by color? Because maybe my interfaces / macadresses change. So the backup ports the settings by color?
I hope I got everything right. I am sorry, not a native english speaker :grinning:
Thanks for your help!
Pegasus

Another question I forgot before, sorry for that:
If I boot the machine with a USB-Stick and delete the /etc/passwd from the IPFire installation and reboot IPFire, how would it react? Can I reset a root and admin password?
Thanks you guys for your input.

Hello Pegasus,
If you restore the saved configuration every configuration should be like before. If you change your hardware you have to reassign the NICs to your zones using the setup command.

You shouldnā€™t delete the /etc/passwd because every account the os uses is stored in this file. But on my opinion usernames and passwords are included in the backup. Unfortunately i donā€™t know how to reset the root password.