Post by Eric Oyenwell, if you move the pot files (and in fact, the entire .john directory), you should maintain current work progress as well as settings. just remember to use the exact same command as on the previous machine (such as john mypasswd) or you can use the restore option.
You absolutely have to use the "--restore" option to maintain current
work progress. Simply using the same command line again restarts the
work from scratch (except that already-cracked hashes would be skipped,
but this is irrelevant when cracking just one RAR file's "hash").
A ".john" directory is only used for system-wide builds, which are
provided with Linux distros, etc. We recommend not doing system-wide
builds unless you're a distro packager. For normal user-local builds,
the "run" directory contents could be (partially) copied.
Post by Eric OyenIf I find another more suitable machine for the purpose of cracking the password of a rar file, can I export the current progress to the other machine? Then continue from there to save wasting previous work?
The other machine would be a different OS and have a fresh ./john installed.
You'll need to copy at least the input file (with the "hash") and the
*.rec files, and use the "--restore" option.
This usually works, but there may be issues (at worst, some candidate
passwords never tried by either machine) when the two versions of JtR
or their configurations are different. We try to avoid/minimize such
issues, but sometimes breaking compatibility for restored sessions is
too inconvenient to avoid - e.g., sometimes we just want to revise a
bundled wordlist ruleset that you might have been using, etc.
Alexander