[Sussex] Re: Simple cloning

[Brendan Whelan]

Once again than you all for your responses.

Nico, you write 'rsync is great: you have to be careful with the "exclude"
syntax to avoid recursion'
What setting would you suggest adding to the basic cloning of one SCSI disk
to another i.e.
rsync /dev/sda /dev/sdb

Anthony you wrote "....but the safest would be to use a live CD to copy the
old system to
the new".
Do you mean booting the system in Fedora Linux rescue or some other way?
How will my SCSI drives be referenced?

Brendan

----- Original Message -----
From: <ar at f2s.com>
To: <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:24 AM
Subject: [Sussex] Re: Simple cloning


> From: "Brendan Whelan" <b_whelan at mistral.co.uk>
> Regarding using "cp" I had understood (possibly wrongly) that cp didn't
> always give a perfect copy and that rsync was more reliable.
> Would the cp command be cp -Ra  /dev/sda /dev/sdb   ?

cp copies files not devices so /dev/xxx wouldn't be right and 'normal' cp
old-root new-root wouldn't copy special files (device files etc.), although
there seems to be no limit to GNU bells and whistles.

Perhaps if your old and new systems are identical FC5 there won't be any
additional special files on the old system: you could search and compare
using
'find'.  Then after cloning you'll have a comparison script ready for
tweaking
to check that the clone's identical at filesystem level (for all file
types).

> > > 4. Boot the system and allow to settle down.

It's inherently multi-user so this isn't safe.  Booting it as single-user
ought
to suffice but the safest would be to use a live CD to copy the old system
to
the new.  Even if dd weren't giving you problems with block counts it might
well produce an inconsistent image from a live system.

Anthony



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