[CentOS] Updating/Backing Up Server

[Matt]

>> I am slowly migrating the data etc off an old CentOS32 4.x server to a
>> new CentOS64 5.x server.  The old server only has 15Gbyte of its hard
>> drive in use.  Is there an easy/safe way to copy the entire contents
>> of old server root directory to a directory on the new server for
>> future reference?  Most of the data is various test files, perl
>> scripts, etc. scattered all over.
>
> Yes, with new machines typically having many orders of magnitudes more
> storage than old ones it is easier to keep a backup of old stuff
> online than to sort through it.   If both machines are still running,
> on the old one, cd to /, then
> rsync -av . new_machine:/path/to/save
> perhaps using --exclude to avoid the /proc and /sys directories.
> Rsync will create the last directory in the target path if it doesn't
> exist, but only the last one.

That worked great.  Thanks.