Lamar Owen wrote: > On Friday 06 October 2006 22:42, Joseph Cheng wrote: > >> Thx for all the suggestions ppl. I think for simplicity I will either >> go with the knoppix & dd solution or I also found ghost 4 unix >> http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ >> > > I have used the dd solution a number of times, and it works quite well. > > There are, however, a couple of suggestions I would make: > 1.) Use the CentOS rescue mode (boot CD number 1, type 'linux rescue' at the > boot prompt) and tell it not to mount your drives. No need to download Yet > Another Linux Distribution to do the work. Or use the CentOS LiveCD. > 2.) While the dd is running, you can check on its progress. Switch to another > virtual console (you are by default on VC 1; hit ALT-F2 to go to VC 2) and > send the dd process a SIGUSR1 (run a ps ax and make a note of the dd > process's PID; then kill -USR1 $PID); then switch back to VC 1 and you'll see > where dd is in your copy. > > You can then run fdisk or parted and grow the partition; then you can resize > the filesystem (I'm fairly certain the rescue mode includes the resizing > program; not sure about the LiveCD, but I would think it does). The native > CentOS tools to do this are, in my experience, far superior in quality to the > various third party solutions (including Symantec Ghost) availabe to do this > sort of thing. They are a little harder to use, though they seem to work > better. > Interesting. I wonder if you used this method to copy the image from one disk to an identical disk hda-->hdb if you could then unplug hda and have the system boot from the "copy" without any other intervention. Kind of like a poor man's RAID1 except you only get back to where you were at the instant the snapshot was taken. I've never tried this since RAID cards are so cheap, but I guess I'm wondering out loud if that would work. Anyone tried it? Cheers,