On 9/17/2010 4:52 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>>>> I was thinking of copying the old root partition with
>>>> sudo cp -a -P /* /mnt/hd
>>
>>> I think the command rsync is a better approach for this task. It has
>>> much more features, for example, you can exclude certain files.
>>
>> Thanks for the suggestion.
>
> Thanks for all the responses.
>
> Further to my query,
> I'm wondering if one can safely copy partitions
> (in particular the root partition / )
> while the system is running.
>
> The reason that I ask is that I'm slightly afraid
> the machine will not re-boot into single-user mode
> with the present OS on the sick disk.
Theoretically you shouldn't, but I've never had a problem using rsync to
copy running machines - the same should apply to tar/cp/cpio, etc. A
dd-style image copy would not be safe with the disk changing, though.
Be sure you exclude /proc, /sys, /dev. And if you have trouble, you can
boot the system install disk in rescue mode to recover.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com