[CentOS] How to copy a system?

ken gebser at mousecar.com
Thu May 5 15:36:28 UTC 2011


On 05/05/2011 10:41 AM Robert Heller wrote:
> At Thu, 05 May 2011 10:10:52 -0400 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 05/05/2011 08:01 AM Brunner, Brian T. wrote:
>>> centos-bounces at centos.org wrote:
>>>> At Thu, 05 May 2011 07:44:52 -0400 CentOS mailing list
>>>> <centos at centos.org> wrote: 
>>>>
>>>>> On 05/05/2011 07:13 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>>>>>> Is there a standard way of copying a working system
>>>>>> from one machine to another with different partitions?
>>>>> You could also utilize cloning software, such as the client version
>>>>> of drbl, clonezilla livecd. 
>>>>>
>>>>> You could also do a direct copy with dd onto a connected drive.
>>>> Warning: dd is not a good choise if the source and desination
>>>> drives/partitions are *different* sizes.
>>> Different block mappings will also give you grief.
>>> .:. The drives must be identical manufacturer and model, down to the
>>> firmware revision.
>>> dd is not a backup tool in the general sense.
>> ...
> 
> Hmmm.... Using dump & restore (or tar or rsync or cpio, etc.) would
> likely be a lot faster.  Esp. if the disk is not 100% full.  Remember,
> dd will copy even the unused free blocks (which is a total waste of
> time).  And dump & restore will likely use a more optimal block size,
> which will copy the data faster as well...

Speed is good sometimes.  But I was probably either sleeping or watching
TV during those eight to ten hours, so the length of time to do the copy
didn't matter at all.

The most time-consuming part of the job was finding the particular
command with the correct args that actually worked-- not the command or
utility that "should" work or that "theoretically ought to" work-- but
one which in fact *did* work.  So if anyone actually finds a faster way
to clone a system-- meaning they've run the command(s), and done the
testing to determine that it was successful-- I'm all ears.  The other
possibilities are interesting, but given what my schedule is like,
unless success with something else is 99.9% assured, I'll probably do it
the same way again next time.  Hey, what can I say...?  I like success.






-- 
"Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it."
	--Mark Twain



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