[CentOS] Copying a live system

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I want to backup my current CentOS-7.2 system to another drive.
> Is it safe to copy the system while it is running?
> Eg by
> mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt
> rsync -HPaxvz /. /mnt/
> I've found contradictory advice on the web.

Yes. When we're cloning a system, such as a compute node in a cluster, or
rsync upgrading, we
rsync -HPavxz /. newmachine:/new/.
rsync -HPavxz /boot/. newmachine:/boot//new/.

As long as you're not copying /sys or /proc....

     mark