On Wed, 2016-05-04 at 12:38 +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote: > I recently asked about copying a running system to a new drive. > > As a postscript, I'm wondering if it would have been preferable > to run the machine under a Live OS, and simply copy the root partition > to the new drive? > Eg while running under the LiveOS, > # mkdir /mnt/old /mnt/new > # mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/old > # mount /dev/sdb6 /mnt/new > # cp -avx /mnt/old /mnt/new > or > # rsync -ax --progress /mnt/old /mnt/new When copying systems I developed a preference for cpio; fewer problems handling weird inode types. My typical recipe is: - rescue boot the new system and create my desired disk partitioning - decide what top level directories I want duplicated on the new system - iterate through them: for i in bin boot lib etc .... ; do mkdir -p /mnt/sysimage/$i ssh root@$OLDSYSTEM "cd /$i && find . -xdev -print0 | cpio --null -oaVc" | (cd /mnt/sysimage/$i && cpio --no-absolute-filenames -imVdc ) done - make any adjustments that might necessary in the configuration - if this was a copy of a running system I might quiesce the original, do a final rsync of data that might have changed between now and when I made the cpio copy - grub-install (or equivalent) - release the hounds.