On 05/17/2017 12:03 PM, ken wrote: > An entire filesystem (~180g) needs to be copied from one local linux > machine to another. Since both systems are on the same local subnet, > there's no need for encryption. > > I've done this sort of thing before a few times in the past in > different ways, but wanted to get input from others on what's worked > best for them. > > One consideration is that the source filesystem contains quite a few > hardlinks and symlinks and of course I want to preserve these, and > preserve all timestamps and ownerships and permissions as well. > Maintaining the integrity of this metadata and the integrity of the > files themselves if of course the top priority. > > Speed is also a consideration, but having done this before, I find it > even more important to have a running progress report or log so I can > see how the session is proceeding and approximately how much longer it > will be until finished... and too to see if something's hung up. > > One other consideration: There isn't much disk space left on the > source machine, so creating a tar file, even compressed, isn't an option. > > What relevant methods have you been impressed by? I use rsync for such work. It is good at maintaining hard and sym links and timestamps. It can give you a running progress as well. One thing I have learned is that crud happens and I loose my local session for some stupid reason or another, thus I often run rsync in a screen shell that I can easily reconnect to.