IBM eServer x series 206 RH-to-Debian migration
Greetings all, long-time Debian user, first-time poster here. So,
I've got a predicament. I need to get Debian Etch on a box that is
already an in-production HeadRat Enterprise server (RHEL 3.0 Typhoon 6),
running a few production apps (Apache with a handful of VHosts, postfix,
a ticketing system we use called GForge and it's attendant Postgres
database, and a few NFS mounts). The company I work for no longer wants
to pay the HeadRat extortion fee just to be able to download package
updates and whatnot, so I am tasked with migrating all of our HeadRat
servers over to Debian.
My big question is, does Debian work with the Adaptec SATA HostRAID
controller that this IBM eServer x206 box has on it? I can't seem to
find an Etch hardware compatability list, and all the docs I've seen on
Google say that "the controller isn't supported. In kernel
2.4.ancient." I'd really hate to get to work on Saturday, get the RAID
all reformatted and whatnot, only to find "Hey, Debian can't see my
array. W00t!"
For the curious, my "grand scheme" and "backout plan" is to initially
get the entire filesystem off the box via
"tar cvf - -C / . | ssh user@othermachine gzip -c \> backupfile.tar.gz"
(obviously with the flags to preserve permissions, stay on the local
filesystem, etc). Once I have my 9 gig tarball located somewhere safe,
format the drives, set up the array, and install a base Debian system.
Once I'm safely booted into the new Debian kernel, I'd create
/mnt/oldsystem or whatever and untar the old system back to that
directory. I'd then apt-get install an app (say, Apache), then copy
it's configuration files and volatile data back from /mnt/oldsystem.
Rinse and repeat for the users, NFS mounts, fstab, ticket application,
etc. and after a few hours I'll have my shiny new Debian system with all
the old applications, data, and settings back on it. If for some reason
that doesn't work and I need to revert back to the old system, I'd
repartition the drives as they were before, boot a LiveCD, mount the
partitions correctly under /target of the boot CD, then untar the whole
thing back across the network. chroot to /target, run grub, reboot, and
(ideally) I'd have the "old" system back in a pinch.
For those of you who managed to read this far (go YOU!) does that
sound feasible, or am I doing far, far too much work?
Many thanks for your assistance!
--Lee
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