Re: migrate to new system disk
Mark Neidorff put forth on 12/2/2009 5:22 PM:
> On Tuesday 01 December 2009 09:22 pm, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> I currently have a 40GB IDE boot disk in a Lenny server. I boot with
>> LILO, but not INITRD. I have the following partitions:
>>
>> I would like to add a new IDE disk between say 160GB and 250GB, on
>> another IDE channel, and copy/mirror/etc the exact contents of the
>> current system disk to the new disk; make the new disk the system (boot)
>> disk, and remove the original disk from the machine. I've never done a
>> disk migration such as this with Linux.
>>
>> This is a production email firewall/gateway. Thus, I need to have the
>> system down as little as possible to complete this. I know I'll need to
>> enter single user mode to do the work. I'm just not sure what work I
>> need to do in order to properly accomplish this task.
>>
>> So, what's the best method to pull this off, guaranteeing (as best as
>> possible) that all the data made it across the river intact, with an
>> identical partition and directory structure, will identical permissions
>> on all dirs and files, and that will be bootable? If I start up Postfix
>> after the migration to the new disk, and the queue directory/file
>> permissions are incorrect, my mail server would be dead in the water.
>
> There is no concise guide to doing what you want, because it is a complex job.
I guess I just figured someone had gone through the same process and
documented it.
> Do your users store e-mail on the server? That is an issue.
No local mail storage, it's primarily a Postfix anti-spam gateway. I do
some occasional ftp on if someone wants to send me an ISO (or a dozen)
or what not. It also hosts some static content via lighttpd, but it's
very little, stuff like log file summaries, some personal stuff,
basically utility knife web hosting.
> Do you have a second PC that you can use to install the software and test?
That I do not have.
> Suggestion:
> Install mondorescue
> stop the mail server
> do a backup
> restore to the new disk (on a different computer)
> Install lilo
> move the new disk to the server
> start it up and see how it works.
>
> Mondorescue will take care of the bare metal restore and get you up and
> running just fine.
I'll look into Mondorescue. What is its preferred backup media? Only
storage devices I have on the box are an HD and 3.5 floppy.
I was really hoping I could just go disk-disk and be done with it, using
something like ghost, or just mirroring the old disk, then breaking the
mirror and run with the new disk. I used to do that alot back in my
Winders days.
I guess none of the Linux mirroring utilities will work for this since
no one has suggested it?
--
Stan
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