Re: Migrating a server to Debian amd64?
Thanks a lot to everybody who responded.
Thomas Steffen wrote:
On 5/26/05, Yassen Damyanov <yd@media-c.de> wrote:
Hi all,
Couple of years experience with Gentoo but none with Debian. Need to
migrate an AMD-64 server running Gentoo Linux to Debian AMD-64.
Is there a reason for this? I am just asking because I don't see a
compelling reason to do so, but if there is, that may be relevant to
your question.
One single reason -- my boss wants to manage the server via a web based control panel like syscp (www.syscp.de,
which adds php and mySQL to the services listed) and any such open source package is supported primarily on
Debian. I lost countless hours trying to tune every service to work on Gentoo but I gave up. It could have been
much simpler if I'd just had a Debian system instead.
Services:
apache2,
postfix + filters,
ftp over TLS (vsftpd or proftpd),
IMAPS (Courier-IMAP)
SVN
Sounds fine, those packages are supposed to work.
Be aware that the environment for 32bit binaries (ia32-libs) is still
work in progress, so you should test that if you need it.
(1) Is the AMD64 port of Debian usable for a production server?
That depends on your expectations. Since it is not release yet, there
are no security updates. Assuming that Sarge is released soon, you can
just install Sarge and follow its transition from testing to stable,
at which point there will be security updates.
Excuse my Debian ignorance: can I install Sarge in an AMD64 port?
(3) If (1) is to be answered with a definite 'yes', then what would you
recommend as steps to *remotely* convert the gentoo box into Debian amd64?
My guts say that if you have to ask, you should not do it :-).
Seriously, you need experience with both systems, and with the
necessary procedure relative to your boot manager (be that grub or
lilo). So by all means try this at home before you do the real thing.
I did that couple of times with Gentoo (it's risky, I admit, but it was possible; I have a check list left from
those days... also I have a backup variant to get remote access to the console if things run bad).
In theory, it is simple:
1. Install the new system on a free partition
2. chroot to that system, and install/configure the boot manager
3. reboot into the new system (assuming you did not make a mistake...)
That's how I imagine it (but I guess I will stumble in the details... anyway, Google is my friend!)
Thanks again,
Yassen
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