Re: disk duplication question

[Andrew Perrin <aperrin@socrates.berkeley.edu>]

IF (and only if) the drives are geometrically the same, you can use dd:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

to copy directly disk-to-disk, or to save to a file for later dumping to
a disk:

dd if=/dev/hda of=<filename>

of course, <filename> will be very big and must not be on /dev/hda or
you will create yourself a nasty little paradox.

Andy Perrin

Stuart Marshall wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to duplicate a hard drive that has Debian
> installed to use of several additional computers.
> 
> I can write a script which does:
> 
>   sfdisk to partition the new drive;
>   mke2fs to make file systems on the new drive;
>   mkswap to initialize the swap area on the new drive;
>   cd old-partition; find . -mount | cpio -pdm /new-partition
>          (for each partition).
> 
> But then to finish it seems I need to boot the new computer
> (after installing the new drive) with a boot floppy and
> run lilo by hand.
> 
> Is there some way to also install the stuff that lilo does
> on the new drive?  The new machines will not usually have
> a floppy so I would like to avoid that step.
> 
> thanks,
> Stuart
> 
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