Re: Transferring install to another HD
Stephen Tait wrote:
At 15:46 26/08/2004, you wrote:
Not on _my_ computers you won't. That's a completely unreliable way
of restoring the directory.
Why doesn't someone read the man page for cp? It tells you how not
copy /proc.
man cp
Personally, I prefer
tar ... | tar
which seems to work far better for me than cp.
man tar
--
Cheers
John
I've had more than a cursory glance at the man pages for cp (TBH, I
didn't even think of using tar) but
Pay close attention to "-x" aka "--one-file-system
couldn't find any particular reference to /proc files (maybe cos I'm
using woody...?). There were plenty of references to "special files"
to be warned about (such as never ever use the --copy-contents switch,
etc), which I assume includes most of /proc as well as the more exotic
parts of /dev, but there weren't any specific references.
Looking at it now with a few examples from Thomas' page, it does look
like tar is the best way to do it (if a little more convoluted), but
all I've copied so far are the non-special stuff (just user profiles,
apps and so on), but am now sorely worried about my procs and devs.
What is it about Thomas' makedev line that I should avoid?
At least some distros come with /dev already populated. MAKEDEV won't
necessarily create all of the devices you are using.
Sometimes, sysadmins such as you find it necessary to create an extra
deviceor two because of some new software they want to use. MAKDEV won't
recreate those either.
If at all possible, backup/restore is the way to go: in your specific
instance that means "copy."
The incantation of tar I would use would be something like this. First,
the preliminaries> mount stuff.
mkdir /mnt/(srce,dest}
mount source /mnt/srce
mount dest /mnt/dest
<maybe mount more stuff>
tar cC /mnt/srce . boot... | tar xpC /mnt/dest
You can expand on this use of tar to copy across a network, with/without
compression.
For more,
man tar
I'm quite tempted to switch to GRUB, as I find it's syntax nicer,
although I'm used to just using it on IDE systems (under gentoo). I
take it all I need to do is supplant hd* for sd*...?
Grub is grand. If you need a rescue disk, grub on a floppy may be all
you need.
Read the docs closely. On Debian there's a script that will create your
initial configuration.
Beware: Cricketers coming:-)
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
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