David Witbrodt <dawitbro@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> tar cvf - / | (cd /mnt/; tar xvf -)
I'm a dummy. I had just spend the past several days reading docs, including the 'man' page for 'tar', and failed to notice that the "cvf" and "xvf" switches for 'tar' do not have the '-' character, but the man page for 'tar' _does_ use it.
I copied the command quoted above from http://wiki.debian.net/?Move, and I seem to recall using versions of 'tar' in previous years that didn't use the '-' for its commands. When I modified the above command to this,
tar --exclude=/mnt -cvf - / | (cd /mnt/; tar -xvf -)
things almost worked. I noticed a lot of errors as the process neared completion, and when I compared the '/' dir to the '/mnt' dir, a lot seemed to be missing. I considered making manual corrections, but when I tried to save a text file to '/mnt' I got an out of space error, from which I conclude that things are pretty messed up.
JacobS just sent a very helpful reference to a HOWTO in another message posted to debian-user, and I think I will try that out now (after clearing the new partitions for a fresh start).
DW