a pseudo-"clone" facility for migrating to new hardware?
into the final stages of my debian upgrade adventure, and here's the
final phase. at the moment, i have a couple more upgrade steps to get
the existing server (old dell P4 system) up to a fully-upgraded lenny
system, and make sure all the software still works properly (web
server, mail server, etc.). and this is on a system where there is a
single root filesystem (/dev/sda1), so it's a very simple partitioning
layout.
once that upgrade is done, i want to pick up the entire install, and
move it to a new dual-drive poweredge server, obviously keeping
everything in place. but i want to format the new system with LVM and
multiple filesystems for robustness. so what's the best way to do
that?
the obvious solution is to take the running server offline, reboot
to a rescue CD, and copy the entire rootfs verbatim to a backup
device, connect that backup device to the new server, and restore with
a directory-oriented restoration which will honour the new LVM layout.
but that suggests that the new server already has a debian install on
it, so that restoration will obviously end up writing over top of an
existing install. is that safe?
i find it hard to believe that would work cleanly as the old log
files (dpkg, aptitude and so on) would overwrite the ones on the new
server, and i'm betting i'd end up with all sorts of inconsistencies.
the only way i can think of avoiding that kind of grief would be for
me to do the barest install on the new server, where the packages i
installed there would be an absolute subset of the ones on the old
server. or, better yet, just arrange for empty filesystems to be
sitting there, waiting to be filled.
is there, perhaps, a utility for this sort of thing? after all,
this has to be a fairly common occurrence -- moving a working debian
system from an aging, old system to a newer one. thoughts?
rday
--
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Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.
Web page: http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday
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