Re: a pseudo-"clone" facility for migrating to new hardware?
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 03:25:22AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>
> 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?
>
If you end up doing a fresh install as somebody else suggested, you
might consider running it in a virtual machine. It could be considered
a waste of resources, but it should make it easier to migrate that fresh
installation to new hardware in the future, since the virtual hardware
will be unchanged.
-Rob
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