Re: migrate to new system disk
On Tuesday 01 December 2009 09:22 pm, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> I currently have a 40GB IDE boot disk in a Lenny server. I boot with
> LILO, but not INITRD. I have the following partitions:
>
> I would like to add a new IDE disk between say 160GB and 250GB, on
> another IDE channel, and copy/mirror/etc the exact contents of the
> current system disk to the new disk; make the new disk the system (boot)
> disk, and remove the original disk from the machine. I've never done a
> disk migration such as this with Linux.
>
> This is a production email firewall/gateway. Thus, I need to have the
> system down as little as possible to complete this. I know I'll need to
> enter single user mode to do the work. I'm just not sure what work I
> need to do in order to properly accomplish this task.
>
> So, what's the best method to pull this off, guaranteeing (as best as
> possible) that all the data made it across the river intact, with an
> identical partition and directory structure, will identical permissions
> on all dirs and files, and that will be bootable? If I start up Postfix
> after the migration to the new disk, and the queue directory/file
> permissions are incorrect, my mail server would be dead in the water.
There is no concise guide to doing what you want, because it is a complex job.
Do your users store e-mail on the server? That is an issue.
Do you have a second PC that you can use to install the software and test?
Suggestion:
Install mondorescue
stop the mail server
do a backup
restore to the new disk (on a different computer)
Install lilo
move the new disk to the server
start it up and see how it works.
Mondorescue will take care of the bare metal restore and get you up and
running just fine.
Mark
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