Re: Migrate OS to smaller drive?

[Sjoerd Hardeman <sjoerd@lorentz.leidenuniv.nl>]

Ron Johnson schreef:
> On 2010-04-12 03:14, Sjoerd Hardeman wrote:
> > Ron Johnson schreef:
> > > On 2010-04-11 15:54, Sjoerd Hardeman wrote:
> > > > Ron Johnson schreef:
> > > > > On 2010-04-11 08:11, Clive McBarton wrote:
> > > > > > Sjoerd Hardeman wrote:
> > > > > > > mount the new device (mount -odev /dev/newdevice), and do a
> > > > > > >  rsync -ax / /media/newdevice.
> > > > > > What exactly is the advantage of this approach over "cp -a" or "mv"?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I would have suggested mv. It has the useful property that you can
> > > > > > easily spot aborted transfers by the fact that the original device is
> > > > > > not empty afterwards.
> > > > > One note is that I've had issues where symlinks remain pointing to 
> > > > > the old drive.  (That was a long time ago, though, and maybe I did 
> > > > > something
> > > > > wrong.)
> > > > I thought symlinks keep point via a file location memo, like "look at
> > > > /usr/share/the/file/you/want", which is the old location just after
> > > > copying, but the new location when you boot from your new device and
> > > > that becomes root.
> > >
> > > Note how at the bottom or this example bar/shoe still points to 
> > > ../snuffle/shoe/.  When you try to "cp -axv / /some/new/root" the 
> > > same thing will happen.   In /usr/bin all the symlinks to 
> > > /etc/alternatives will still point to the *current* /etc/alternatives 
> > > not to /some/new/root/etc/alternatives.
> > As expected, thus. So when change your fstab to let /some/new/root 
> > become / then all the symlinks are as they should be.
>
> There's only one way to find out...
Well, I once migrated with these options from an almost broken hard 
drive to a working one, and I didn't run into problems with symlinks. SO 
most likely, "it just works"

Sjoerd

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