From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 16 16:10:11 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F91716A41C for ; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 16:10:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) Received: from mail.goinet.com (mail.goinet.com [208.207.72.15]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EAB9D43D55 for ; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 16:10:10 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) Received: from mail.goinet.com (localhost.goinet.com [127.0.0.1]) by mail.goinet.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id j5GGA0I7075462; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:10:00 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) Received: from localhost (tshadwick@localhost) by mail.goinet.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) with ESMTP id j5GGA0St075447; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:10:00 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) X-Authentication-Warning: mail.goinet.com: tshadwick owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:10:00 -0500 (CDT) From: Tony Shadwick To: "Andrew P." In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050616110429.Y30082@mail.goinet.com> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.85.1, clamav-milter version 0.85 on mail.goinet.com X-Virus-Status: Clean Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Headless upgrade from Linux to FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 16:10:11 -0000 There are "ways" to do this, but none of them are really good ideas. If this machine has any uptime requirements at all, I wouldn't do it. If you *must*, and you have a decent bootloader on the disk you're booting from now (grub?), and you have a second available disk, then you could create a bootable system on another box that is not headless and is local to you, install all of the software that you want, then dd that system to a single file, gzip it to make it as small as possible, transfer it to your redhat system, unzip the file, dd the image file back to the second drive, add the new system drive to grub's config file, reboot and pray. I really don't think it's a good idea though....bad bad bad bad bad. If you're going to do it, might I suggest that ahead of time you recompile your fedora kernel to support at least UFS2 read, if there isn't safe UFS2 write available now? That way after you finish dd'ing the image to the second drive, you can view the filesystem and check for any mistakes you might have made, or make any adjustments that you think of at the last moment before you do that last reboot? Tony On Thu, 16 Jun 2005, Andrew P. wrote: > Hello, > > I've been using FreeBSD for a while - and I prefer it to all other > server OS'es, but incidentally I have Fedora Core 3 installed on one > of the servers I manage. I consulted all interested parties and they > have nothing against migrating it to FreeBSD. I've got physical access > to the box, but I'd would like it very much to make a headless > upgrade. > > It's a single-Opteron box with around 130Gb on a 200Gb SATA hard > drive, the internet bandwidth is about 20Mbit/s. In fact, I've already > tried to run FreeBSD-5.3 on this very box - without any problem. There > is no DHCP/DNS on the network it's connected to, so static > preconfigured IP-address is a must, as well as a pre-configured BIND > (or at least resolv.conf with one of my external DNS-servers). > > I'm thinking about creating a large hard-drive image (with FreeBSD) > and somehow writing it on the hard-drive with an in-memory dd-like > tool. Can anybody suggest a better way? Maybe I could even save some > data without backing it all up on another server? > > Thanks, > Andrew P. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >