From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 28 19:00:49 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F87F1065694 for ; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:00:49 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from poseidon.ceid.upatras.gr (poseidon.ceid.upatras.gr [150.140.141.169]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 84B4C8FC1A for ; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:00:48 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.ceid.upatras.gr (unknown [10.1.0.143]) by poseidon.ceid.upatras.gr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4AFD8EB57E5; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:47 +0300 (EEST) Received: from localhost (europa.ceid.upatras.gr [127.0.0.1]) by mail.ceid.upatras.gr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D2AB45164; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:47 +0300 (EEST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ceid.upatras.gr Received: from mail.ceid.upatras.gr ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (europa.ceid.upatras.gr [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id oeIvVRBYbJ38; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:46 +0300 (EEST) Received: from kobe.laptop (adsl243-164.kln.forthnet.gr [79.103.56.164]) by mail.ceid.upatras.gr (Postfix) with ESMTP id B621E45152; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:46 +0300 (EEST) Received: from kobe.laptop (kobe.laptop [127.0.0.1]) by kobe.laptop (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n8SJ0jH1003068 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:45 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by kobe.laptop (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) id n8SJ0hYi003067; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:43 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Chris In-Reply-To: <20090928011444.29110022@chris.makeworld.com> (Chris's message of "Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:14:44 -0500") Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:02:11 +0300 Message-ID: <87zl8ftbfg.fsf@kobe.laptop> References: <20090928011444.29110022@chris.makeworld.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1.50 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Disk Cloning 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: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:00:49 -0000 On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:14:44 -0500, Chris wrote: > Greetings, > > Please suggest a cloning method comparable to Clonezilla. > > Preferably fast, no need to install a base OS, easy to clone and > restore. Of course, the key is fast. > > Clonezilla does a nice job with OS's other than *BSD (It uses dd > (iirc)) and that takes forever (at least when cloning - have not tried > a restore). > > Some specs I'm using to compare: A typical restore/save currently with > other OS's using CloneZ takes about 12 minutes with a simple boot from > CD. > > The restored/imaged drive is 400 meg sata. A dump & restore of a 400 MB system should be *very* fast. Copying files from a read-only USB flash disk easily reaches speeds of more than 20 MB/sec on my laptop. This means that 400 MB of data should take around 20 seconds to copy from an external USB disk. If you can attach both disks at the same time, e.g. the source disk as ad0 and the target disk as ad1, it should take less than 2-3 minutes to: * Enter single user mode * Partition and mount ad1 under /mnt * Use dump(8) to save data from ad0 and restore(8) to copy them over to ad1. Even if you cannot attach both disks at the same time, but you can access the source disk over the network, it should be possible to: * Install the target disk on the target host (host2). * Boot from a rescue image (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or USB). * Bring up a network interface to access the source host (host1). * Partition the ad0 disk of the target host (host2). The standard fdisk(8), bsdlabel(8) or gpart(8) utilities can do this. * Tunnel dump over ssh: host2# cd / host2# ssh operator@host1 'dump -0a -C32 -L -f - /' | restore -rf - Clonezilla is really nice, because it can take care of partition layout and sizes automatically. It isn't really _necessary_ to use Clonezilla to clone an existing system though. The base system of FreeBSD includes enough tools to do that already.