Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:00:12 +0100 From: "Rickard Dahlstrand" <rd@tilde.se> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: automatic dump and restore over Message-ID: <00a301c3d832$16a40c00$7001010a@nyalaptopen>
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Hi, I think I have a plan for upgrading a large number of computers over the ne= twork. I would really appreciate some help finding flaws in this idea. All the servers is installed with one partition for /, one for /var/. When = I do the initial install I move the /etc to /var/etc and synlink /etc to po= int at /var/etc. This should make the / partition exactly the same on all t= he servers. On the reference server (where I do all the upgrades) I then use dump to c= reate a file from the / partition. This file is the zipped and moved to my = laptop from installation on all the other servers. The laptop is then connected to the same network as the server that needs u= pgrading. The laptop is running DHCP, TFTP and NFS services. All servers are set to boot using PXE and once I reboot it the server boots= an image from the laptop containing a picobsd dist with a modified startup= script.=20 This script automatically mounts the hard drive on the server and a directo= ry on the laptop containing the dump-file from the reference server. Then i= t uses restore to write the dump-file over the / partition on the server. After the upgrade is complete I reboot the server without the DHCP server a= ctive and the server should boot using the new / partition. Can this work? I have read that dump/restore is the best solution for backi= ng up disks. Could there be any problems using restore on a partition alrea= dy allocated? Thanks, Rickard.
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