From owner-freebsd-stable Thu Feb 22 19:17:24 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from cepheus.azstarnet.com (cepheus.azstarnet.com [169.197.56.195]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 79C3537B401 for ; Thu, 22 Feb 2001 19:17:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from Castalia@azstarnet.com) Received: from azstarnet.com (dhcp676.mc01.dsl.azstarnet.com [169.197.10.164]) by cepheus.azstarnet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA17898; Thu, 22 Feb 2001 20:17:10 -0700 (MST) X-Sent-via: StarNet http://www.azstarnet.com/ Message-ID: <3A95D76F.ACD80A09@azstarnet.com> Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 20:22:23 -0700 From: Bradford Castalia Organization: idaeim X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 4.2-STABLE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Corey G." Cc: Alexandr Kovalenko , lists , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: installing onto a new drive from a running system References: <20010222152655.A70899@mighty.grot.org> <11423074949.20010223014023@yahoo.com> <20010222191020.A51735@telocity.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Mirroring" (in the sense of making a duplicate, not in the RAID sense) should be a trivial operation. I, too, use a plug-in drive drawer which contains a disk that matches the internal system disk. I duplicated the system disk to the removable disk using dd on a quiescent system: dd if=/dev/rad0 of=/dev/rad4 This copied _everything_ - boot block, disk label, filesystem info, user files - in one go (i.e. a byte-for-byte duplicate of the entire contents of the device). It did take awhile (30GB ATA 7200 RPM), and requires that the disks be physically alike, but it's the simplest way I can imagine to make a truly duplicate a disk. After the dd I can mount each partition independently (e.g. to /mnt) and find everything exactly as it appears from the original. The duplicate disk is a convenient backup, easily ports to other systems in its plugable drawer, can substitute for the system disk after a disaster, and is suitable as the system disk in a clone system. This is not a substitute for a well managed backup plan. But with disks being inexpensive commodity parts, it was an easy way to duplicate my system disk after I confirmed that I had a good fresh installation and get the peace of mind that my foundation is secure. -- Bradford Castalia Castalia@azstarnet.com Systems Analyst http://azstarnet.com/~castalia idaeim 520-624-6629 "Build an image in your mind, fit yourself into it." The Log of Cyradis, Seeress of Kell. "Corey G." wrote: > > I successfully did a dupe of my running FreeBSD 4.2 system using the > following method just a few weeks ago. My goal was to keep it as simple > as possible. I use pull out drives which makes this method even easier > for myself. > > 1. installed the second drive as a slave > 2. created partitions and labeled partitions using sysinstall from the > running system > 3. mounted each partition from the slave drive one at a time to /mnt > 4. used "rsync -avp /source/ /mnt" as my copy method for each FS > > When I was done I simply switched my master and slave drive and > rebooted. Everything worked without a single modification. > > Rsync was my choice, maybe not the fastest in this situation but it > worked. > > Thanks, > Corey > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message