[ale] backup a running RH7.2 box

[Michael Still]

Do you have a /boot partition?  If so then remount it ro and dd it's
entire contents to an identical partition on the new drive.  It's very
important that the geometry and filesystem layout (fdisk) of the
drives match.  This will preserve the layout for the boot loader so
that it can find the kernel where it tries to find it.  Do this step
after step 8.

If you don't have a /boot then things will be more difficult but it
should be possible to accomplish it.

On 9/13/05, Sid Lane <jakes.dad at gmail.com> wrote:
> all,
>  
>  for reasons I do not which to discuss I have a semi-pressing need to make
> as close a backup as possible of a running RH7.2 box.  I can shutdown as
> many services as needed but am somewhat afraid of rebooting (especially
> spinning down the drives since we have had fairly high failure rate with
> that model).
>  
>  I have tried the following without success:
>  
>  1.  install an identical drive in another server
>  2.  fdisk to identical partitions as server to be cloned (S2BC)
>  3.  format filesystems with same type as S2BC
>  4.  shutdown as many services as possible on S2BC
>  5.  tar / on S2BC (tar cvzpf cloneme.tgz /)
>  6.  scp tarball to surrogate server
>  7.  untar tarball
>  8.  dd MBR from S2BC to surrogate drive
>  9.  install clone drive to identical chasis as S2BC
>  10.  kick the tire, light the fire...
>  
>  it gets as far as "LI" (presumably of "LILO") and hangs...
>  
>  can anyone tell me what the flaw(s) in my procedure is (/are) and how I
> might go about successfully accomplishing this?  again,  I would prefer not
> to reboot but would consider it as long as it did not require a power cycle
> (spinning down/up drives).
>  
>  any help would be greatly appreciated...
>  
>  thanks!
>  
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> 


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