RE: clone a linux system over the network

["Jean-Philippe CIVADE" <noc 100pour100net com>]

I've done it using a free project called Mondo Archive. It's more a crash recovery tool, but it's able to do iso images with
recovery functions.

http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/index.html

Yours,

Jean-Philippe CIVADE

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taroon-list-bounces redhat com
> [mailto:taroon-list-bounces redhat com]On Behalf Of Garrick Staples
> Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 9:30 PM
> To: taroon-list redhat com
> Subject: Re: clone a linux system over the network
>
>
> On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 09:16:03PM +0200, wolf2k5 alleged:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I need to migrate a Linux system from a server to another one.
> >
> > I cannot reinstall the OS and applications on the new server and then
> > migrate the data from the old server, since that would require too
> > much time.
> >
> > In the past, to migrate a Linux system from a server to a new one with
> > HD of the same size, I shut down the servers, booted a Linux live CD
> > (Knoppix) on them and used 'dd' and 'netcat' to clone the system over
> > the network: that worked fine, but with two cons:
> >
> > - It is pretty slow, since it will copy over even blank data.
> >
> > - You cannot resize the partitions: if the new server has a bigger
> > disk, you cannot enlarge the original partition to use the additional
> > space.
>
> You should be able to fsck and use the filesystem's grow utility (resize2fs,
> resize_reiserfs, etc.) after you dd the partition.
>
>
> > Do you know any better way to clone the system over the network that
> > will fix the above problems?
>
> rsync instead of dd?  That will just copy files.  Be sure to use --sparse.
>
> My larger servers tend to have spare internal disks that are informal mirrors
> of the real boot disks.  I manually rsync them from time-to-time so that I
> always have something relatively recent to boot.
>
> I've done OS upgrades by installing the new OS on a test box, and rsyncing from
> the test box to the server's spare disks and rebooting then just rebooting to
> the new disks.  Obviously this is a very error-prone method because you need
> worry about boot partitions, boot loaders, device names, fstab, etc.
>
>
> > I think the commercial application Symantec Ghost can do it, but I am
> > looking for something free.
> >
> > It would be great if such tool supported PXE boot too.
> >
> > On a separate note, do you know how to boot Knoppix via PXE without
> > using the Knoppix Terminal Server (that requires an additional
> > machine)?
> > I already have a Linux host running TFTP/DHCP/NFS servers and use it
> > to perform Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations via PXE.
> > How do I configure it to perform Knoppix boots via PXE?
>
> I haven't found a way to boot an ISO image over the network.  I can netboot
> linux and dos floppy images (dos floppies are useful to automate BIOS/firmware
> updates over the network).
>
> --
> Garrick Staples, Linux/HPCC Administrator
> University of Southern California
>