How to copy a Fedora system?

[Timothy Murphy]

John Summerfield wrote:

>> So my query is: how exactly should one copy a Fedora system
>> to another partition?
>> 
> 
> I, and others, have answered this many times over the years. Google is
> your friend.
> 
> dd can be a good start. I even use it for Windows.

I don't think dd is appropriate in this case,
as the source is in several partitions
(/usr and /usr/share were separate partitions).

> tar | tar # with appropriate options, works extremely well, and can even
> do it across a network.

I don't see any difference between tar, rsync and cp -a in this case.
Why do you think tar would be better?
How would the outcome differ from rsync?

There would still be the same problem with /dev .

Have you actually done this with tar since udev was introduced?
If so, what directories did you exclude?

I may say I have copied systems in the past using dd, tar and cp -a.
But I haven't done it since udev was introduced.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
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s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland