DD Rules

[Karl Larsen]

Matthew J. Roth wrote:
> Karl,
>
> For the sake of new users who are routinely instructed to research the 
> list archives prior to asking a question, please explain the following 
> points:
>
> Karl Larsen wrote:
>> 1. The destination partition MUST be at least a byte larger than the  
>> source partition where the data is coming from. This is essential!
> Why must the destination partition be larger than the source 
> partition?  It is my understanding that the ideal situation is for 
> both partitions to be the same size.
    It is hard to be sure of partition size. I was using two Hard Drives 
with exactly the same number of total cylinders to make the same 160 GB. 
I made the destination partition 7 cylinders larger than the source with 
fdisk. That is a lot of bytes bigger. But yes identical is better if you 
know how to do that :-)
>> 4. If you are making a copy of an entire working Fedora system make 
>> sure you change all the entries in /etc/grub.conf and /etc/fstab 
>> files to the new partitions of the copy before you try to run it.
> This needs to be elaborated upon.  Both "grub.conf" and "fstab" are 
> critical files that may cause severe problems if misconfigured.  Since 
> this is a new thread, you must assume a reader is unaware of the 
> changes you are referencing.
    It is beyond the scope of this short paper.


>> 6. Always run dd in the source computer.
> Is it really wise to copy a mounted partition with a live file 
> system?  What if the file system is being written to during the copy?  
> The advice to use a live CD (given in one of the other myriad threads 
> on this topic) seems more prudent.
    It didn't seem to make any problem. I was getting emails and sending 
them. They were all working normal on this computer and the  destination 
copy runs just great.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Matthew Roth
> InterMedia Marketing Solutions
> Software Engineer and Systems Developer
>


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.