Re: [tlug] Sbackup Question

["Daniel A. Ramaley" <daniel.ramaley@example.com>]

On Sunday January 4 2009 23:10, CL wrote:
>What I would like to do is install the basic OS and then do a restore
> of the current installation on the smaller HDD so that, when the
> machine is turned back on, it will be as if nothing had changed.

If you are happy with the current installation, why not just move the 
whole installation to the new drive rather than installing and trying 
to restore important files from a backup?

I've done this several times with Linux, OpenBSD, Mac OS (both Classic 
and X), and even Windows. With Linux the basic steps are:

1) Install both drives into a machine.
2) Boot from a live CD, preferably for the same distribution you are 
running.
3) Create 2 directories somewhere, i'll say /mnt/src and /mnt/dest.
4) Mount the source drive on /mnt/src. Look in etc/fstab on the drive 
and make sure you mount all partitions in the appropriate places.
5) Partition and format the destination drive the way you want it, and 
mount it as /mnt/dest. Run mkswap on a swap partition (if any). If you 
are using multiple data partitions, create the mount points and mount 
those partitions.
6) Run this to copy the files. There are many other commands that will 
do this; this is just the one i use since tar seems to handle device 
and other weird files acceptably:
    (cd /mnt/src ; tar -cf - .) | (cd /mnt/dest ; tar -xvpf -)
7) If the drives are different enough to use different device names (say 
when migrating from ATA to SCSI), edit etc/fstab and possibly whatever 
config file your boot loader uses.
8) Install a boot loader on the new drive. How to do this will differ 
depending on which one you use (most likely either Lilo or Grub). 
Usually you'd do something like chroot to /mnt/dest, and then run 
whatever command installs the loader, possibly with an argument telling 
it what device to put it on (if different from what it will be after 
install).

That might sound like a lot of stuff to do, but it really doesn't take 
long. Just be careful when partitioning and formatting the destination 
drive that you are working on the correct one. In my experience the 
easiest place to experience problems is with installing the bootloader. 
Sometimes i remove the source drive and put the destination in its 
final place and then boot from the live CD again to install the 
bootloader. That way device names are usually the same as they will be 
when booting from the drive and the process is often smoother.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
+1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA