[plug] Migrate HDD on headless server

[Craig Ringer]

Weirdo wrote:
> I am currently running my debian server on a 400mb HDD with 10mb free. I 
> have a 2Gb drive that I want to replace the 400 with. The server is 
> headless and doesn't accept graphics cards (part of the MB is bung and 
> it will boot up graphicly 1 out 30 times.) I can probably put the hdd in 
> as slave, i can't remeber if the BIOS is set to AUTO but Linux will see 
> it any way. I need instructions for copying / to the new drive and 
> resizing it to a new size. Then I need to make it bootable etc...
> I don't need a swap partition although it currently has one. I will have 
> to do all this over ssh.

The ssh requirement makes it hard. The usual method I use is to boot 
"linux init=/bin/bash" and DD the root filesystem over to the new 
partition while it's in RO mode. I then DD all the other partitons and 
"resize2fs" or "reiserfs_resize" them up to the size of the new host 
partition. Then I shutdown, swap disks, boot up off a GRUB floppy and 
install GRUB on the new primary disk. It's easy and fuss free IMHO.

I think that in your case, perhaps you should simply move the disks to a 
machine which isn't broken and do the migration there, then put the new 
disk back?

Craig Ringer