[plug] Migrate HDD on headless server

[James Devenish]

In message <20030628025853.60230.qmail at web40712.mail.yahoo.com>
on Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 12:58:53PM +1000, Andrew Furey wrote:
> * Use something like cp -ar?, tar, or my personal
> choice (mc) to copy everything from / to /mntpoint.

I'm sure Tim has a regular backup image that he can restore from ;)

> * You should be able to get a "ps ax" list down to init, various
> other kernel-type processes (k*, also bdflush maybe), a few
> getty/mingetty/foo processes (don't matter), and sshd.

I thought one of the features of Linux distributions is that they
support useful 'run levels'. Could the above be achieved via that
mechanism? (I.e. almost single-user mode but not quite.)

In message <20030628025853.60230.qmail at web40712.mail.yahoo.com>
on Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 12:58:53PM +1000, Andrew Furey wrote:
> CraigR did make a good point, putting the drives in
> another machine would make things _much_ easier...

It is true that some people routinely use a procedure like this:

 - grab the backup image for the filesystem on the remote host,
 - restore the backup image to a new disk on a local host
   (alternatively, generate an up-to-the-minute duplicate from a
   snapshot, as you have suggested),
 - make adjustments or upgrades as necessary using the local host,
 - test on a local host,
 - ship disks to wrench monkey at remote location.