OT: cloning (copying) a HD over a network...

[Pedro Fernandes Macedo]

Kim Lux wrote:

>The hard drive is full on our server.  I can ssh into it from my
>workstation.  I've got a formatted drive mounted on my workstation ready
>to receive the server files.
>
>How do I easily copy the server files to the workstation drive over our
>network ?  Keep in mind that I need to preserve the file ownership,
>permissions and dates.
>
>If I had the new hard drive mounted on the server, I would use:
>
>cp -aR /olddrive /newdrive >> logfile
>
>I've tried using scp, but I cannot force it to preserve the file
>attributes.
>  
>
I do the followin in such situations: Create a folder on the destination 
disk. Then , the following command should do the trick when run in the 
destination machine
rsync -avz -e ssh login at remote_machine:/remote_directory/ 
/local_directory/ |tee logfile

Before doing anything for real , I suggest you add the --dry-run 
parameter... I did the stupid thing of forgetting that parameter the 
other day and had to recover my home directory from backup :p

For recursive scp , you can use -p to preserve modes and atime and -r to 
work recursively. But I strongly suggest rsync , since -a uses -rlptgoD 
, which means:
recursive , copy symlinks as symlinks , preserve permitions , times , 
group , owner and devices. I've used that same command a few times to 
move services between machines and no user ever complained about wrong 
permissions or errors like permission denied on the webserver...

--
Pedro Macedo