[F8] Need help with tar or how to copy root to new drive?

[Les Mikesell]

Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> I am having a hard time simply trying to copy my root partition to a new
> drive and somehow tar is not doing what I expected. Can someone advise
> me how to do it correctly?
> 
> I tried:
> 
> 1) mkdir /mnt/new
> 2) mount /dev/sdc3 /mnt/new
> 3) cd /mnt/new
> 4) (cd /; tar --one-file-system --xattrs -cf - .) | tar --one-file-system --xattrs -tvf -)
>    [result: All mounted filesystems are copied over]  Drat!

I think you have a typo somewhere.  The --one-file-system option should 
  keep tar from traversing mount points (and your -tvf option isn't 
going to copy anything...)

> The only other possibility that comes to my mind is to mount the root drive
> to /mnt/root read-only. mount the new drive to /mnt/new, and then tar-copy
> but this may have consequences with the currently mounted root filesystem?

If your drives are identical you can boot the install media with 'linux 
rescue' at the boot prompt, then use dd to copy the raw disk image.

cp -a or rsync should work as well as tar for a file oriented copy, and 
both have --one-file-system options.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com