[K12OSN] Re: 4.2.1 fresh install, trying to move old /home to it

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 01:01, ssanders at coin.org wrote:

> the Webmin backup has choices to do full backup or just diffs. i am
> having a problem, however, getting it to run on a schedule. no errors in
> the logs, it just doesn't happen. starting manually it runs fine. i have
> tested several restores, and they seem good.
> 
> these are sloppy hacks for several reasons. i know that LVM is a better
> way to deal with disks/partitions. i just need to learn more about it,
> instead of working around it. especially since this is all local, i
> think rsync would be a better way to go. it's been a couple of years
> since i used rsync, i'm RTFM on it now a bit, trying to re-learn
> it.

There are any number of ways to copy stuff keeping owners and
permissions, especially if you can keep the login names and
uid numbers consistent.  The handiest for a system move is,
on the source system:
cd /path_to_copy
rsync -essh -av . target_host:/target_path
Using . as the source eliminates the question of whether it will
add an extra directory on the target or not.  It will create the
last directory in the target path you specify if it doesn't exist
and use it if it does.

The nice thing is that you can do this ahead of a system switch to
get the bulk of the data over and perhaps do some testing, then
repeat it, adding the --delete option at the last minute before
you cut over and it will run very quickly, just taking the changes.
Then change the names and IP addresses on the boxes and reboot and
you are all set.

If you are doing this a lot, you might want to set up backuppc
(http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/) to keep copies on a different
box and restore those to the new machine.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com