John, you're right about booting from the live CD. You usually don't want to use dd to copy from a mounted (live) filesystem; since it operates at a block level, any write activity on the source drive during the copy is likely to produce a corrupt copy. When doing what you want to do, I usually boot the machine off of a CD and use dd. If the new drive is larger, or if I must run in the live machine, I'll partition the new drive with cfdisk and use rsync to copy the files, then run grub-install to write the boot track. In either case, you don't need tar. Tar doesn't do the right thing with special files anyway, such as device inodes and sockets, so don't use it. (I know much of what I just now said may not make a lot of sense yet.)
Whatever you do, don't get the source and destination drives mixed up. ;-) If you want something like a recipe, this google search (on the various stack exchange web sites) will help: https://www.google.com/search?q=stack+exchange+clone+drive+linux+dd+rsync If you want more background and/or have an unusual situation, you'll want to google for: - dd - rsync - grub - dmesg # shows recent hardware activity - cat /proc/partitions # shows currently available partitions - mount # makes an available partition active and attaches it somewhere in the live filesystem tree - umount # the Linux equivalent of what you need to do before ejecting removable media - chroot For a boot CD, I usually use systemrescuecd, because it pretty much gives me a vanilla Linux machine -- I've been working with *nix since the early 80's, so anything more than that just gets in my way for a simple copy. I've never used clonezilla, but as far as I understand it's got more drive cloning tools added for what you want to do. It's also got a lot of network-based bits in there, the kind of thing needed for multi-machine deployments, which adds a lot of complexity, but you can just ignore all that for your use case. Finally, here's my own completely untested example showing what I usually would do if using rsync. I'm probably missing some steps here, and I've simplified stuff, so use this only as a guide, not a recipe: Assuming sdc is the source drive and sdd is the destination: cfdisk /dev/sdd # make a big Linux partition called sdd1, and a swap partition roughly 2x RAM size called sdd2 mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdd1 # format sdd1 (caution -- make dead sure sdd1 is the destination) mkswap /dev/sdd2 # format swap partition (caution) mkdir /mnt/sdc1 mkdir /mnt/sdd1 mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/src # make source accessible under /mnt/src mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt/dst # make destination accessible under /mnt/dst ls -la /mnt/src # confirm you're looking at the old drive ls -la /mnt/dst # confirm this is the new drive -- only thing showing should be an empty lost+found directory rsync -HaSx /mnt/src/ /mnt/dst/ # do the copy -- all of these flags are important, as well as the trailing slashes rsync -PHaSvx /mnt/src/ mnt/dst/ # alternative, verbose version of the above command mount -t proc none /mnt/dst/proc # get things set up for the chroot mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dst/dev mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/dst/sys chroot /mnt/dst/ /bin/bash # start a new shell using /mnt/dst as / grub-install /dev/sdd # install boot loader (caution) exit # leave the chroot umount /mnt/dst/proc # tear down the chroot umount /mnt/dst/dev umount /mnt/dst/sys umount /dev/sdc1 # detach the source and target drives from the live filesystem tree umount /dev/sdd1 All of that mount and chroot stuff towards the end is to enable you to use the new drive's version of grub to install the boot loader in the boot track of the new drive. Google for 'chroot grub-install' for more details about this. Steve On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:28 AM, <tom-...@bgp.nu> wrote: > > >> On Feb 20, 2016, at 11:56 AM, Chris Albertson < > albertson.ch...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Note that to close a device you need identical hardware. > > > > To clarify, you don’t need “identical” hardware. You need a disk that > is the same size or larger to clone a disk. > > -Tom > > And, I should add, that if the disk is larger the extra space is not used > (due to the partition map). There are tricks to add that space (or expand > into it). > -Tom > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance > APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month > Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now > Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140 > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
