On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Dexter Graphic wrote: > Any suggestions on how I can mirror (duplicate onto an identical > drive) my fancy 3 distribution and 8 partition GNU/Linux system? > > Would "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb" work? If so, do I have to run > it from a boot floppy so that no partitions are mounted? That's what I would try if I had two *identical* devices, except that you may want to increase the block size for speed, from the default of 512 byte (at least on all versions of dd I had) to xk or xM. I am not sure if the block size needs to match the granulariy of the device, i.e. would a partial block been read and written? I just tried: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0 # to erase the floppy dd bs=1M count=2 if=/dev/hda of=/dev/fd0 # to look at the partial block Although it said 2+0 record in 1+0 records out I had the entire floppy filled with the correct data (I always wrote the floppy to file after each step and used midnight commander 'mc' in hex mode to look at it)
Booting from a floppy would also be my choice since things in /var/ constantly change (either dd may throw up (tar does after several tries on a very busy machine) or fs gets corrupted). Also I don't know how the funny stuff in /proc is handled by dd ? (which you don't need to worry about if the drive is not mounted/active) Good luck, and let us know .................. Horst > ... _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
