The exercise you pose is trickier than it might seem at first glance, and I
don't know of any "standard" procedure for it. Partly this is because it
depends on how similar the two systems are.
Clearly they are not identical; if they were, you would be taking the
obvious solution of turning off power to the old server, swapping in the new
one, and turning the power back on.
So the first thing you need to consider is how different the two are. You
mention that the 6.0 box has RAID capability; by implication the 6.2 box
doesn't. RAID, as I recall, requires special kernel compilation options;
will the kernel on the 6.2 box run, unmodified, on the 6.0 box? RAID is the
obvious example, but filesystem arrangement and NICs are other potential
differences. You said its differences include "and the such", whatever that
might refer to, so I do assume there is more than just RAID to worry about.
How much of the rest of the configuration will transfer unmodified?
Presumably the hosts have different IP addresses, requiring a bit of
customizing. Do they use the same X server? The same /etc/printcap entries?
And so on ....
I'm not really asking you to tell us all the answers here, just trying to
illustrate the range of details you need to think about when trying to
transfer a configuration from one host to another. THis should give you a
fell for why there is no off-the-shelf answer to your question.
Assuming the configurations of the kernel and a large assortment of
ancillary packages matches, the next question is whether you can interrupt
service tor 30 minuts or so. If not -- if the system needs to run 24/7 --
the sort of upgrade you want to do probably is impossible, and you'll need
to "hot swap" the new host for the old one (interrupting service for a
minute or so; I don't know a way around that), rebuild the old server, and
then hot swap again. The details depend on what *content* the old server is
serving up; it needs to be mirrored to the new server for you to do this.
How to do the actual transfer? The easiest way I've found is to boot up the
target machine from a suitable floppy-based Linux (tomsrtbt is a good choice
for this), transfer the new system in any of several ways (NFS mount + cp; a
"tar" pipe; by tape if both hosts have tape drives [apparently not in your
case]; etc.), run LILO, and reboot/init with the new kernel and other upgrades.
Even here, you need to make sure you only overwrite the portions of the
filesystem(s) that you want upgraded. If you used a standard RH
disk-partitioning scheme, with a bunch of (mostly) small filesystems, this
will be easy -- the stuff you want to preserve on the old system, its
contents, will be separate from its execuatables. If you are using fewer,
larger partition, you need to be careful not to overwrite anything you want
to keep. A selective tape backup and restore might help you here.
At 08:25 AM 5/31/00 -0500, Mike Tvarkunas wrote:
>Hi Group,
>
>Does anyone have a quick idea, or a link to a good site about migrating to
>a new box. What I have is a production 6.0 box, and a Pre-Production 6.2
>box. The 6.2 is ready for the real world now, and I want to move it to the
>current box running 6.0. (It has a raid capabilities and the such)
>
>My question is what is the best way to go about this.... IS there a best
>way? The 6.0 box does have a tape drive, but the new one doesn't. Can you
>do any type of NFS backup or something from the 6.0 of the 6.2 and then
>restore to the box?
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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