Hi Joe,
I've used the Disk Utility and created a copy that boots. Thank
you it was fun. I haven't done the cron thing yet or the psync
over it.
One question, it appears like everything on the restore copy is
exactly the same, however the total file size and the total number
of files is off by about 1%. Maybe Disk Utility is smart enough
not to copy items in the Trash Can or maybe there is something else
going on?
Good question: I've had a bit of a trawl through my different copies
and it does seem that there are some portions of the system that
Disk Utility doesn't copy. For example, the swap files and associated
guff (in /private/var/vm). That accounted for about a gig of the size
difference on my machine. There's also some other contents of the /
private/var/tmp that seems to escape copying, though I haven't looked
closely enough to sort out what's taken and what's left.
Similarly, it looks like the some of the caches (/System/Library/
Caches) might also escape the copying. I tried hunting down a page
detailing the process, which is really "asr" (ie, Apple Software
Restore, see "man asr"), but didn't have a lot of luck.
Cheers,
Paul
