"i am such an idiot on command line stuff." "please excuse my ignorance"
"i'm sure i know less than you" I'm not sure what, but something seems really out of place here for PLUG. Maybe there's something in the valley water supply? :) Happy New Year, -jmz On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Kurt Granroth <[email protected]> wrote: > OR... maybe better yet, if you want to copy your entire hard drive onto > a bigger one, follow this step-by-step guide (with screenshots!) > > http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/showcontent.php?topic=03_Disk_to_disk_clone > > On 12/30/09 8:13 PM, Kurt Granroth wrote: >> Your advice to use 'dd' was referring to something other than copying >> your home directory ;-) >> >> The 'dd' command is as low-level and hard-core as you typically can get. >> It is used to make a *perfect* byte-by-byte copy of a file. However, >> it's rarely used to make copies of "normal" files anymore. Instead, >> it's used to make copies of "block" files. That is, all hard drives and >> all partitions in the hard drives have a special pseudo file called >> /dev/something. So if you want to make a perfect copy of an entire hard >> drive (including all file systems with their inodes and logs and >> everything), then you use 'dd'. The normal 'cp' and the like can't get >> low-level enough to deal with things like that. >> >> ('dd', btw, stands for "Copy and Convert". Supposedly it was initially >> shortened to 'cc' but since that was taken by the compiler, they used >> 'dd' instead.) >> >> If you want to copy a directory, your best bet is to use 'cp' or >> 'rsync'. Why the choice? Well, 'cp' is an old-school Unix utility and >> it was never built to fully handle directories. The GNU version of 'cp' >> (which is what you are using) *can* handle directories and permissions >> and the like and so it'll work just fine... but people who have been >> around Unix long enough (and those who work on disparate Unix and >> Unix-like systems), tend to avoid counting on GNU cp since there's no >> guarantee that it'll be on any given system. >> >> 'rsync', on the other hand, is nearly ubiquitous and it works awesome >> for copying directories. It is, by far, the most common tool used for >> copying or backing up entire directory structures. >> >> So you have a couple of choices to make. First, do you want to copy >> *everything* off of the old hard drive to a new one? Or do you only >> want to copy off the home directory? >> >> In either case, I recommend using 'rsync'. Thar be dragons when using >> 'dd' and it won't help you much in either case here. >> >> So.. >> >> 1. Mount your new USB drive and format it as ext3 or ext4. You should >> be able to do that in a fairly GUI manner with any half-way modern Linux >> desktop. >> >> 2. Do you see where the USB drive is mounted? I'll pretend it is >> /mnt/usb for this example. Do the following if you are copying over >> just your home directory: >> >> $ rsync -azvH /home/stormy /mnt/usb/ >> >> If you are copying over your entire hard drive, then: >> >> $ sudo rsync -azvHx --exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys / >> /mnt/usb/ >> >> On 12/30/09 7:13 AM, betty wrote: >>> i'm sure i know less than you, the advice was to use dd. is one better >>> than the other?? i'm willing to use whatever will work to copy my home >>> dir to the new computer so that all my settings are the same. >>> >>> what would be the command for cp? >>> thx >>> betty i >>> >>> Eric Cope wrote: >>>> please excuse my ignorance, why would cp -r not work? >>>> Eric >>>> >>>> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:33 PM, betty<[email protected] >>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>>> >>>> I installed the new drive into the new computer. I'm going to >>>> transfer >>>> the home directory to a usb drive and then to the new computer. >>>> This is the command i tried and the result i got. >>>> >>>> sto...@stormy-desktop:~$ sudo dd if=/home/stormy of=/dev/sdc1 >>>> bs=1024k >>>> [sudo] password for stormy: >>>> dd: reading `/home/stormy': Is a directory >>>> 0+0 records in >>>> 0+0 records out >>>> 0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.000942499 s, 0.0 kB/s >>>> sto...@stormy-desktop:~$ >>>> >>>> What is wrong there? i am such an idiot on command line stuff. aghhh. >>>> Thanks. >>>> betty i. >>>> >>>> Joseph Sinclair wrote: >>>> > First, I'd definitely recommend going with a new SATA drive on >>>> the new machine. You'll find everything just works better and the >>>> added reliability of a newer drive makes for a lot less stress >>>> (although regular and frequent backups are definitely the best >>>> peace-of-mind tool). >>>> > >>>> > For the data transfer there are 3 simple options: >>>> > 1) If you have, or can borrow, a large enough USB drive (flash >>>> or HDD), I'd copy everything (I prefer rsync, but dd is a good >>>> choice too) to the USB drive, then copy from that to the new >>>> computer. >>>> > 2) Temporarily install the old drive in the new machine on the >>>> ATA (CDROM) interface (if the new machine has an old-style ATA >>>> interface for the CD drives), and copy the data from one drive to >>>> the other (definitely use rsync here). >>>> > 3) Connect the two machines to an ethernet router/hub and use >>>> rsync to transfer the files over the ethernet connection. >>>> > >>>> > However you end up doing the transfer, I'd definitely recommend >>>> retaining a separate backup of all of your personal data >>>> (pictures, documents, music, videos, etc...) as part of the >>>> process, if at all possible. >>>> > >>>> -- >>>> betty i. >>>> www.webcanine.com<http://www.webcanine.com> >>>> information for people >>>> who care for dogs. >>>> >>>> --------------------------------------------------- >>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] >>>> <mailto:[email protected]> >>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >>>> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Eric Cope >>>> http://cope-et-al.com >>> >>> >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
