I still like Lance's solution, but for 1 alteration. Being lazy, I just use # cp -a to create a recursive archive copy of the orginial filesystem. The good thing (compared to dd) is that, since no *nix has a "defrag" you end up with one big whoppin chunk-o freespace using cp -a. dd will duplicate the fragmentation. The contiguous-ness probably goes the same for dump | restore into a brand-new mkfs'd ext3, but I never compared.
I'm paranoid about doing the right thing with various things like holey files, etc. I know dump/restore does the right thing so I use it.
I've also used a very similar mechanism to upgrade systems to the next version of the hardware. We are a Dell shop at work and use LOTS of PowerEdge 2x50 boxen. I've rolled servers from 2450 -> 2550 -> 2650 over time using the dump/restore mechanism to move the data. Works like a champ as long as you pay attention to changing hardware devices (RAID controllers, ethernet devices, etc.) Adjust the modules.conf/modprobe.conf, run mkinitrd again, and you're gold.
--[Lance]
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