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Hello all
To sintetize... I want to know how to make "mirror" copies of an arch install, to transfer it to another partition on the same disk, after resizing it, or to other computers with identical specs.
I'm currently using arch Linux on four machines (two desktops and two notebooks).
On one of the desktops I installed arch linux along Ubuntu in a somewhat messy partition division:
sda1: ubuntu ext3 (15GB)
sda2: swap (4,1GB)
sda5 (extended): arch ext4 (15GB)
sda6 (extended): "data" ext4 (466GB) (not "home"... a space where I put movies, music, etc accessible from any systems without any user of config files. "home" is respectively inside ubuntu and inside arch).
This is giving me some headaches, discussed in other posts...
I would like to entirely change the partition division to something like this:
sda1: Arch (30GB) EXT4
sda2: DATA EXT4 (or swap)
sda3: swap (or DATA EXT4)
The thing is... I love my currently arch install in this machine... It has many aur packages, wine programs, and a lot of "customizations" on programs hotkeys, plugins, icons, themes, default aplications for files, compiz plugins, etc...
I would like to find some way to "backup" the entire arch partition, format the HD and simply put it back to work.
Space for backup is not an issue... I have lots to spare in external HDs or in other computers.
I've tried to simply copy the partition with nautilus in root mode, but I saw that it changed permissions to files/directories and "failed" to copy some files (if i'm not wrong, devices...). So i'm afraid it wont work to simply copy.
I saw in this topic on the forums http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=56467 something about copying an arch install to an virtualbox machine with "dd".
Would it work with my case? Should I use a live CD, or can I do it inside the working system? Any other ways to do it? Other sugestions?
If this works... It would be handy - for instance - to make an arch install "default" or "backup", and mirror it on many machines with identical/similar specs...
Thanks in advance for any help.
Last edited by Raws (2010-03-21 16:48:44)
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I am able to copy Arch partitions around and only edit the /etc/fstab file for it to work in its new location as long as I am not trying to do this while the partition I am copying is active (i.e. what I booted from). Sometimes it has been necessary to chroot to the relocated partition and run mkinitcpio although I am not exactly sure what triggers the need (I only know that it will not boot until after I have done this).
My setup is similar to yours, except that I keep a minimal (i.e. console only) Arch partition at /dev/sda1 that I can boot into to do maintenance. When I am making a copy of my main Arch partition (for backup or to move), I use rsync -ax ... after I have booted from my minimal partition.
Steve
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I'll check rsync... Thanks for the tips!
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I went to check Rsync and found this on wiki http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ful … with_rsync
Dont know how I missed it before (believe me, I checked the wiki before posting the topic).
I'll try it on the following days.
Thanks again.
Changing to solved.
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