1:1 copy of notebook system on netbook

orschiro · 2010-05-05 06:42:59

Hello guys,

I have synchronised my complete system I'm using on my Thinkpad SL500 on an external hard disk. Now I want to restore the whole system on my Asus EeePC.

As they are using completely different hardware I'm not sure whether this is possible. My Thinkpad has a x86_64 version installed, the EeePC only supports i686. So is there any chance to use my system with all it's configurations and installed programs on the EeePC or do I have to reinstall from scratch?

Regards

demian · 2010-05-05 08:00:37

You won't be able to boot the kernel.

What i would try:
Copy backup to EEEPC and start from livecd. Install 32bit kernel, xf86-evdev and xf86-video-[...] and see if you can boot.

If that doesn't work you'll have to "install from scratch". You could, of course, copy all the config files and /home to your new drive.

Xyne · 2010-05-05 08:34:55

If you've installed x86_64 on your Thinkpad then you cannot clone it onto your i686 EeePC. You might be able to do what demian suggested, but I wouldn't. I see no reason to copy over a 64-bit userland just to re-install everything anyway.

If you want to install the same packages then you can use the following script:

#!/bin/bash

pkgs=$(pacman -Qqe)
foreign="$(pacman -Qqm)"
for pkg in $foreign; do
  pkgs=$(echo " " $pkgs " " | sed "s/ $pkg / /")
done

for pkg in $pkgs; do
  echo "$pkg" >>repo_pkgs.txt
done

for pkg in $(pacman -Qqme); do
  echo "$pkg" >>foreign_pkgs.txt
done

It will create two files. repo_pkgs.txt will contain a list of all explicitly installed packages which are available in the repos. You can reinstall them with "pacman -Syu $(cat repo_pkgs.txt)" (or with powerpill, which will be faster). You will have to filter out x86_64-specific applications (e.g. 32-bit libs).

The second file will contain a list of foreign packages. If they are available in the AUR then you can use one of the AUR helpers to install them as well. You can probably skip the above step and use "<aur helper> -Syu $(cat repo_pkgs.txt; cat foreign_pkgs.txt)".

Use (g)rsync to copy /home then copy your config files one at a time while sanity-checking them.

orschiro · 2010-05-05 09:06:11

^Xyne. That's a very neat idea. Thank you for that. But I think and as you already described it would be easier to install the system and then copy all related configs and of course /home onto the new machine.

Well thank you for the input. I'll try that out.

Regards

orschiro

Arch Linux

#1 2010-05-05 06:42:59

1:1 copy of notebook system on netbook

#2 2010-05-05 08:00:37

Re: 1:1 copy of notebook system on netbook

#3 2010-05-05 08:34:55

Re: 1:1 copy of notebook system on netbook

#4 2010-05-05 09:06:11

Re: 1:1 copy of notebook system on netbook

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