Installation via VM, or Live Clone?

jlacroix · 2012-09-13 17:15:42

For a while, I've been creating Clonezilla images of each of my Arch machines. It worked really well, if ever I had some sort of problem and needed to reinstall, I could just restore a Clonezilla image which has all of my programs and settings already configured. However, I gave up on that recently because I found myself spending too much time updating the image every time there was a substantial change. Later, I found my image no longer worked due to the filesystem and gcc upgrades. So, no more of that.

I recently came up with the idea of maybe installing Arch on a VM with all my programs and settings, and then using that to restore my system should it fail and or need replacing. Perhaps, if possible, the VM could write to the hard drive of the computer to be restored over the network to get it back running if such a thing is possible.

So, any thoughts? Is this a practical solution?

Last edited by jlacroix (2012-09-13 17:16:24)

DSpider · 2012-09-13 18:03:48

Sure. You can move your system in and out of VirtualBox:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fu … with_rsync

I'm hoping some time in the next few weeks to write a wiki article on moving an existing install in and out of a virtualized environment (VirtualBox, QEMU, VMware, doesn't matter), and possibly to a USB stick, based on the above link. Because it's really not that difficult. Obviously, the initramfs needs to be re-generated, because the hardware is changing, the fstab edited, and the bootloader reinstalled and its configuration file updated. Heh... It sounds a lot more difficult than it is.

jlacroix · 2012-09-15 13:30:15

I'm not completely sure I understand, but it looks like a good solution. If you do write such an article, let me know.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-13 17:15:42

Installation via VM, or Live Clone?

#2 2012-09-13 18:03:48

Re: Installation via VM, or Live Clone?

#3 2012-09-15 13:30:15

Re: Installation via VM, or Live Clone?

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