How to do to save Archlinux

burmmo · 2008-09-15 03:26:31

Right now i'm using Pentium M notebook and the notebook using ide 40gb hard drive and i'd been thinking of buying 160gb ide 2.5 hard drive but i'm not sure is there a solution for this kind of problem?

Is it possible to not reinstall archlinux but i can boot normally to archlinux after copy manually(ctrl+c) all the data and other archlinux directory to the new hard drive 160gb.

here my current partition

boot = 50mb ext3
/ = 20gb jfs
home =rest of hard drive jfs
swap =2gb

(other information)
i got 3 user in the laptop =1 root and 2 normal user
i'm using overlord archlinux

i want to do like this to a new hard drive

boot = 100mb ext2 or ext3
/ =20gb jfs
home =the rest of hard drive,jfs format
swap=2gb

Gui application is much prefable cos i'm still a nooby:(

tonyisnt · 2008-09-15 04:18:32

I have, in the past, cloned partition images and recreated them. I don't think ctrl+c-ing everything will do it, though. But I could be wrong.

I also, just a few weeks ago, made a tarball of everything on my system (excluding dev, sys, proc, and tmp) and extracted it to a brand-new partition on another PC. And with a little help from this page, all I did was execute the mknod and mount commands from that section and was ready to go. And theoretically, things like cp and rsync could probably do it, too. It's important to keep permissions and ownership and all that the same, though. And I don't know of any GUI apps, personally, but commands to do it are simple enough.

Anyways, this was (basically) the command I used to archive it all:

tar -p --same-owner --exclude /dev --exclude /proc --exclude /sys --exclude /tmp -cf archive.tar /

You'll probably want to umount anything you might have in /mnt our /media or anywhere else (I had /windows, for instance). I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure all of those mounts will be included in the tarball.

EDIT: Gparted is what I've used to clone a partition once, and it worked, though I'm not sure this the best method. It is GUI.

Last edited by tonyisnt (2008-09-15 04:19:43)

fukawi2 · 2008-09-15 07:42:28

Yes it is possible, but messy, dangerous and painful... I've only ever done it once when I had to rebuild a hardware RAID array in my companies mail server after a disk died and I couldn't get a replacement. Was still easier than reinstalling and setting everything up again though. Took me all night from around 5.00pm till 4.30am.

1. BACKUP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT.
2. CHECK BACKUP FROM STEP 1.
3. DOUBLE CHECK BACKUP FROM STEP 1 AND 2.
4. Add new hard drive to system.
5. Boot to a LiveCD - I used Trinity Rescue Kit, but the Arch install CD should work too.
6. Mount all partitions on the old hard drive to /old (making sure you mount everything to the right places, so mount root first, then /boot, /home and any others inside that so /home will end up being mounted to /old/home for example). I also suggest you mount everything read only. `mount -o ro /dev/hdX1 /old`
7. Partition your new drive to suit.
8. Repeat steps 2 and 3.
9. Mount all your new partitions to /new. Once /new is mounted, create the appropriate mount points for all your new partitions and mount them inside /new too.
10. Use rsync to mirror the old drive to the new drive:

rsync -av --recursive --links --perms --owner --group /old/* /new/

11. Shutdown and remove old hard drive (just unplug the power for now).
12. Attempt to boot from new hard drive. It will probably fail - you'll need to boot from the LiveCD and update your GRUB and /etc/fstab to reflect any changes in your partition scheme. Using UUID's will be of great benefit here.

Once you are certain everything has gone OK and things are cruising good, plug in the old hard drive and wipe it to use it for whatever you want. Remember that plugging it back in may change your device ordering etc in the BIOS and the OLD drive may boot, instead of the new drive. If your BIOS is new enough, you should be able to specify the boot order in the BIOS after you plug the old drive back in, and set it to a lower priority than the new drive.

Last edited by fukawi2 (2008-09-15 07:47:48)

byte · 2008-09-15 08:13:33

About the previous post... yes, that's about what I would do, too.
Except: rsync -a already includes all the other options
And: the UUID scheme won't work on the new partitions (=new filesystems), so I prefer mounting by LABEL. Looks nicer, too.

Obi-Lan · 2008-09-15 17:27:09

When I swapped harddisks I did just use cp -a with some excludes (/etc, /proc /tmp..) directly from old system and installed grub on new disk. Checked fstab and grub config and booted into new system.

.:B:. · 2008-09-15 17:39:50

Run a live CD, and use dd and compress the output afterwards (dd requires a partition/external HD as big as the partition/HD you want backed up though).

Dd will byte copy everything, so a 80 GB HD with 5 GB of space used will have you end up with a 80 GB image; compressing it with gzip/bzip2 gives you a +- 5 GB image though . With a fast disk it doesn't take that long and you have a full backup.

moljac024 · 2008-09-15 19:52:33

You know what ? Why complicate it ? Just use a disk cloning utility and be done with it.

whargoul · 2008-09-15 21:00:24

I thought this was a new movie based on Saving Private Ryan.

"Saving Rolling Arch"

fukawi2 · 2008-09-15 22:14:15

byte wrote:

And: the UUID scheme won't work on the new partitions (=new filesystems)

Good point, I forgot to mention to make sure it's the new disk's UUID's to put in to fstab and Grub

pyther · 2008-09-15 22:37:16

Guys your making it to hard, a simple cp should work.

1. Mount old drive as read only
2. Mount new drive

cp -a /old/* /new/

Installing Grub
1. mount -t proc none /new/proc
2. mount -o bind /dev /new/dev
3. chroot /new /bin/bash
4. grub-install /dev/sda (where sda is your HD)
5. reboot, and enjoy

You can also make a tar archive if your /, I'd recommend doing that from a live cd also.
tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

Then you can extract the tar to the new HD, and follow the steps for installing grub

Check this out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

B-Con · 2008-09-16 05:51:04

[edit] Never mind, basically what pyther said.

Last edited by B-Con (2008-09-16 05:51:31)

burmmo · 2008-10-06 21:09:55

Thanks all for the solution i guess i have to use cli command to backup the harddrive and tranfer to another new bigger harddrive

Runef · 2008-10-15 13:42:09

At the company where I work, we use TAR to clone productionservers.

Invoke tar with the options to keep permissions and stay within the filesystem.
Then you have your image (can be done on a live running server).

On the new machine, untar the stuff in an empty filesystem, make sure the IP, hostname and fstab are in order, reinstall grub (grub-setup) and the machine is ready to boot.

We've been using this procedure for a few months now, and works like a charm.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-15 03:26:31

How to do to save Archlinux

#2 2008-09-15 04:18:32

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#3 2008-09-15 07:42:28

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#4 2008-09-15 08:13:33

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#5 2008-09-15 17:27:09

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#6 2008-09-15 17:39:50

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#7 2008-09-15 19:52:33

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#8 2008-09-15 21:00:24

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#9 2008-09-15 22:14:15

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#10 2008-09-15 22:37:16

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#11 2008-09-16 05:51:04

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#12 2008-10-06 21:09:55

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

#13 2008-10-15 13:42:09

Re: How to do to save Archlinux

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