Copying a large file system (again)

[Jonathan Dill]

Desai, Jason wrote:
>> I need to copy the whole /backup/backuppc directory structure in one
>> pass so that hardlinks are preserved. Or I'd need some tool 
>> which could
>> preserve the hardlinks another way.
>>     
>
> http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/BackupPC.html#other_installation_top
> ics
>
> The section on Copying the Pool may help, specifically using
> BackupPC_tarPCCopy.  If that does not work, you may be able to copy the
> pool over first, then do the hosts one at a time and try to manually run
> BackupPC_link.
>   
I've used rsync with the -H option to preserve hard links with a pool 
around 300 GB, but first I had to upgrade the memory so there was enough 
for rsync to build the file list without paging like crazy, and of 
course it was slow.

I also had a pool on LVM and wanted to change the disk partitions, so I 
set up a new PV, added it to the VG, and then used pvmove to move all of 
the LVs, including the one with the pool, onto the new PV.  Again, it 
was slow, but preserved the complete filesystem structure, including 
hard links, since it was moved at the LV level.

Jonathan