Disk cloning

[Tino Schwarze]

Hi Dimitri,

> I kind of had the feeling there was no simple way of doing this.  And, of course, I've
> just been made aware that there are MySQL databases running on the target machine.

Then run mysqldump prior to rsync'ing.

> I've certainly considered rsync (in fact, I use it for backup tasks on my own systems).
>  So, what you're saying is the I should:
> 
> - create the same filesystems on sdb as on sda
> - mount sdb / on sda /newroot
> - mount e.g sbd /var on sda /newroot/var, sdb /usr on sda /newroot/usr, etc.
> - run rsync, with exclusions

Periodically, after doing mysqldump.

> - recreate or copy MBR to sdb (don't know how)

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

You could also do an initial dd of /dev/sda to /dev/sdb to have all MBR,
partitions etc., then fsck all file systems on /dev/sdb with correcting
all errors, then use that as a starting point for first rsync (which
will correct all inconsistencies).

You may schedule the daily mysqldump/rsync job via cron.

HTH,

Tino.

-- 
"What we nourish flourishes." - "Was wir nähren erblüht."

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