[gentoo-user] RE: problem cloning root filesystem to alternate partition

[Martin Polley]

The way I did this was to boot from CD (e.g. LiveCD) and then do the 
copy operation. That way /dev comes out the way it should.

HTH,
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*Martin Polley
*Technical Communicator
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   Subject:
   problem cloning root filesystem to alternate partition
   From:
   Lincoln A. Baxter [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Date:
   Sun, 19 Oct 2003 00:32:04 -0400
   To:
   gentoo-user [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In the past (with Redhat systems) I have made backups of root
filesystems to alternate partitions and booted them.
Typically I after making the alternate FS, I mount it on /mnt/altroot
and cd to / and do the following:
tar -cplf - | ( cd /mnt/altroot  tar -xvf - )

Then (after adding a stanza in /boot/grub/grub.conf), I boot into
the alternate filesystem.  This is real useful for being able to do
upgrades, and quickly back it out, by just booting into the original FS.
Recently I tried this with my Gentoo system and the boot into the copy
crash back to the bios after printing unable to open console device.
So I looked at /dev on the alternate root FS.  And sure enough it is
empty.  My kernel is configured with /devfs support. (I think this was
a gentoo default with genkernel). I understand, why it is empty, I told
tar to stay on the same filesystem.  But was does the kernel not
populate it when I boot the alternate. 

Any suggestions on how I can get my alternate root filesystem bootable?



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[gentoo-user] RE: problem cloning root filesystem to alternate partition

[Lincoln A. Baxter]

On Sun, 2003-10-19 at 03:17, Martin Polley wrote:
 The way I did this was to boot from CD (e.g. LiveCD) and then do the 
 copy operation. That way /dev comes out the way it should.
 
 HTH,

Well that was the ticket.  Its a bummer that I have to take a system
off line to do this.  I used to be able to do it hot.  (/var is NOT
on my root partition for this reason).  I wonder if a script could be
developed that would read /dev, and create the correct /dev on the copy?
If I knew the rules I would contribute such a script.

Sigh... at least I have now managed to get off of reiserfs which was
already beginning to eat itself up -- a few weeks back my system became
unbootable until I did a 

   reiserfsck --rebuild-tree 

which fortunately worked.  I'm back on ext3... which is nothing
if not stable. I do use NFS, and it seems (based on recent posts to this
list) that NFS and reiserfs do not get along so well). My other system
which was also reiserfs I am converting now.

Thanks again,

Lincoln




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