Replace local linux OS with rsynced linux OS?

[Dr. Poo]

You rock! I'll have to try that tommorrow. I ALMOST did exactly what you just 
mentioned. I second guessed myself though because i was really hungry and it 
was getting late, and i knew i would have to be there for a while searching 
out 'overlaps' like the ip and hostname and...??? after the restore (if that 
even worked...which you've affirmed will) 

I'm not too familiar with the files that i'd want to exclude anyways? Do you 
have a list of potential excludes? Like a template/skeleton?? Should i 
exclude /dev too?

Or more or less what do you exclude?

I really appreciate you're words, 


On Monday 16 December 2002 08:44 pm, Jason Haar wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 12:41:51PM -0600, Dr. Poo wrote:
> > Hi everyone, again. My question today is, how can i replace my
> > development boxs' local OS with a resynced version of the production OS
> > (which currently has it's home on the dev box)?
>
> I do it all the time! :-)

Do you recommend it? What's the benifits over making an image?

I mean, it seems like this IS a really good method of syncing two systems...

>
> Obviously you'll probably need an exclude list as the IP address/hostname
> of the dev box will differ (I assume) from your production box, but unlike
> Windows, all files will go over fine. Just make sure you re-run lilo (if
> that's your boot manager) after the rsync otherwise you won't be able to
> reboot :-)
>
> [BTW. exclude /proc]

Anything else??

>
> > After the new OS is running, i'd like to be able to boot up and have the
> > new OS be mounted as root., but still then be able to mount the old dev
> > box OS and copy files from it that were being developed previously...then
> > remove the old dev OS all together. Make sense?
> >
> > I know this will require chroot, and changing fstab? and stuff like
> > that.... Has anyone done anything like this (or this exactly)? (A shell
> > script possibly? or a better mailing list to be asking this question on?)
>
> Ahh - trust you to make it harder :-)

You got it!

>
> You can't chroot at boot time - doesn't really make any sense. All I can
> think of is that your dev box will need more partitions that the production
> box, and use lilo to choose between booting off the dev or the production
> image:
>
> e..g
>
> production box running 2.4.18 with /dev/hda1 as / and /dev/hda2 as swap
>
> dev box running 2.4.20 with /dev/hdb1 as root and /dev/hdb2 as /
>
> Then configure lilo to boot off /dev/hda1 for production (and therefore
> /etc/fstab on /dev/hda1 refers to /dev/hda* partitions). When booting off
> /dev/hdb1, the fstab in there refers to /dev/hdb* partitions.
>
> Then when booted under dev, you can mount the production partition under
> "/mnt" and rsync the live system onto it, etc.

That's fantabulous!
>
> ...should work :-)

I'll Let you know! 

		-Chris