[ale] Copying entire machines

[Bob's ALE Mail]

> Anyone know of a quick and easy way to copy a Linux setup to an identical
> machine? (multiple machines actually)

If you can move the new machine's disk to be the second disk on the
existing machine, just do

	dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k

The block size is not critical.  Change "hd" to "sd" as needed.

If you want to copy the second disk to the third do:

	dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k

This also works if you boot off of floppy, of course.  You even can
duplicate not linux disks, e.g. BSD or that worthless OS.

If you don't want to move disks, on the new system boot (from floppy)
a kernel that has networking.  (The Slackware distributions have this,
I don't know about RH.)  Then, from the new system use ftp (if it allows devs)
or rcp or rsh cat, etc. to copy the devices.

Bob Toxen
bob at cavu.com http://www.cavu.com
transam at cavu.com [ALE & Linux Laptops]
Fly-By-Day Consulting, Inc.

"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
anything."  -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore