Copying Ubuntu from One Partition to Another

[Irony]

To copy your distro to another partition or to back it up to an external drive use the following command;

sudo cp -axv /. /media/usb/01092010/.

To see what the arguments mean type;

cp --help

Thus in the above example I would boot into Ubuntu as normal and then plug in my usb drive which is already formatted to ext4 and has a label of usb. I already have a bunch of files saved on that drive so I create a folder in the usual fashion (right click and choose Create Folder) - I name the folder according to the date, thus the above example of 01092010 means 1st September 2010.

I then open a terminal and issue the command first shown - this results in an exact copy of my distro to the folder 01092010.

Should I mess up Ubuntu in some manner I can then copy back the back-up from a live CD;

sudo cp -axv /media/usb/01092010/. /media/ubuntu/.

To do this I would boot up the live CD run System > Administration > Disk Utility, format my original Ubuntu partition, then mount that partition and issue the above command.

Its that simple...

http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/install/upgrading-without-risk.html

[diwas]

Thank you...i have to test it out!!

[jnw222]

use partimage

[Irony]

To edit etc/fstab in the new install open up fstab as root;

gksudo gedit

And then go to my newly copied /etc/fstab file and drag it into the gedit window and change sda3 (or rather its UUID number) to sda6. To find the new UUID number do;

sudo blkid

To update grub I do;

sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
sudo chroot /mnt
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo update-grub

Then I boot to the new install and hopefully it works.

[Irony]

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