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dave562
September 25th, 2009, 11:37 PM
I have an Ubuntu server that I have inherited and I need the box for something else. What is the best way to make an exact copy of the installation on another piece of hardware? I can't just drive copy it over because the box in question has a RAID array, and the box I'm moving it to just runs standard SATA drives.

Is the kernel going to completely freak out if I move it onto another box?

earthpigg
September 26th, 2009, 01:29 AM
http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/remastersystool.html

why this outstanding tool is not in the ubuntu repositories is beyond me.

it will turn your current install, including settings and custom configurations and whatnot, into an installable .iso.

raymondh
September 26th, 2009, 03:29 AM
http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/remastersystool.html


+1

dave562
September 28th, 2009, 08:21 PM
Thanks for the heads up about Remastersys. When I try to apt-get install the remastersys package I get errors about broken packages. It seems to be looking for two dependencies. dialog and squashfs-tools. Both of those are listed as "not installable".

How did you guys get it to work on your systems? Did you manually compile from source?

cariboo
September 28th, 2009, 11:01 PM
Use gebi by double clicking the file, or you can install it manually using dpkg:


dpkg -i <packagename>

dave562
September 28th, 2009, 11:08 PM
I'm not using the GUI so I'm doing everything CLI. When I try to use the dpkg command, it returns...

dpkg: error processing squashfs-tools (--install):
cannot access archive: No such file or directory

When I try using apt-get to install the same package, it errors with.

Package squashfs-tools is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only avialalbe from another source
E: Package squashfs-tools has no installation candidate


I don't mind trying to compile from source but I haven't been able to locate the source files. Any suggestions?

dave562
September 28th, 2009, 11:10 PM
Never mind, I sorted it out. I just had to add a couple more repositories to the sources.list file. It was setup to only pull security updates.

dave562
September 29th, 2009, 01:19 AM
I got remastersys working, but it turns out that it isn't the right tool for this job. The server is question currently has 107GB of data on it. I can't exactly burn that to an .ISO file and move it another box.

I do have a tape drive connected to the box. I'm not clear on how to do a full backup and then bare metal restore on a Linux box. I only need to "borrow" the hardware for about a week as part of a VMware rollout. Then I can restore the system from the tape backup.

earthpigg
September 29th, 2009, 02:14 AM
I got remastersys working, but it turns out that it isn't the right tool for this job. The server is question currently has 107GB of data on it. I can't exactly burn that to an .ISO file and move it another box.

what if you use usb-creator to put that .iso onto an external USB hard drive?

(usb-creator = system -> administration -> USB Startup Disk Creator on a standard ubuntu install)

solitaire
September 29th, 2009, 02:25 AM
what if you use usb-creator to put that .iso onto an external USB hard drive?

(usb-creator = system -> administration -> USB Startup Disk Creator on a standard ubuntu install)

with remastersys if the image is over 4Gb in size the program will fail at the point where it creates the ISO

Try doing a "Dist" or a "Distcdfs" that will get the system on to a disk you then can use a standard backup program to backup the data.

You then can use the Dist to install the base system and then restore the backup