[wplug] Backing up (cloning) to a smaller drive...

[scoob8000]

On 8/13/07, Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org> wrote:
>
> Is there any reason why you have to have a clone of the filesystem?
> Resizing lvm volumes is possible, as well as resizing ext3 filesystems,
> but why go through the effort unnecessarily?
>
> I assume that you aren't using the full capacity of the original drive,
> so you could always copy the data from one disk to the other, without
> needing to clone the filesystem.
>
> One thing you could do is this:
> I assume you have /dev/Old/Root as /, and /dev/New/Root as the new disk,
> at /mnt/newroot.  I'd then run:
>
> cd /mnt/newroot;
> /sbin/dump 0f - / | /sbin/restore rf -
>
> That'll copy all the data from / to /mnt/newroot.  Since this is LVM, I
> suspect you'll also have to create and copy a /boot partition too, which
> isn't in LVM.
>
>

I guess I left a few details out.  :(

The new drive is actually in a second machine with identical hardware as the
first.

I was tasked with putting together a server with the hardware we had at
hand.  I was asked
to make a second box the same as the first so if it would ever die, anybody
would be able to unplug
it and plug the backup unit in.

You are correct in that the 40gb drives are nowheres near full.

Typically I would use DD and Netcat for this.  Which is how I learned my
second drive is just slightly smaller
than the first.  Assuming the end of the drive is all zero's, is it safe to
just ignore any errors I receive?

-Mike
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