How to GHOST a drive in Linux...

[Chewie <chewie@wookimus.net>]

I did something very similar to what you're trying WITHOUT using dd or tar...
I had purchased a new drive for the server and wanted to move some of the
directory trees to the new paritions, namely /var, /home, and /tmp (which I
didn't copy over...go figure).

In the sequence of events:

	1. Partition the new harddrive.
	2. Format the new harddrive with an ext2 or desired file system
		(Nice, because you can use any system you want.)
	3. Make sure you have a backup of your current harddrive (if
		you have the ability to back it up).
	4. Create mount points in /tmp for the new partitions:
		/tmp/home
		/tmp/var

And now for the magic:

	5. At your root prompt:
		# cd /home
		# find . -mount -print | cpio -p -v /tmp/home
		# cd /var
		# find . -mount -print | cpio -p -v /tmp/var

	6. Verify that everything copied over well w/ramdom file checks:
		Content, permissions, etc...

	7. Edit your /etc/fsck file to mount the new disk partitions at the
		appropriate mount points.

	8. The scary part (needed only if you moved a directory tree that
		didn't have a partition of its own originally).  Delete the
		files from the original directory trees that you copied over: 

		# rm -rf /home/.*
		# rm -rf /home/*
		# rm -rf /var/.*
		# rm -rf /var/*
	
	10. Unmount the partitions from the /tmp directory and remount them on
		the root tree:	

		# umount /tmp/home
		# umount /tmp/var
		# mount -t ext2 /dev/hdb2 /home
		# mount -t ext2 /dev/hdb3 /var
	
	11. Done.


You could apply this same technique to copy one harddrive to another.  You
could even rsh this, or perhaps use an NFS mount to a rescue boot of Linux to
reformat the harddrive.  

-- 
^chewie

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