Best way to copy the whole system to another host

[nash11]

I have two unix server , I want to copy all the data from one server include its file permission , directory , owner , time stamp , symbolic link ( anything except the OS ) to another host , so that both hosts has exactly the same data , what is the best command in unix? thx

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If this is HP-UX to HP-UX then the least evil free choise is fbackup/frecover. You could also use tar or cpio but you should be aware that tar (if patched) has a maximum file size limit of 8GiB and cpio has a maximum of 2GiB; fbackup/frecover does does have this limitation so a pipeline of fbackup using remsh to frecover will send it over the network. Skip the remsh and use tape; it's your call.

Now, since you have to ask I am going to suggest that perhaps you are not the best choice because what you are asking is a bit dangerous if you are unfamiliar with HP-UX and you could easily wind up with an impossible to patch (safely) system.

[Victor Fridyev]

Hi,

I agree with the previous (A.C.S) message, but I hope that you are enough careful in order not to destroy the target computer. I suggest, you don't intend to copy /usr, /opt and /var, but only /home
Technically what you want to do is not very complicated. For this purpose I use tar and permit remsh access, at least for period of copying.

On the source:
cd /home| tar cf - dirname1 dirname2 ...|
remsh target "cd /home; tar xf -"
If you copy homedirs, you will have to update /etc/passwd and /etc/group on the target machine accordingly.
If you want to copy databases, ensure that database server installation is copied normally, shut down databases and only after copy their files.

HTH

[Khashru]

Also make sure that in both the system users and groups has the same UID and GID. Otherwise permission will be changes as UNIX remember permission by ID naot name.

[yulianto piyut]

hi nash,

try to user rsync. just googling to download rsync software. example using rsync:

# rsync -arvuzP source_dir destination_dir


-yut-

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

fbackup is indeed the best choice.

You can go filesystem by filesystem with:

rcp -rp /fs/ hostname:/fs

or

ssh -rp /fs/ hostname:/fs

rsync with ssh to preserve some level of security is probably the best choice after fbackup.

rsync example:
rsync -avH --stats --delete -e ssh /var/httpd/ $othernode:/var/httpd/
# this syncs a webserver httpd filesystem from one system to another (part of a cluster configuration).

No matter what, make sure all databases and applications are down when you do this.

SEP