How to migrate a complete installation to a different box?

[Sven Geschke]

Hi

I have a Redhat9 Box up an running as Router/Firewall w/ NAT, Web- and Mailserver, but it has a little lack of CPU-power and Ram (P1-133/128 MB).
I'd like to migrate the installation to a different machine (Compaq Proliant 850R, 2 PPro/200 CPU's, 512 MB Ram, RAID-1 on a SmartArray 2/P).
What would be the easiest way?

Rgds
Sven

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

I see two ways here:

1) install RHL9 on Proliant and move all configs from your old box

2) copy your old system to the new disk; but this will be tricky because you'll need to hack initrd for adding SCCI/RAID drivers

1st way seems to me easier

Regards,
Vitaly

[Steven E. Protter]

You can boot your system off a Windows 98/Dos disk.

Then use Norton Ghost to make an image of the entire system on a second disk.

In this case, you can do a disk image through a parellel cable or the network.

You'll need network protocols on the diskette to use the network.

The problem here is the hardware differences. You are transferring a kernel that has drivers in it for different disk drives.

You are probably better off doing a clean install on the new system and then migrate important configurations like httpd etc one at a time.

SEP

[Balaji N]

hi

install a minimal OS on the new system.

take a complete tar ball from the first machine and restore it onto the second box.

only directory u might need to be careful should be your /dev directory.

hth
-balaji

[Huc_1 · Accepted solution]

a sort of a variation on the same background music

First mount a formated floppy on /mnt/floppy
then out put the result of the following to a file on the floppy

#find / -name "*" -exec md5sum {} \; > /mnt/floppy/keep_file_old_sys.txt

Backup to tarball your old system's disks.

Then install from scratch new system.(given it a temporary name and ip addrress)

mount the floppy from first step on this new system
put the result of the following to a file on the floppy

#find / -name "*" -exec md5sum {} \; > /mnt/floppy/keep_file_new_sys.txt

unmount floppy write protect it then remount the floppy in write protect.

now use the two files on the floppy to help you know what need's to be transfered from old system (something like diff keep_file_old_sys.txt keep_file_new_sys.txt > differences_of_old_new.txt).

You will have lots of differences in differences_of_old_new.txt , but you can probably figure out the one's that realy matter, like the *.rpm files are in there
just to know what has still to be insttaled.

by repeating last step You should be able to ease out the pain.

Of course most the file in /dev /root etc could be ignored, you will have to use jugment here, I would keep the old system on line until the last moment when you are sure
you have a fair match. (then change ip address/name on new system to old system values)

Just my 0.02 Euro/cent

J-P

[Sven Geschke]

Hi

Thanks to all of you! :-)
I think the last reply wins the oscar!!

Rgds
Sven

[Mark Grant]

May I suggest that, if possible, you install stuff that could usefully be moved to another machine into a volume group using LVM. Then, in this case it would have been a simple vgexport on the first machine and a vgimport on the second. LVM is good!

[Dave Falloon]

Really quick addition to what Huc said. A handy way to find only the unique files is the command:
cat filename | uniq -u

I find it a lot easier to read than diff output.

Dave