Hi

I have an existing Fedora Core 5 installation up and running with its various user accounts and software.

Also in the Server Rack, we have a new Computer running Fedora Core 5 which I would like to transfer all the User accounts, System Files, Software applications, everything.

The new system has just been installed with the FC5 OS, nothing else. It has been assigned an IP address different from the original FC5 System.

I would prefer to do this accross the Network as everything is Racked up and very awkward to pull apart. Also I am reluctant to upset the original System as if anything nasty should happen to it, creeks and paddles come to mind.

Is there a lovely piece of software out there to automate this process? or a simple procedure that doesnt incolce making CD Rom versions of the OS etc.,etc.,?

Any help is much appreciated in this matter.

Adrian

you could dd over a network connection.

you could tar over a network connection.

you could export the mount points from the new machine to the old machine, and then just cp the files to the nfs mounts, writting over the files on the old machine. This is going to be dangerous since you would be writing over the system files hot... You could boot off a damn small disk and do this very easily though. Or pxeboot the damn small iso.

I wrote a pxeboot script that would capture a windoze load, and then I could pxeboot another machine and write the image to the new machine. It wasted space though since I was using dd it would write blank space to my image file. gnome.org has a better way.

gnome has a program for doing this via pxeboot. it makes a copy of the first machine and then you pxeboot the 2nd machine and it dumps the image onto the new machine.


regardless of what you choose if you do this hot is going to be fun to watch!!! I would choose the pxe method or boot off a cd...

You do realize that FC5 has not had any updates in over two years? This leaves it vulnerable (wide open) for attack. Fedora only has support for thirteen(13) months(Fedora 11 will be released in a month or so). For a server like this you may want to consider using Centos. Centos is RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with the logos removed. It has a five year (plus) support life and is free to download/update (unlike RHEL). Centos/RHEL5.X (5.3 current) was based on FC6 so it "feels" very similar.

As it is new hardware it is a very easy to checkout the entire system before you switch all the machines over, no creek issue. After you have debugged the new machine, and (then)switch your traffic over to it, just hold onto the old system (as is) for a few weeks. That way if any serous issues do pop up you can just switch back. This is pretty much the industry standard way to bring new stuff online.

you could get a list of the installed software with `rpm -qa > /tmp/list` then do something like:

yum update `cat /tmp/list` # on the new server, the version numbers might cause a problem though


then backup /etc/ and restore it to the new server.



you get a little more then logos when you pay for RHEL but ok. Yea a few weeks is industry standard...

oh oh i thought of another way.

You could get the /root/anaconda-ks.cfg file off the old server, put it on a floppy or usb drive and then install the new server then on the boot line put `linux ks=floppy:/anaconda-ks.cfg` then your new server would be just like the old server was when it was installed. Takes a cd though unless you use pxeboot.

and WHY are you using a dead , Past it's End Of Life , version of fedora ( fc5) on a production server
fedora 5 has had NO security updates since May 2007

he never said it was in production. He just said it was a server running FC5 that he wanted to clone and if there was any software available for such a task.

And even if it was in production he could apply updates on his own. You can get source code for every package you can get an rpm for, build the source and install it or even make your own rpms. So yes it could have as many and probably more updates for it then even FC10. That said FC10 would be much simpler...

Hi Everyone

Stoggy, thank you kindly for your assistance with this matter, although, my expertise doesn't excel with Linux derivatives.

Johnw, quite simply the fc5 production server has been in service for over 3 years, so hopefully this obviously explains why fc5, the then current Fedora release was chosen. As I'm sure you know fc6 or the soon to be arriving fc11 wasnt released back then!

Stoggy, I'm inspired by the idea of installing a later version of Fedora, or even something else. My problem is the application being used on the system hasn't any installation media, and the company who originally wrote the program aren't supporting it to anywhere near the levels they were a few years ago.

until the powers at be can invest in a new more recent version, then I have to build some kind of backup/redundancy solution in case this system should fail.

Hence why I want to build a new Server and copy the configuration to it.

Stoggy, do you know if there is a step by step white paper available to try and achieve what I want to achieve with this? My knowledge is very basic with Linux, but I am keen to improve on that. Maybe in the future replace a few Windows Server with Linux based alternatives.

Adrian

There is no obviousness in that statement at all because the admin installing FC5 at the time should have been familiar with how Fedora handles releases. The fact something being installed 3 years ago itself is no argument. For a production server you could look for a distribution with good maintenance support and less strenuous release handling. If you want to stay on the RH side of things you could look at say Centos.

Agreed...

At the very least I would install Centos 5.3 and migrate the FC5 server over to it...you would at least get the updates at that point...

Fedora is always a "bad" choice for a production server...

-C

Fedora is not a bad choice for a Linux server. Linux is linux is linux. Ok using fedora might be more work in the long run but that doesn't make it a bad choice. I like slackware its a lot more work then Fedora but makes for a more simple, secure and faster distro.

Just because you cant clicky the update button and get updates doesn't mean you cant apply updates.

As if I would just install an update from Redhat, Centos, Sun, IBM, Microsux, slackware, debian, *bsd or any other software manufacturer on a server without testing it first... so whatever. You could even get source rpms for everything in every version of Fedora if doing config, make and make install is to tough or not applicable.

I would try to get the application source, install files or rpms. Load FC11 or FC8 or FC6 or ... and try to install the application there. If you can get the source code for the application it should work in any linux, you can install the gcc compat rpms and try that way too.

Or if worse comes to worse tar up the application and move the files to the new server and untar there. Try it on several different versions of linux and see what happens. Make sure you install the gcc compat rpms if you try on a more recent version of FC.

Don't throw in the towel cause these ID10TS tell you that 2 years ago you or someone else made a bad decision. Now you got a problem but for every problem there is an answer.

Linux isn't windows end of a release cycles doesn't mean its over. That is a windows problem.

The problem with rebuilding src rpms from newer versions on older versions is that there are often (usually) things in there that require new dependencies. A lot of times this means changing GCC versions. Now if you use a non package based distro like slackware replacing GCC is no big deal, but on a package based distro you have a VERY good chance of breaking the entire system. On Fedora in particular you are going to run into real problems with the kernel. Pre F7 kernels had both hda drive designations and sda drive designations. F7 and later version use sda drive designations for both sata and pata. So if you stick with FC5 you will have to compile a custom kernel every time a security fix comes along (assuming you want to stay current). Building a current custom kernel on an older version like this (rpm based) is going to have issues. Then there are all the OS parts that you are going to have to rebuild becuase the stuff in the newer kernel breaks them(which is part of the reason a new version of Fedora is released every 6 months).

OH MY GOD!!!

So what your saying is that you can compile something on Slackware but you cant compile it on FC? Are you kidding? You can compile source on any distro, at least that i know of, and in FC they provide src rpms so if the package needs a different requirement you can still build it. You may have to have older versions of somethings but if you dont want them on the system just build them into a temp dir and statically build them into the app in question. And if your worried about polluting the system with an old library or something build in a jail, and that is old...


If that is to hard then ...

$: yum list compat-gcc*
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Available Packages
compat-gcc-34.x86_64 3.4.6-9 fedora
compat-gcc-34-c++.x86_64 3.4.6-9 fedora
compat-gcc-34-g77.x86_64 3.4.6-9 fedora

try these...

Who is saying that you can't compile on Fedora...where did you get that idea?

Anyway,

apograph, you have 2 choices.

1) Keep using FC5 and install updates on your own
2) Migrate Current software to Centos 5

-C

stoggy

What I was referring to was system components. Newer components often use features that are not available in older versions of GCC. Try changing GCC to newer versions on a rpm based distro, you will see a VERY high number(95%?) of attempts that end in breaking the system. If you have ever seen the trick where you use three toothpicks to span a glass (wider than any one toothpick) you will understand how an rpm based system works. Basically A relies on B, B relies on C, and C relies on A. In order to change A,B,or C, you have to change A,B, and C, all at the same time. The problem is actually FAR more complex becuase there are a LOT more than three components. Now that is not to say that this applies to all packages (it does not) but a lot of system components (like the kernel) it does.

Now as far as the compat libs: Those are great for running older software on a newer GCC based systems. But you will notice that there are no compat libs for running newer software on older GCC based systems(say compat-gcc-4.3 for a system that was based on GCC4.1), which is the exact case we are facing by trying to build newer (say FC10) src.rpms on an older (FC5) system.

Since slackware is not a package based system and was/is designed to be able to replace any component at will, it is far less interdependent than a package based distro. So yes, it is MUCH easier to do this type of "surgery" on slackware than on a package based system.