Hello,

I'm thinking about cloning a system without having physical access to its HDD. Is it possible to simply copy the contents of the filesystem (using ssh/scp) to a freshly formatted HDD (maintaining the source fs-type and -geometry)?

Do I have to pay special attention regarding the /dev, /proc and /sys folders?

You can use cpio command to live backup. It will not maintain fs-type and disk geometry.
You need to tar backup for /dev

Your destination machine should manually parition and create filesystem as you want.
Again, your source and destination boxes must be same hardware. If not, you may need to change the drivers manually.

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Thanks for your answer. So it should be (at least theoretically) possible to acomplish this task...
Is there an easy way to copy the current bootloader or can I simply prepare the new disk using syslinux?

By the way: Why do you mention cpio instead of tar?

what Linux OS is it oxident, just curious?

To copy the bootloader
dd if=/dev/sda of=bootloader.img bs=512 count=1
or
dd if=/dev/sda of=bootloader.img bs=446 count=1

sda or hda is depend on your harddisk
bs=512 will backup your parition also. bs=446 will not include partition table only bootloader

Yes. you can use any linux liveCD or bootableCD to create partition table with fdisk,parted utilities and format with any filesystem.

cpio is my preference for live backup. Here is some comment about cpio vs tar. You may google also.
http://rightsock.com/~kjw/Ramblings/tar_v_cpio.html

Cheer

1 members found this post helpful.

What is the reason behind cloning the system? Do you have special settings that you have forgotten or something of the sort?

It has been my experience, that building a new VM or Server, then rsyncing the actual content that I need is always easier than trying to clone a machine. Given, sometimes that means pulling out the httpd config, or hosts files, or other configurations that are sometimes forgotten until you try and get the thing to work, but it still seems quicker than trying to find a machine with the exact same specs, formatting and partitioning, copying bootloaders etc...

Wind River Linux glibc_cgl (standard) 2.0 2.6.21.7-hrt1

It runs inside a raster image processor...

The reason is a little bit strange: The system is an embedded print server (using specialized/properitary expansion cards) and I need to upgrade its performance (currently, it runs on an Intel Tolapai SoC at 1GHz). Unfortunately, everything's tight closed and no sources are available (not even for the kernel!).

I'm now trying to put everything on a P4 or Core2 mainboard (maintaining the same chipset or at least, matching the same series).

I can't clone this machine offline because the HDD is protected (using ATA security).

While each is entitled to their own opinion of the horrors of proprietary licensing (the horror, the horror) you should be aware that (aiding in) circumvention of protection mechanisms, regardless of motives, may be a violation of the license agreement and of the LQ Rules.

Yes, of course I have this in mind and I totally respect those rules but I don't see any legal issues in this case. I won't break any protection when I swap the hardware my (licensed) software runs on, will I?

This statement runs counter to this:
From http://www.windriver.com/products/pr...-overview.pdf:
What have you done to try to obtain the source?

First, I've crawled Windrivers website in order to find any sources. Then I've written a mail requesting the sources but they replied that my request is being forwarded to the sales dept.
This happened about two weeks ago ...

I too crawled & googled their web site & found no sources or offer of them.

In your e-mail, did you reference the GPL or mention the FSF?

Interesting. While two weeks seems long polling the vendor IMO is the right approach.

CYP post detailed print server vendor, brand and product specs? Maybe that'll help those willing to do some research.

Including the make & model of the locked HDD.