I have a Linux Red Hat 7.3 box that someone else installed and setup. My goal is to set up another box that has exactly what is installed on the live box so testing can be done. What is the easiest way to make sure my test box has everything installed that is on the live box?

I would say that you would set both boxes up at the same time. If you cannot reach the person that set up the first box, I would say do the best you can to make it the same.

Is this box a production box, or can it be rebuilt?

If it can be rebuilt, I might consider rebuilding it and the 2nd one at the same time.

What about "ghosting" or imaging the box over to another box?

Is it a server with RAID or just a "desktop" style box?

More info please

This is a production box setup by someone else. It is a server class system with raid. I do not want rebuild this system, but rather duplicate it on another box. The test box would be different hardware (no raid, etc.) so I don't think ghosting will work here.

This is a production box setup by someone else. It is a server class system with raid. I do not want rebuild this system, but rather duplicate it on another box. The test box would be different hardware (no raid, etc.) so I don't think ghosting will work here.

I hate to say this, but typically you don't have a test box that is "different" than the production box.

Whenever we test stuff at work we have to identical servers loaded with identical software, and OS, and then we test.

I'm not real sure how you would make 2 different systems kinda the same....

Hmm.... I'll think on it.....lemme get back to ya.

My production server is a very beefy, expensive PC. I don't want to spend thousands of dollars just to do testing. To get another system the same as the production, I know I can list all the packages installed and install them on my test system. But what about the installations done with non-package files? What about the configuration files for all the software installed? These are what I was wondering if there is an easy way to replicate them on the test system.

I am relatively new to Linux (I have only been working with it for a few years), so I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something here I did not know about.

Hmm...

Well. I don't know then. You can't do a whole lot other than do a fresh 7.3 install, and then copy the config files you can think of over to the new box.

I know sometimes we can't afford the same hardware, but that would be the best in a "perfect world".

Not much else I can say dude....



Peace...