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Overview

This document covers how I cloned my linux systems. I use Fedora Core 4 as of 8/20/05. I run my servers on a 2U 4 blade Compact PCI chassis. At times this does not make installing Linux easy. So I use a standard PC to setup and configure linux on. Once I'm done I clone my installation to a laptop hard drive. The laptop hard drive is then installed into the blade server.

hardware setup

Shutdown your system. Disconnect the cdrom dirve and plug the connectors into the hard drive you want to clone to.

Cloning the Drive

First thing we want to do is boot the system in to single user mode. Select the version of the kernel that you wish to boot and type e for edit. You will be presented with a list of items in the configuration file for the title you just selected. Select the line that starts with kernel and type e to edit the line. Go to the end of the line and type single as a separate word (press the [Spacebar] and then type single). Press [Enter] to exit edit mode. Back at the GRUB screen, type b to boot into single user mode.

Once you are in single user mode run fdisk on the new drive and partition it exactly like your other drive.

We now need to create a mount point for the new drive.
> mkdir /mnt/new_image

Format the swap space.
> mkswap -L SWAP1 /dev/hdc2

Format your root and boot partitions.
> mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdc2

Mount the partitions
> mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc3 /mnt/new_image
> mkdir /mnt/new_image/boot
> mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc1 /mnt/new_image/boot

Let's check and be sure
> df -h

Now copy the data. Don't put a "/" at the end of the paths.
> cp -avx /mnt/image/* /mnt/new_image

Coffee break time.

10. reboot the client from the network

11. Now we need to run grub

> grup --no-floppy