Timothy Murphy wrote: > Timothy Murphy wrote: > >> Marcelo M. Garcia wrote: >> >>>> I was thinking of copying the old root partition with >>>> sudo cp -a -P /* /mnt/hd >> >>> I think the command rsync is a better approach for this task. It has >>> much more features, for example, you can exclude certain files. >> >> Thanks for the suggestion. > > Thanks for all the responses. > > Further to my query, > I'm wondering if one can safely copy partitions > (in particular the root partition / ) > while the system is running. > > The reason that I ask is that I'm slightly afraid > the machine will not re-boot into single-user mode > with the present OS on the sick disk. I've done a number of machines - actually, I'll be doing another one Monday. What we do is mkdir /new /boot/new mkdir /old /boot/old rsync -HPaxvz --exclude olddrve-or-machine:/old olddriveormachine:/. /new/. and ditto for /boot - note you need the /. Then zsh load files/modules (I forget the exact line, and it's all at work), but you need this, can't do it, AFAIK, with other shells. cd /boot mv * old/ mv old/new/* . cd / mv * old/ mv old/new/* . mv old/lost+found . sync sync Then edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth? as needed, and also /boot/grub/grub.conf, and /boot/grub/device.map, and finally grub-install /dev/sd<whatever, usually a> And reboot. mark _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos