HOWTO Clone a Machine

Using standard Linux tools, this guide explains how to copy a working Linux machine onto a brand new machine, in less than an hour.

Server/Golden Machine

First, create an image of a good working system or use an existing image, if you have one. At Research we have images stored at musashi:/export/mirror/image/fresh-deployable-gentoo-images

• Do this as root.

# cd /
# tar cpzf hostname.tgz / --exclude=/hostname.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys

• This will create a host image of about 1.5 GB.

Client/To Be Imaged Machine

Boot the machine you want the image deployed on with a minimal Gentoo CD. Mount that hard drive and partition it appropriately.

# fdisk /dev/hda

Add filesystems

# mke2fs /dev/hda1
# mkswap /dev/hda2
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda3

Mount drives:

# mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
# swapon /dev/hda2
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc

Copy over the hostname.tgz file onto this machine.

# scp root@hostname:/hostname.tgz /mnt/gentoo

Extract it into the root of the new machine /mnt/gentoo

# cd /mnt/gentoo
# tar -xzf hostname.tgz

Chroot into the new environment.

# chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
# env-update && source /etc/profile

Verify /boot/grub/grub.conf and /etc/fstab

Setup grub on the hard drive:

# grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab
# grub-install /dev/hda

Finish Configuring the machine:

• Set a root password.
• Set the hostname.
• Static ip address.

Exit and umount drives, remove Gentoo CD, reboot the machine.