Re: A linux alternative to the "ghost" programs?

From: P.T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 06/30/04 

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 00:28:28 +0200

Cubic <cubic@fjomp.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for an alternative to the "ghost" programs, to make a mirror
> image of my current drive on a larger drive that I'm planning to buy
> really soon.

And what exactly is wrong with "cp"? Man cp.

> The entire problem I have is, I want four partitions(one
> win98 partition, one ext2 and an extended partition containing one swap
> partition and another ext2) over to the other drive(most probably 200
> gigs in size),

SO what's the problem?

> with the bootrecord(I have BootMagic running on the MBR and

You can't copy bootrecords just like that! They don't "make sense" out
of their context. You'll have to rewrite the bootrecord the way you
want it on the new medium. Nobody knows for example if you want the new
master boot record to point to the old partition records, or to the new
ones. Rerun lilo.

> lilo running on the root ext2 drive) and all, since the current drive(30
> gig)is to be used elsewhere. So basically, I want the 200 gig to be a
> mirror image of the 30 gig after the operation.

Well, it can't be. Sure, the file systems can be mirrors, but not the
disks. They're not the same size.

> I know that this'll make
> for 170 gig to be unused, but I'll just add/resize partitions with a

Oh - you want equal partitions! Why didn't you say so? And what is your
problem with cp? Or tar? Or rsync? Or even kernel soft raid1?

> I've heard talk about a dd program that I could use like "dd if=/dev/hda
> of=/dev/hdb"

That would copy all of one disk to another. You don't want that. And
it's not different from "cp /dev/hda /dev/hdb"!

> ( I have also veryfied that I have it installed).

Is that some kind of surprise? dd has been a basic unix utility for the
last 30 years.

> Is it really
> that easy?

What is wrong with using cp?

> Or do I have to add more options and lots of crazyness? Do you

Whatever you like. dd is only a version of cp in which you can control
the transfer blocksize, and other minor things!

> know of any alternative, easier to use(possibly safer) programms?

What drugs are you on? Why don't you just make a filesystem on your
target partition, and copy "cp -a") one file system to another? What's
all this fuss about?

Peter

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