I can't believe it....

[Stefan Bruda]

At 15:30 -0500 on 2004-5-5 Ryan Nix wrote:
 >
 > Does rsync copy over all the partitions too?

No, you will have to create the file systems first and then use rsync,
so it is a two-step process.  But then you do not create file systems
that often, and updating is really fast.

 > Know any PPC boot discs where this is possible?

There is no need for any special indices or something.  Once you have
an image (more general a file system) you can just copy it around.
Right now I am doing

    rsync -arl -v \
       --exclude=/misc/ --exclude=/home/ --exclude=/distfiles/ \
       --exclude=/dev/ --exclude=/proc/ \
       --exclude=/sys/ --exclude=/lost+found/ \
    / /misc

to move the root file system from one volume to another (mounted
temporarily as /misc), without any preparation (I'll have to mkdir the
dev, proc, sys, and home afterwards though).

The process is largely identical for inter-machine copying, were my
/misc on another machine called foo I would do

    rsync -arl -v --rsh=ssh \
       --exclude=/misc/ --exclude=/home/ --exclude=/distfiles/ \
       --exclude=/dev/ --exclude=/proc/ \
       --exclude=/sys/ --exclude=/lost+found/ \
    / foo:/misc

(foo will of course have to run sshd for this to work).  Take a look
at the manual page for the gory details.

Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass