Installation - image of anther machine

[Tony Abernethy]

Chris Henderson wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 2:39 AM, Josh Grosse 
> <josh at jggimi.homeip.net> wrote:
> > 1) Backup of OpenBSD filesystems is best done by the 
> dump(8) program as
> > described in FAQ 14.9; the example there use tape devices.  
> Backup may be done
> > on other media -- external disk drives, over a network to 
> another system, etc.
> > Describe your backup media and someone may be able to give 
> you specific advice.
> > Other backup software that might be usable include tar(1), 
> pax(1), cpio(1),
> > dd(1) ... or 3rd party packages such as gtar, bacula, 
> amanda, or external
> > software like g4u.
> 
> At the moment I have a Vista computer where I would like to dump the
> OpenBSD image.
> The OpenBSD box has only one sinlge partiton (/) of 80GB. I can ssh to
> the OBSD box via putty.
> But I don't have samba running. How can I dump the image to the Vista
> box? If this is not possible,
> I can install OBSD 4.3-release on my new machine and NFS moount the
> new machine to the old one
> and then dump the image there.
> 
> Also, my old machine has only one partition (/) and I am planning to
> have multiple partitions (/, /var/, /tmp, /usr/ etc.) in my new
> machine - is this going to cause any issue with the dump and restore?
> 
> Thanks.

I assume the old machine has a single 80GB partition
and you are using only some of it, say 20GB
(df -h will show disk usage)

I assume the new machine has Vista, much larger disk
and you do not intend/want to keep anything on that disk

I assume the new machine has different hardware: network etc

I assume that both machines are 32-bit x86 

To be aware of, when you copy things from one place to another:
There are things like /dev/zero and /dev/null where a simple
straight-forward copy will not do anything you want.

Looks like (to me) dump/restore is for preserving partitions
and you want to change the partitioning.

If there is enough free space on the old machine, something like
tar -czf /home/root.tgz /

On the new machine, install and partition
MAKE A COPY IN A SAFE PLACE (like /home/etc) of at least
/etc/hostname.* 	these are the network interfaces
/etc/fstab		this has what partition is where --- vital
Check for any other vital configuration (ls -lrt)

Somehow/anyhow, get the tarball from the old machine 
untar the tarball  (cd / ; tar -xzf /home/root.tgz)
get back the vital files from /home/etc or wherever
that the last step wrote over.

There are many variations that will work
Me, I'd set up rsync on both sides and then copy over "everything"
(with a few judicious --exclude=...)
(might want to do /etc first and very very carefully)
(fun&games with users and groups and permissions)

There should be people on this list that actually know what 
they are talking about.  Flames invited.