Question, is there any way or program that will let you clone/image a FreeBSD system

[Andrew Batson]

Hello,

I have spend a few hours trying to find way to create a clone/image
of a currently working FreeBSD version 5.3 system. I would like to be able
to clone/image the system to a secondary hard disk drive attached the PC. I
have used Symantec's Ghost many times for Windows Systems and know that it
could do the job but only in a sector by sector operation. This will create
huge images files.

Is there any way to do? I have read about with g4u, dd, dump/restore
but they do not seems to be able to do create the clone/image on a secondary
attached hard disk drive.

Thanks for your help,
Andrew

[Kevin Kinsey]

Andrew Batson wrote:

>Hello,
>
> I have spend a few hours trying to find way to create a clone/image
>of a currently working FreeBSD version 5.3 system. I would like to be able
>to clone/image the system to a secondary hard disk drive attached the PC. I
>have used Symantec's Ghost many times for Windows Systems and know that it
>could do the job but only in a sector by sector operation. This will create
>huge images files.
>
> Is there any way to do? I have read about with g4u, dd, dump/restore
>but they do not seems to be able to do create the clone/image on a secondary
>attached hard disk drive.
>
>Thanks for your help,
>Andrew
>
>

I'm not sure ... have you looked at /ports/sysutils/dolly?

[513] Sat 26.Feb.2005 16:28:32
[kadmin@archangel][/usr/ports]
# make search key="clone" | grep -A 5 -B 2 disk
Port: dolly-0.57
Path: /usr/ports/sysutils/dolly
Info: A program to clone harddisks/partitions over a fast switched network
Maint: [email]lioux@FreeBSD.org[/email]
B-deps:
R-deps:
WWW: [url]http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/CoPs/patagonia/dolly.html[/url]

Port: dolly+-0.93
Path: /usr/ports/sysutils/dolly+
Info: Improved version of dolly harddisk/partition network clone utility
Maint: [email]lioux@FreeBSD.org[/email]
B-deps:
R-deps:
WWW: [url]http://corvus.kek.jp/~manabe/pcf/dolly/[/url]

If you label, fdisk and slice the 2nd disk identically to the first, I'd
think
dd would be easy, a la `dd if=/dev/ad0s1 of=/dev/ad1s1` and so on.

I've done something similar to what you describe by setting up the
new disk via sysinstall and piping my partitions through tar, but I
don't recall it being an immensely satisfying experience.

Kevin Kinsey

[Volker Kindermann]

Hi Andrew,

> Is there any way to do? I have read about with g4u, dd, dump/restore
> but they do not seems to be able to do create the clone/image on a secondary
> attached hard disk drive.

g4u has definitely the ability to copy to another disk:

---
4.4 Copying a disk locally

If you just want to copy one local disk to another one with no
network & server involved, the "copydisk" command is what you want. E.g.
to copy the first IDE disk to the second IDE disk, use "copydisk wd0
wd1", to do the same for SCSI disks run "copydisk sd0 sd1".

Beware! All data on the target disk will be erased!

A list of disks as found during system startup can be found using
the "disks" command.

---


-volker