Hi folks, On a FC3 box it has following partitions; FC3 /root on /dev/hda5 /swap on /dev/hda3 /home on /dev/hda5 BLFS /root on /dev/hda6 (size=5G only taking up 1.5G) /swap sharring with FC3 on /dev/hda3 /dev/hda7 with ext3 not occupied (size=2G) Now I want to duplicate another BLFS on /dev/hda7 To my knowledge following command dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/dev/hda7 bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror only works on equal size partitions. I have been searching on Internet to confirm it without result. Please advise. TIA If the abovementioned command does not work then can I apply following method to clone /dev/hda6 on /dev/hda7 ??? 1) Boot up FC3 2) # dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/home/myimage.img (can I use /home for keeping myimage.img? It has sufficient spare space) 3) # dd if=myimage.img of=/dev/hda7 4) Modify the Bootloader (grub) of the FC3 as follow; /boot/grub/menu.lst title Fedora Core (2.6.12-1.1378_FC3) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.12-1.1378_FC3 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet initrd /initrd-2.6.12-1.1378_FC3.img title Fedora Core (2.6.12-1.1376_FC3) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.12-1.1376_FC3 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet initrd /initrd-2.6.12-1.1376_FC3.img title LFS 6.1 (2.6.11.12) root (hd0,5) kernel /boot/lfskernel-2.6.11.12 ro root=/dev/hda6 vga=795 title LFS 6.1 (2.6.11.12-sound) root (hd0,5) kernel /boot/bzImage-2.6.11.12-sound ro root=/dev/hda6 vga=795 adding: - title LFS 6.1 (for LiveCD) (2.6.11.12-sound) root (hd0,6) kernel /boot/bzImage-2.6.11.12-sound ro root=/dev/hda7 vga=795 OR are there any better methods? TIA BR satimis

Be Careful: The option “notrunc” seems to order all 5G to be continued after the end of 2G. I thought I was the onlyone doing such mistakes. You are copying a full 5G into a 2G-partition. If you add e.g. count=480000, only the first 480000x4096 bytes will be copied, i.e less than 2G. But DD does not choose the important blocks, so you must be certain that all important data is included in the copied part of hda6. But “notrunc” seems to be inconsistent with “count=”. The simple way is, of course, to tarball all folders and files and untar them into the new partition, with careful options, so the pointer-files are “tarred” correctly as they are. You might lose some irreal files like socks, but it has not been any problem for me (as far as I know) . Linux-Amateur

Assuming /dev/hda7 is mounted on /mnt/hda7 cd / find root -depth -xdev|cpio -pdvm /mnt/hda7 this copies everyhing except symolically linked directories.

Hi folks, Tks for your advice. I need to duplicate the complete OS (BLFS) on /dev/hda7 making it working there. Linux Amateur, Can following tar command work for me? tar -C / -lcpvf- | tar -C /mnt/livecd -xf - are the flags correct? /mnt/livecd=/dev/hda7 dlonra (by Dlonra) To include copying all symolically linked directories, which additional flags should be up as well. Otherwise it won't be a working OS on /dev/hda7 TIA B.R. satimis

You must boot in the FC3 system. In the FC3-system you must mount both involved partitions e.g. as /tmp/hda6 and /tmp/hda7 I suppose FC:s GUI – partitionmanager can do this, otherwise: mkdir /tmp/hda6 mount /dev/hda6 /tmp/hda6 mkdir /tmp/hda7 mount [-t ext3] /dev/hda7 /tmp/hda7 As root: copy all of the topfolders /bin, /boot, /dev, /etc, /home....... from BLFS to the new partition hda7. In order to copy the /home folder, for example: move yourself into the BLFS-root tarball the /home folder (dont worry about the warning of missing “/” ) move the tarball to the new partition move yourself into the new partitions root- folder (so you get back the missing “/” ) untar the tarball that is: cd /tmp/hda6 tar -cf home.tar home mv home.tar /tmp/hda7 cd /tmp/hda7 tar -xf home.tar and the same for the other folders. With this method you have control over each step. But it can certainly be done more elegantly. Linux-Amateur

my description on symbolically linked directories was misleading - the links are copied, but the contents are not- in almost all cases, this is what you want when you do a partition copy. check the copied /etc/fstab for explicit references to /dev/hda5. If present, change to hda7. Also check that swap is where you want it.

Question to Dlonra Am I right to assume, that your commands are run from the system that is copied ? (in this case BLFS) Does your elegant solution move all sockets ? My solution drops the empty sockets, and I have a nagging feeling that I might get future problems, although it seems to work without them. Linux-Amateur