Cloning a running Linux OS

[Tyler Aviss]

Just out of curiosity, while do you need to clone it while it is running?
In most cases, I've managed to clone a non-running OS by plugging in a
secondary drive (via USB or as a slave) and then mounting and
tar-copying the files

cd /path/to/drive/mount
tar -cf - * | tar -xvf - -C /path/to/new/mount

(or if you want it in a file, just tar to it).


Tar's a little nicer about copying any special file attributes etc
than a normal "cp"

Depending on what's running, you might be able to get away with
tar'ing most of the drive live. Just skip the files in /dev and a few
other places because I believe some of those
behave a bit oddly (like copying memory-related /dev entries).


- TJA


On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 3:43 PM, John Miles <jmiles242-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A question:
> Are there any tools, similar to partimage that would allow me to clone a
> running Linux OS to file, network storage location, or even a destination
> machine running a LiveCD distro?
>
> I see a tool called Clonesys, however, it's activity on Sourceforge is from
> 2004.
>
> Thanks,
>
> John Miles
>
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