Live data from Hacker News

Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

meribold.org

11–20 of 422 posts

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#11

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

I would boot from a live disk image, mount the built in hard disk, and then rsync the files to it from there and reboot I think.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#12

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

I'm gonna guess you rsync onto a separate partition and then get rid of the "host" partition once you're done instead of replacing stuff on the fly.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#14

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

Interesting question. Only other ideas I can think of is they pulled the drive out from the laptop to do the copy physically, or they booted the laptop from a live distro and did the copy. But those are simply guesses!

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#15

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

Boot from external media (USB disk, cd or dvd if you're kicking it old school, maybe even network) with no persistent storage (ramdisk or whatever only). Mount the hard drive. Format. Rsync the files over.

That's pretty similar to what installation media does anyway, really.

[EDIT] Oh you might need to install the bootloader too. But you can sort-of (your running kernel will still be the installation media's) do that from the rsync'd system once it's copied over, with some creative chrooting and mounting. Which, again, is something that Linux installers kinda do anyway, in ordinary operation, but you'd likely want to do it manually in this case. It's exactly what you used to do (probably still do?) installing Gentoo, even for a "stage 3" (least-painful) installation.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#16
post #3

Exhibiting the self discipline to not distro-hop in 10 years is more commendable...but I guess that's Arch Linux for you.

Yeah Arch is basically the final destination all that distro hopping gets you to.

No reason to hop once you've arrived.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#17

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

You boot into a live cd (probably the arch install disc) and rsync on to a mounted partition, then you chroot into that partition and re-install the bootloader.

This is pretty much how you install archlinux normally, except instead of rsync-ing the initial filesystem you make a new initial filesystem based on the "filesystem" package.

https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/filesystem/

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#18

> A few months ago, I copied my complete installation to a ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 using rsync How would something like this work? Is the target laptop running any random linux distro, and rsync replaces all system files etc. effectively "swapping" operating systems? Can the laptop boot into the new system as if it was installed normally?

I do that routinely. Boot from a liveUSB, rsync data from the main system, fix the bootloader and a couple of configs like /etc/fstab. Works like a charm every time.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#19

I'm the same but with Gentoo, which is another rolling distribution. I've had it installed for over 12 years on multiple servers without any issues.

Hrm...

    $ qlop -tvm|head -n1

    2007-01-18T19:50:33 >>> x11-base/xorg-server-1.1.1-r4: 9′23″

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#20
I left my computer in storage for a year while I lived elsewhere and I couldn't upgrade through pacman. There was no simple viable upgrade. The constraints just couldn't be met. Fortunately, all I had to do was reformat / and go again since I keep most user config in /home

Really enjoyed it otherwise

Post reply on HN