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Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

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Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#11

Post by jeroenhd »

I'm sure there are benefits to this approach, but I've transferred laptops before by launching an installer on both and then combining dd and nc on both ends. If I recall correctly, I also added gzip to the mix to make transferring large null sections faster.

With the author not having access to an ethernet port on the new laptop, I think my hacky approach might've even been faster because of the slight boost compression would've provided, given that the network speed is nowhere near the speed limit compression would add to a fast network link.

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#13

Post by Moneysac »

jeroenhd wrote: post #11

I'm sure there are benefits to this approach, but I've transferred laptops before by launching an installer on both and then combining dd and nc on both ends. If I recall correctly, I also added gzip to the mix to make transferring large null sections faster. With the author not having access to an ethernet port on the new laptop, I think my hacky approach might've even been faster because of the slight boost compres…

could you explain how you do that exactly?

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#14

Post by jauntywundrkind »

wjnc wrote: post #6

So this just bit for bit dumps a NVMe device to another location. That’s clear. So all encryption just is transferred and not touched. But doesn’t the next machine go into panic when you boot? There are probably many changes in the underlying machine? (Okay, now I read the other post. The author really knows the way. This is at least intermediate Linux.)

A Linux install is often remarkably hardware agnostic.

Windows would panic, certainly (because so much drivers & other state is persisted & expected), but the Linux kernel when it boots kind of figures out afresh what the world is every time. That's fine.

The main thing you ought to do is generate a new systemd/dbus machine-id. But past this, I fairly frequently instantiate new systems by taking a btrfs snapshot of my current machine & send that snapshot over to a new drive. Chroot onto that drive, and use bootctl to install systemd-boot, and then I have a second Linux is ready to go.

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#15

Post by therein »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #14
wjnc wrote: post #6

So this just bit for bit dumps a NVMe device to another location. That’s clear. So all encryption just is transferred and not touched. But doesn’t the next machine go into panic when you boot? There are probably many changes in the underlying machine? (Okay, now I read the other post. The author really knows the way. This is at least intermediate Linux.)

A Linux install is often remarkably hardware agnostic. Windows would panic, certainly (because so much drivers & other state is persisted & expected), but the Linux kernel when it boots kind of figures out afresh what the world is every time. That's fine. The main thing you ought to do is generate a new systemd/dbus machine-id. But past this, I fairly frequently instantiate new systems by taking a btrfs snapshot of m…

I expected Windows to panic as well but Win 10 handles it relatively gracefully. It says Windows detected a change to your hardware and does a relatively decent job.

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#16

Post by gouggoug »

Moneysac wrote: post #13
jeroenhd wrote: post #11

I'm sure there are benefits to this approach, but I've transferred laptops before by launching an installer on both and then combining dd and nc on both ends. If I recall correctly, I also added gzip to the mix to make transferring large null sections faster. With the author not having access to an ethernet port on the new laptop, I think my hacky approach might've even been faster because of the slight boost compres…

could you explain how you do that exactly?

This comment explains it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39676881

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#17

Post by rincebrain »

jeroenhd wrote: post #11

I'm sure there are benefits to this approach, but I've transferred laptops before by launching an installer on both and then combining dd and nc on both ends. If I recall correctly, I also added gzip to the mix to make transferring large null sections faster. With the author not having access to an ethernet port on the new laptop, I think my hacky approach might've even been faster because of the slight boost compres…

Well, if it's whole-disk encrypted, unless they told LUKS to pass TRIM through, you'd not be getting anything but essentially random data for the way the author described it.

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#19

Post by netsharc »

therein wrote: post #15
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Linux install is often remarkably hardware agnostic. Windows would panic, certainly (because so much drivers & other state is persisted & expected), but the Linux kernel when it boots kind of figures out afresh what the world is every time. That's fine. The main thing you ought to do is generate a new systemd/dbus machine-id. But past this, I fairly frequently instantiate new systems by taking a btrfs snapshot of m…

I expected Windows to panic as well but Win 10 handles it relatively gracefully. It says Windows detected a change to your hardware and does a relatively decent job.

Yeah, I've done several such transplants of disks onto different hardware.. maybe even from an AMD to an Intel system once (different mainboard chipsets), and of Windows 7. As you say, it will say new hardware detected and a lot of the times will get the drivers for them from Windows Update. There are also 3rd party tools to remove no-longer existing devices from the registry, to clean the system up a bit.

Re: Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP

#20

Post by lnxg33k1 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #14
wjnc wrote: post #6

So this just bit for bit dumps a NVMe device to another location. That’s clear. So all encryption just is transferred and not touched. But doesn’t the next machine go into panic when you boot? There are probably many changes in the underlying machine? (Okay, now I read the other post. The author really knows the way. This is at least intermediate Linux.)

A Linux install is often remarkably hardware agnostic. Windows would panic, certainly (because so much drivers & other state is persisted & expected), but the Linux kernel when it boots kind of figures out afresh what the world is every time. That's fine. The main thing you ought to do is generate a new systemd/dbus machine-id. But past this, I fairly frequently instantiate new systems by taking a btrfs snapshot of m…

If you moved the wrong stuff Linux would give you a bad time too, try /proc, /dev
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