On Sat, 04 Apr 2020 14:33:21 -0400,
Dale wrote:
>
> Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Your world file should do that for the Gentoo stuff, with limitations.
> > It assumes you have nothing on the system that was created outside of
> > normal portage/emerge. It would probably duplicate the latest kernel
> > tree but wouldn't build it, and wouldn't copy old kernels that aren't
> > in portage if you still have them on the system. It isn't going to get
> > virtual environment, be they python or things like virtualbox if you
> > use those.
> >
> > I suspect you'll get a 'working' machine (I've done it) but you will
> > still have a lot of stuff to transfer by hand or from backups which
> > you really should do anyway.
> >
> > HTH,
> > Mark
> >
>
> I recently tried this in a chroot starting with a stage3 tarball. At
> first, I tried unpacking the tarball, copying over /etc and the world
> file. I also copied over the binaries and tried using -k. It was a
> disaster. I ran into hard blacks that I never was able to get around
> not to mention emerge complaining about USE flags and such. Then I
> tried unpacking a tarball and just updating the tarball itself with no
> changes on my part, not even the profile, it to ran into hard blocks
> just not as many of them.
>
> In the 2nd attempt, I think something was off in the tarball itself.
> When you unpack a tarball and try to sync and update it and it fails,
> something is wrong somewhere. It's not covered in the install handbook
> either. In theory, one should be able to unpack a tarball, copy over
> /etc and the world file and do a emerge -e world. If one copies over
> the binaries from the old system, one could add a -k to speed up the
> process, for most if not all packages. Thing is, theory meets real
> world real fast and it gets ugly. After multiple attempts, I ended up
> coping my original OS over and that worked better and MUCH faster.
>
> Way back in the day, I would boot a rescue disk of some type, mount both
> drives and then copy everything over, excluding /home if it is on a
> separate drive or any others that shouldn't be transferred. Once that
> is done, chroot in and install grub, the old original one not grub2.
> Once that is done, shutdown and remove old drive, plug new drive into
> old port and then power up, crossing fingers and toes. It worked first
> time generally. I have NOT done that with grub2. It may work the same,
> it may not. Grub2 is a bit of a beast.
>
> Theory, should work. In my real world experience, it does not. Coping
> tends to work if you do it all right.
>
> Just my thoughts.
I did something like this a few months ago, I first got the tarball,
did an immediate update, copied a lot of /etc, particularly
/etc/portage, but not some things like package.use, because I wanted
to let it redetect them, and did parts of the world file at a time,
not all at once, because I had some crud in the world file which I
wanted to be sure I got rid of. Took a couple of weeks, but did work
and then I had a better system than I had before.
--
Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
How do
you spend it?
John Covici wb2una
cov...@ccs.covici.com
