John Covici wrote: > 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. >
Since I keep a clean world file, it wouldn't matter for me. I have -1 as a default emerge option in make.conf which means I have to intentionally add a package to the world file, either by hand or with --select y as a option on the command line. Even if I got the tarball to work, I'd still end up with the same system I got on my main install. It wouldn't matter any. What really got me tho, being unable to get a bare stage3 tarball to update without running into hard blocks. I thought that to be really strange. Still, based on past experience, copying the system over is the fastest. No compiling or anything, just copying it over. Dale :-) :-)
