On 2023-10-17 08:23, Masaru Nomiya wrote:
Hello,
In the Message;
Subject : Re: OS disk cloning Message-ID : <67beb350-da5f-40fa-b2d9-db85c434c83c@telefonica.net> Date & Time: Tue, 17 Oct 2023 07:51:31 +0200
[CER] == "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> has written:
CER> [1 <multipart/mixed (7bit)>] CER> [1.1 <text/plain; UTF-8 (base64)>] CER> On 2023-10-17 03:28, Masaru Nomiya wrote: CER> > Hello, CER> > CER> > In the Message; CER> > CER> > Subject : Re: OS disk cloning CER> > Message-ID : <5e65a0c8-cc1a-40a9-8aff-4523256a9aa1@telefonica.net> CER> > Date & Time: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:50:46 +0200 CER> > CER> > [CER] == "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@telefonica.net> has written: CER> > CER> > [...] CER> > CER> Or clonezilla. I don't have experience with any of them. I use CER> > CER> plain dd (or dd*rescue), or rsync. CER> > CER> > CER> Notice: if btrfs is on the root system, I can not handle it. I CER> > CER> don't know how. CER> > [...] [...] CER> I don't like btrfs in root, simply because recovery⁽¹⁾ is so CER> complicated that I can not memorize and reproduce. At the time I CER> looked at it, there was no way to format a new btrfs with the CER> same structure as the machine you are going to clone r CER> restore. The only known way was to install openSUSE fresh.
CER> (1) recovery in this context is cloning the system, or bare iron recovery, CER> reconstruction of a system from backup.
As you can see from my quote, I am talking about migration to btrfs, not system cloning.
Yes.
MN> > I did BTRFS transparent compression described there.
MN> > The question that boggled my mind was how to migrate the current MN> > Tumbleweed.
CER> You can not. No published procedure AFAIK.
As I mentioned before, I know there is no description of how to migrate from ext4 to btrfs.
I would like to know why you say no.
I myself don't dare to do anything that doesn't make sense.
MN> > When I asked Google, the only answer I got was "clean install of MN> > Tumbleweed". So I decided to investigate by installing tumleweed on MN> > my laptop with btrfs. The result was that the fstab looked quite MN> > different from the one in the ext4 case, but I found the structure of MN> > the system was the same as in the ext4 case, MN> > MN> > Then, I did as follows; MN> > MN> > 1. Backup of the current Tumbleweed to an external hard drive using rsync MN> > MN> > 2, Download a snapshot of Tumbleweed with the same kernel as the MN> > current Tumbleweed & clean install with btrfs. MN> > MN> > 3, Restore the backup Tumbleweed using rsync in overwrite mode (except MN> > /boot area)
CER> Yes, you can do that. I would perhaps have deleted all the files CER> of the fresh install prior to restoring the backup, except fstab.
I can't understand why you say it can't be done above and then say it can be done here (I excluded fstab, of course).
Could you explain it to me?
Well, it works, but it is not a "proper" procedure. It is install fresh, then overwrite it. A proper procedure would be a script creating the proper volumes and subvolumes or whatever, then a file with the fstab needed entries, ready to populate but empty. We also need another script to read the sctruture of an existing system in order to recreate it later (backup or clone). What you described is a "hack". Yes, I knew about it :-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.5 (Laicolasse))