Originally Posted by
Gossamer
I'd like to replace my G4/400 server with a G4/2x1GHz machine. The current server has dual 40 gig drives, and the new one has dual 80 gig drives. What's the easiest way to get all of the current info/configurations from the old server to the new one? It's currently a backup/web server, and I'd like to avoid reinstalling and reconfiguring all of the files and websites it's serving right now.
Any ideas?
1) Install Ubuntu on your new machine
2) Either recreate the accounts on the new machine, or copy over the relevant lines from /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow/, /etc/group to reestablish these accounts. For simplicity, I recommend keeping the usernames the same for this initial transfer
3) rsync over all of your own software, home directories, apache config, and service configurations using the archive flag (-a), and optionally the verbose flag (-v). Be careful about rsyncing over machine specific configurations in /etc, because some of those (e.g. X11) will not work properly on the new hardware. I would probably just ignore /etc and recreate these machine settings manually. This includes your networking settings, video settings, inetd stuff, etc.
4) Cue the usual remarks about how all of this is easier under OS X.