From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 23 02:40:31 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61AC216A4CE for ; Thu, 23 Dec 2004 02:40:31 +0000 (GMT) Received: from galilee.polands.org (CPE-24-208-53-189.new.rr.com [24.208.53.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9376143D41 for ; Thu, 23 Dec 2004 02:40:30 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dpoland@polands.org) Received: from eden.polands.org (wap.polands.org [172.16.1.40]) by galilee.polands.org (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id iBN2eSRZ064555; Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:40:29 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dpoland@polands.org) Received: from eden.polands.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by eden.polands.org (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id iBN2eOso074059; Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:40:24 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dpoland@eden.polands.org) Received: (from dpoland@localhost) by eden.polands.org (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id iBN2eNth074054; Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:40:23 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dpoland) Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:40:23 -0600 From: Doug Poland To: RL Message-ID: <20041223024023.GA72035@polands.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Switching FreeBSD machines X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 02:40:31 -0000 On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 08:27:18PM -0500, RL wrote: > Hi. I have FBSD 5.3 on one machine. I'm thinking of buying a Dell > 420SC Server and would want to use FreeBSD on that. I went through a > hard time getting things to work on my current machine such as Java > and maybe a few other things, so I really would rather not start from > scratch. And I don't want to swap hard-drives because the Dell comes > with a nice Serial ATA drive I want to use. My only option might be to > clone the old FBSD box using g4Unix and putting it on the Dell. Would > kind of problems and headaches would I have with that? > If you're tracking 5-STABLE, I would bring your current machine up-to-date with STABLE and portupgrade all ports. Then, create packages out of all your ports (man pkg_create, pay attention to -b switch). Create .tar files of your home directory, /etc/mail, /etc/namedb, and anything else you care about that's taken some time to configure. One thing I do on all my boxes is use RCS for all config files. It's a simple and quick step to create a .tar out of all these directories scattered about a box. I back these files up regularly. If I need to rebuild a box, it's a simple OS install, whatever ports are needed, and retrieve my config files from a tar. On your new box, bring it up-to-date with -STABLE, and install packages you created above. Selectively un-tar above files as needed. -- Regards, Doug