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Date:      Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:54:17 -0500
From:      Stephen Cook <sclists@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Cloning a FreeBSD system
Message-ID:  <4F4BB539.7030103@gmail.com>

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Hello all!

I'm relatively new to FreeBSD but I'm enjoying it so far.

I have FreeBSD 9.0 installed as a VirtualBox guest, and I plan on 
cloning it repeatedly to set up a fake network for me to toy with (e.g. 
setting up clusters of replicated databases, web server pools, etc).

Here's the list of things I need to change on each new clone, am I 
missing anything obvious? Or are there any gotchas to what I'm trying?

1) I have to change the hostname in rc.conf
2) I have to change the IP address in rc.conf (I'm using static IPs)
     2a) I saw (on the internet) some people having problems because 
VirtualBox generates a new MAC address for cloned "machines", which 
somehow screws up the naming of the network interfaces (e.g. they get 
renumbered, thereby ignoring any configuration you have set up). Now I 
can't find it anymore, at least not for FreeBSD. Some Linux forums have 
info about "/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules" which doesn't 
exist in FreeBSD as far as I can tell. Is this a concern? I don't seem 
to be having a problem but TBH I'd rather understand what is going on 
than just be lucky.
3) Create new SSH keys
     3a) For host keys, I can delete the existing ones in /etc/ssh/ and 
reboot, is there a better way?
     3b) Should I bother changing the SSH keys for any users I have? It 
is basically one user (I use to log in with) which will be the same 
across the board anyway.

Thanks for any insight!

-- Stephen



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