Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 23:34:59 -0500 From: Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org> To: Peter Leftwich <Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com>, "Zac M. Speidel" <pepsikid83@yahoo.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Installing FreeBSD to Sony Vaio Laptop? Experts.. Please help =) Message-ID: <20020305043459.9232BBA03@i8k.babbleon.org> In-Reply-To: <20020304225651.B96680-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> References: <20020304225651.B96680-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net>
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On Monday 04 March 2002 11:12 pm, Peter Leftwich wrote:
> {I had a question related to this inquiry; May I bounce in with it?}
>
> I am considering -- i.e. fantasizing, way down the road from now --
> changing from a workstation (PC) to a laptop for my primary (sole) computer
> needs. Is there a simple way -- or any way -- what's the easiest, neatest
> procedure to transfer everything including the OS as I have tweaked it so
> far? I would rather not have to *install* a working copy of FreeBSD on the
> laptop then migrate data over.
I would not recommend that you attempt such a thing. In all liklihood, your
hardware, from disk drives to video cards to everything else will be
different, so this seems unlikely to work as well as you'd hope it would.
That said, the easiest way to "mirror" it over would be to do a minimal
install on the laptop and then just "rsync" the system from the other machine.
You can always try this and it works well, great. If it doesn't, no big
loss--just do an install the old-fashioned way. Either way, it'll surely be
easiest to do an initial install on the laptop and mount them to each other
over the network in order to sync the systems up.
I did this recently (well, not over the network, over USB, but it's the same
idea) to restore my system after Windows 98 decided that during its install
it would be a good idea to completely reformat my FreeBSD partition, and it
worked quite well.
FWIW, I've been using a laptop as my primary system ever since my Amiga 1000
gave up the ghost around 1995. I ran Linux, then FreeBSD, then Linux, and
now FreeBSD. (In the early days laptops were a real rarity on either system
and every time I upgraded hardware I'd wind up switching to to the system
that suppported that hardware best. Now I have the luxury of just choosing
the O/S whose behavior I prefer--plus I choose the hardware for the O/S
rather than the other way 'round.)
>
> Is the best bet some sort of boot floppy then a "mv" command or disk-image-
> across-network ghosting sort of process? I could hook up the PC and the
> laptop via USB or something :)
Wouldn't ethernet be easier / more straightforward?
> Any notions or stories from the trenches of
> anyone who has successfully done this appreciated.
--
Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . . bts@wnt.sas.com (work)
Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . . bts@babbleon.org (personal)
ME --> http://www.babbleon.org
http://www.eff.org <-- GOOD GUYS --> http://www.programming-freedom.org
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