Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 23:20:51 -0500 (EST) From: Tim Kellers <timothyk@serv1.wallnet.com> To: "Patrick O'Reilly" <patrick@mip.co.za> Cc: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org>, FreeBSD Question List <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Install new server from existing server? Message-ID: <20020110224943.E52125-100000@serv1.wallnet.com> In-Reply-To: <NDBBIMKICMDGDMNOOCAIEEOGEAAA.patrick@mip.co.za>
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My own Tale of Two Servers... I was changing from an old, single processor machine (a DTK --if you remember them) to a Dell PE 2500 dual processor. I recompiled the kernel on the old box to support aac (PERC 3 RAID that the new box used) and created .tar files of the filesystems on the old box, and set up the same filesystems on the new box. I booted the new box from the #2 (Live filesystem) CD, enabled the NIC and ftp'd the .tar files to their respective filesystem homes on the new box. After a tar -xvf *.tar on the files on the new box, I edited the newly untarred /etc/fstab on the new box (the RAID made the /dev/partitiion names completely different), pulled out the CD and rebooted (and prayed a bit). Sonovagun, the new box booted! I installed the cvsup package, grabbed the new sources, and rebuilt the kernel (the new box needed SMP/APIC support which is death for a single-processor system like my old one was). I then used rsync to sync all 2600 users and their folders to the new machine. And out of those 2600 users, only 2 got hosed (on the new machine) because their accounts were created by a staffer on the old machine between the time I untarred the old server files on the new machine and the time I rsynced the /usr/home directory (I forgot to update master.passwd and their UID and GID came over as numerical values --easily fixed in both cases). All in all I was shocked at how smooth the transition was --I was prepared for a week's worth of hacking around on the new and old boxes to try and get things right. The only thing that bit me (slightly) was when I actually gave the new box the old boxes static IP address. The old box was joined to an NT domain for (Samba) file-sharing purposes, and the new NT Domain Controller had been upgraded to Win 2k Advanced Server about a month prior to my switch. In order to (I thought) provide a transparent hardware switch, I dutifully unjoined the old box from the Domain, and joined the new box to it. What I didn't realize (and never would have thought about) was that since the old box had been "grandfathered" in to the Win 2k Domain (Active Directory enabled), it's NETBIOS name was dutifully accepted by Win 2k Server. I had made it's NETBIOS name the same as it's FQDN --dl1.njit.edu. But, after removing it from the Domain, I found out that Win 2k Server HATES NETBIOS names that contain dots --so the NETBIOS name of dl1.njit.edu became simply dl1 From a network point of view this had zero impact, but from the point of view of several hundred students that had file DSN's with dl1.njit.edu in their path (not simply dl1), it had something more than "zero" impact --it broke every last one of their .asp files. Well we all live and learn --and, surprisingly, rather than calling for my head, the instructors (with panic-supplied instructions from me) all were able to treat the further editting of the .asp files as an exercise, so I was burned in effigy in suprisingly small numbers. Sorry for the longwindedness, but you may benefit from my success and my folly. Tim Kellers CPE/NJIT On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Patrick O'Reilly wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Michael Lucas [mailto:mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org] > > Sent: 10 January 2002 15:08 > > To: Patrick O'Reilly > > Cc: FreeBSD Question List > > Subject: Re: Install new server from existing server? > > > > > > If you have enough disk space on the old machine, you can > > use "make release" to generate all the .tgz files the installer uses, > > and do it as you suggest. > > > > You could do it this way, which would be easier and wouldn't require > > so much disk space: > > > > install 4.3 on new box > > > > NFS mount /usr/obj from the 4.5 server on the 4.3 server. > > > > Run "make installkernel" and "make installworld" from the NFS mount. > > > > That'll save you a good chunk of time & effort. > > > > Of course, you'll need to be sure you haven't set anything in > > /etc/make.conf that will conflict between the two machines (i.e., > > CPUTYPE). > > > > Thanks Michael, I shall be contemplating these options, and then taking > the plunge. :) > > My old and new hardware are not very similar, so I'll need to be careful > about things like CPUTYPE if I go that route, as you said, but that > should be easy enough. > > Meanwhile, I'll be reading up on the release target of make - that's new > to me! I'm assuming I would then tell sysinstall to use FTP or NFS to > get at the files? > > Thank you, > Patrick. > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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