Comments on: How to Clone a Linux Server with Rsync

By: Chiron Se

Chiron Se — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 15:03:35 +0000

Just wanted to share that I could successfully clone a server to another, thank you! I found it's much faster and has a lot fewer conflicts to boot to a live ISO, attach block storage to the source server, `dd` an image, and then rsync the relevant parts to the destination server.

By: West

West — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:47:25 +0000

Probably /etc/crypttab should be excluded too, particularly if a multiple disk/lvm setup differs.

By: Louis

Louis — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 02:32:19 +0000

In reply to Alexey.

Capacity isn’t an issue for the destination, provided the filesystem is structured in the same way.

By: Alexey

Alexey — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 04:57:01 +0000

Thank you for your article.

But I am not sure we can use “clone” expression in your example. It seems to me, in that case, we can use rsync as a copy-paste tool only, not a cloning one. Here we can see only some folders are copied from one server to another one.

In my opinion, the most robust cloning tool in Linux is dd command. In that case, there is no requirement to have a pre-installed OS on a destination server before running dd command.

“Additionally, the servers should have identical file systems and the same hard disk configuration i.e whether single-disks or in RAID configuration.” – what will happen if the size of HDD is larger on a destination server?

Thank you!