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Is it possible to reincarnate an existing ArchLinux installation (+all existing installed software) in another machine?

I have two terminal/kiosk machines, one of them crashed a few days ago. Actually hard drive was screwed up. I might install ArchLinux from scratch then find all other software, then configure and install them.

But is it possible to take an image of working machines current state and move it to another?

marmeladze
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1 Answers1

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I've done such things with rsync several times. First you should boot new machine with Arch Linux ISO and create a partition and format and mount it to /mnt. Then

rsync -aAXxv root@SOURCEMACHINE:/ /mnt

It excludes all mounted partitions on SOURCEMACHINE except /. You should rsync them if you have any. like:

rsync -aAXxv root@SOURCEMACHINE:/var /mnt/var

After that regenerate fstab and initramfs and install grub:

arch-chroot /mnt
grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
mkinitcpio -p linux
sparse
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