Re: [gentoo-user] creating an image of the system

[Michael Hampicke]

Am 09.09.2013 21:05, schrieb Benjamin Block:
> On 08:30 Mon 09 Sep     , Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> Am 08.09.2013 20:51, schrieb Benjamin Block:
>>> Hej folks,
>>>
>>> I wonder what is a good way to create an image of a gentoo-system, so
>>> that one can apply it later to the same or other computers.
>>>
>>> In my case it is a rather simple setup: one partition, no encryption or
>>> lvm. Its a debug-setup, so its only used for certain programming-tasks
>>> and not for daily work, so no need for something fancy. The time I setup
>>> that system I also used only conservative compilation-flags and
>>> optimisation, so that it can be used on other CPUs (well, they have to
>>> be x86_64 and have to have mmx/sse[23] - but I think every setup that I
>>> intend to use this on will have these properties).
>>>
>>> So I reckon that one could just use tar with permission-preservation and
>>> some excludes like dev/sys/proc/tmp. But is this a good idea or is there
>>> a better way to do this? I never cloned a gentoo-system, so thats why I
>>> would like to be at least somewhat sure about it, so that I don't have
>>> to reconfigure it later again, because I messed it up :D
>>>
>>
>> Tar with permission preservation is fine. Just exlude everything in
>> dev/sys/proc/tmp as you said. But make sure, that these directories are
>> in your tar file, it does not matter if they are empty, but they have to
>> exist in order to boot proplery.
>>
>> One special case. To boot you most likely will need /dev/console and
>> /dev/null. Just inlcude those two device nodes in your tar file.
>>
>
> Thanks for pointing that out, but why are these both special? Seems to
> me like these are also (char)device-nodes and shouldn't they also be
> generated by the kernel with DEVTMPFS and then udev at a very early
> init-stage?

If you have DEVTMPFS enabled you should be fine. But not everybody has
that enabled, or even uses udev :-)