OT: cloning (copying) a HD over a network...

[Ed K.]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, Kim Lux wrote:

> The hard drive is full on our server.  I can ssh into it from my
> workstation.  I've got a formatted drive mounted on my workstation ready
> to receive the server files.
>
> How do I easily copy the server files to the workstation drive over our
> network ?  Keep in mind that I need to preserve the file ownership,
> permissions and dates.
>
> If I had the new hard drive mounted on the server, I would use:
>
> cp -aR /olddrive /newdrive >> logfile
>
> I've tried using scp, but I cannot force it to preserve the file
> attributes.
>
> I've tried using sftp, but I don't think it is recursive and I can't
> force it to preserve attributes.
>
> I'm trying to use tar, but I can't figure out how to make it work across
> a network.  FWIW, I have sshd enabled on the server, but not on the
> workstation.  I don't have nfs enabled on the server.  Can I do this
> without enabling it ?
>
> Any hints would be appreciated.
>
> -- 
> Kim Lux,  Diesel Research Inc.
>

If encryption is not the issue - but speed is, use tar and mbuffer
http://www.rcs.ei.tum.de/~maierkom/privat/software/mbuffer/

on source computer:
tar -cf - / |mbuffer -m 50M -O {dest. ip}:{port}

and on dest computer:
mbuffer -m 50M -I {src. ip}:{port} |  tar -xf -

and watch the files fly. This is how I normally move 20G of files from 
computer to computer.

ed