i want to test debian trixie (13) so i can report bugs and troubleshoot before the release later this year. i thought about simply installing trixie alongside my current bookworm installation, but that won’t be my scenario when the time comes, since i’ve been updating my system instead of reinstalling it since debian jessie (8) and this time it won’t be different. how can i clone my current system so i can simulate an update to trixie? do i simply create a new partition and copy my files over, then chroot to it and install grub?

  • mina86@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    What others wrote except don’t use dd. Use rsync or make a backup with tar. dd will waste time reading unallocated regions of the disk.

    • beleza pura@lemmy.eco.brOP
      1·
      12 hours ago

      rsync has a ton of options. any specific setup you’d recommend me?

      EDIT: seems like rsync -av src/* dst is working for me

      • mina86@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        1·
        6 hours ago

        src/* will skip hidden files. You want rsync -avAXUNH src/ dst which copies contents of src into dst. Notice the trailing slash in src/. Without the slash, src is copied into dst so you end up with a src directory in dst. The AXUNH enables preserving more things. You might also add --delete if you’re updating the copy.

        PS. I should also mention how I end up with -avAXUNH. Simple:

        $ man rsync |grep ' -. *preserve'
       --hard-links, -H         preserve hard links
       --perms, -p              preserve permissions
       --executability, -E      preserve executability
       --acls, -A               preserve ACLs (implies --perms)
       --xattrs, -X             preserve extended attributes
       --owner, -o              preserve owner (super-user only)
       --group, -g              preserve group
       --times, -t              preserve modification times
       --atimes, -U             preserve access (use) times
       --crtimes, -N            preserve create times (newness)

        and then include all that. a covers some of those options and those don’t have to be set explicitly:

        $ man rsync |grep ' -a ' |head -n1
       --archive, -a            archive mode is -rlptgoD (no -A,-X,-U,-N,-H)