Re: [gentoo-user] ...recreating exactly the same applications on a new harddisc?

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

John Covici wrote:
> On Sat, 04 Apr 2020 14:33:21 -0400,
> Dale wrote:
>> Mark Knecht wrote:
>>> Your world file should do that for the Gentoo stuff, with limitations.
>>> It assumes you have nothing on the system that was created outside of
>>> normal portage/emerge. It would probably duplicate the latest kernel
>>> tree but wouldn't build it, and wouldn't copy old kernels that aren't
>>> in portage if you still have them on the system. It isn't going to get
>>> virtual environment, be they python or things like virtualbox if you
>>> use those.
>>>
>>> I suspect you'll get a 'working' machine (I've done it) but you will
>>> still have a lot of stuff to transfer by hand or from backups which
>>> you really should do anyway.
>>>
>>> HTH,
>>> Mark
>>>
>> I recently tried this in a chroot starting with a stage3 tarball.  At
>> first, I tried unpacking the tarball, copying over /etc and the world
>> file.  I also copied over the binaries and tried using -k.  It was a
>> disaster.  I ran into hard blacks that I never was able to get around
>> not to mention emerge complaining about USE flags and such.  Then I
>> tried unpacking a tarball and just updating the tarball itself with no
>> changes on my part, not even the profile, it to ran into hard blocks
>> just not as many of them.
>>
>> In the 2nd attempt, I think something was off in the tarball itself. 
>> When you unpack a tarball and try to sync and update it and it fails,
>> something is wrong somewhere.  It's not covered in the install handbook
>> either.  In theory, one should be able to unpack a tarball, copy over
>> /etc and the world file and do a emerge -e world.  If one copies over
>> the binaries from the old system, one could add a -k to speed up the
>> process, for most if not all packages.  Thing is, theory meets real
>> world real fast and it gets ugly. After multiple attempts, I ended up
>> coping my original OS over and that worked better and MUCH faster.
>>
>> Way back in the day, I would boot a rescue disk of some type, mount both
>> drives and then copy everything over, excluding /home if it is on a
>> separate drive or any others that shouldn't be transferred.  Once that
>> is done, chroot in and install grub, the old original one not grub2. 
>> Once that is done, shutdown and remove old drive, plug new drive into
>> old port and then power up, crossing fingers and toes.  It worked first
>> time generally.  I have NOT done that with grub2.  It may work the same,
>> it may not.  Grub2 is a bit of a beast.
>>
>> Theory, should work.  In my real world experience, it does not. Coping
>> tends to work if you do it all right.
>>
>> Just my thoughts.
> I did something like  this a few months ago, I first got the tarball,
> did an immediate update,  copied a lot of /etc, particularly
> /etc/portage, but not some things like package.use, because I wanted
> to let it redetect them, and did parts of the world file at a time,
> not all at once, because I had some crud in the world file which I
> wanted to be sure I got rid of.  Took a couple of weeks, but did work
> and then I had a better system than I had before.
>

Since I keep a clean world file, it wouldn't matter for me.  I have -1
as a default emerge option in make.conf which means I have to
intentionally add a package to the world file, either by hand or with
--select y as a option on the command line. Even if I got the tarball to
work, I'd still end up with the same system I got on my main install. 
It wouldn't matter any. 

What really got me tho, being unable to get a bare stage3 tarball to
update without running into hard blocks.  I thought that to be really
strange. 

Still, based on past experience, copying the system over is the
fastest.  No compiling or anything, just copying it over. 

Dale

:-)  :-)