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.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
21 points (92.0% liked)
Linux
52749 readers
378 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
rsync has a ton of options. any specific setup you'd recommend me?
EDIT: seems like rsync -av src/* dst is working for me
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)
You can do this with the dd command. To prep:
Set up a live boot USB stick with your distro of choice.
Install another SSD/nvme/HDD at least the same size as your bookworm install into your bookworm machine. If that's not an option connect a USB drive that's at least the same size as the drive with your bookworm installation.
Boot into the live USB on the bookworm machine.
Make sure the partition(s) from your bookworm install are unmounted.
Quadruple check the drives/devices for the dd command. Here's the basics of the command:
dd if=/device/where/bookworm/is/installed of=USB/or/second/drive/in/machine bs=8M status=progress
So, if your bookworm install is on /dev/sda, and the USB or secondary is /dev/sdb, then the Cmand would be:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=8M status=progress
Be careful with disk destroyer!
I would recommend cloning the entire disk to another disk of equal or greater size before, best procedure is to boot to a USB installation, run Gnome-Disk-Utility, create a disk image onto a second larger disk, then restore that image to a third disk which is equal or greater in terms of capacity to your bookworm disk, then unplug your orignal bookwork disk amd then attempt to boot from that third disk (fingers crossed)
If you're comfortable with the dd command that's another route to take but if you're not paying attention you can very easily wipe your own disk!
I'm also considering this when it comes time for me to update. I would:
- Throw a spare SSD or equal or greater size into a USB enclosure
- Clone my boot drive to it using Clonezilla
- Remove the original boot drive to avoid UUID collisions
- Boot off the spare SSD and perform the update
Using timeshift would be perfect for this. I run sid and use this all the time to restore back to a snapshot on a bad upgrade.
I just went full nuclear upgrading my Bookworm install to Trixie and then to Unstable
There are multiple way to de this. The easiest solution would be to une a second disk with same size or bigger and clone the current one onto the new one, using dd or clonezilla
if you have enough size on your dis_ for a second root partition, you can use dd to clone the existing root partition in the new one, edit /etc/fstab on the new one to point to the correct root partition, and us grub-mkconfig if you use grub, use grub-mkconfig to reconfigure it. It should automatically detect the new partition.
If you have a second clean drive to work with, you can clone it there and just change your boot target in your BIOS. This is the simplest way.
If you're simply concerned about config incompatibilities and finding what will break (not hardware), you could clone down to a VM image and boot that then run the upgrade, and boot it again.
If you're concerned about hardware issues, you could clone down to a liveUSB compatible image (skipping heavy media files) and boot that from an external device and see how it runs.
It's a bit of an early release to test with your daily driver, so it's going to be a nightmare. Just a heads up.