Mailing List Archive: Anyone ever used mkstage4

Howdy,

Some may recall me buying a SSD for my OS. I been busy and other than
installing it in the system, I haven't touched it since. Now that I
have a little time, I want to play with it a bit. Actually put my OS on
it maybe. I did a little research and found the mkstage4 package that
may do what I want. If it works the way I think, I can create
partitions and file systems on the drive, mount everything and then use
it to copy over a stage 4 install. Basically, it will copy the OS to
the SSD for me and knows what to copy and what not to copy. That's what
it sounds like to me anyway. Thing is, I'm not sure. I found it on the
wiki. It's here:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Mkstage4

It seems I just CD into the / directory of the SSD and run the command.
I'm not real sure on that tho. Some commands do work like that tho. I
think with tar you have to use a option, -C I think, to change
directories. May be as simple as it looks. lol

Anyone ever use this tool? Is it that simple? Think it will do what
I'm wanting it to do? I'm assuming it will skip /home too. That'll
never fit on that little SSD. I've got well north of 40TBs here now,
not counting backups.

Looking for any info on this, good or bad.

Dale

:-) :-)

Am 06.05.23 um 10:15 schrieb Dale:
> Howdy,
>
> Some may recall me buying a SSD for my OS. I been busy and other than
> installing it in the system, I haven't touched it since. Now that I
> have a little time, I want to play with it a bit. Actually put my OS on
> it maybe. I did a little research and found the mkstage4 package that
> may do what I want. If it works the way I think, I can create
> partitions and file systems on the drive, mount everything and then use
> it to copy over a stage 4 install. Basically, it will copy the OS to
> the SSD for me and knows what to copy and what not to copy. That's what
> it sounds like to me anyway. Thing is, I'm not sure. I found it on the
> wiki. It's here:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Mksta
>
> It seems I just CD into the / directory of the SSD and run the command.
> I'm not real sure on that tho. Some commands do work like that tho. I
> think with tar you have to use a option, -C I think, to change
> directories. May be as simple as it looks. lol
>
> Anyone ever use this tool? Is it that simple? Think it will do what
> I'm wanting it to do? I'm assuming it will skip /home too. That'll
> never fit on that little SSD. I've got well north of 40TBs here now,
> not counting backups.
>
> Looking for any info on this, good or bad.
>
> Dale
>
> :-) :-)
>
Hi Dale,

I did use stage4 long time ago tho I don't know the package. I guess I
didn't knew about its existence back than or it hasn't been around.

I learned two things back than.

Sometimes it is better to have a fresh start. I do have some old boxes I
hardly ever use anymore and it is fine to run gentoo on a pc for 16
years and everything still works (which cannot be said for windows or
android on my phone). Even tho; just using the make.conf, the world file
and some thing I fiedelt with here and there to set up a new
installation on the same box seems to get better results. Things change
and not carrying everything from over a decade is a plus.

Second: Be sure your stage4 (and any other backup) is functional. Just
running the backup routine and realizing later that for some reason the
tar did not work and the files are there but the pictures are all broken
and empty is kind of disappointing.

Regards