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I would like to have a couple of VPS servers with identical configuration and software. Is there any chance to do something like this? :

  • install one server
  • do some sort of a backup
  • get another blank server
  • restore the backup from the first server
  • modify some files like hostnames and such

Is that possible to do? Right now i'm backing up my server files as follows:

tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

But i'm not sure if restoring this on another system would do any good. And it would probably overwrite some files that are server-specific.

Thanks for your thoughts

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Yes you can do it that way, as long as you are careful. The nice thing about a virtual machine is if you do mess it up, it's just a few clicks to restore it to the default state.

A few notes:

  • You'll probably also want to exclude /var/run
  • Be sure to edit at least the network configuration files before restarting the server, or you will cause IP address conflicts and/or get locked out of the machine
  • Ideally do the restore with the server running from a rescue mode - most VPS's offer a mode for restoring and emergency repairs that functions like booting it from a livecd. Just mount your partitions and do the restore from the rescue mode.
  • Hostnames will need to be changed.
  • SSH keys for the ssh server should be regenerated.
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  • Thanks for your answer, Grant. Do you by any chance know which files exactly i should keep from the old server instead of owerwriting from the new one? I know that these will probably include "/etc/hostname", "/etc/network/interfaces", but that's where my knowledge runs out.
    – Marius
    Mar 21, 2013 at 15:20
  • Those are the only two I'd exclude outright - but others will probably need some modifications for the new hostname/ip address. Web and email servers come to mind as needing some changes. But I'd copy those files and then edit the addresses to make sure all other settings stay the same.
    – Grant
    Mar 21, 2013 at 15:29
  • Web and mail is no problem, since i'm familliar with those. Didn't know about the system files though. Thanks, Grant.
    – Marius
    Mar 21, 2013 at 15:31

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