3

I have a debian server that I need to move from one hosting provider to another. I don't really know how the old server was setup, all I know is that it's running a Ruby on Rails application with a lot of custom libraries installed and that I should prepare myself for a painful migration.

Old server:
-os: debian 5.0.9
-used disk space: 3.2GB
-architecture: i686

New server:
-os: debian 5.0.9
-free disk space: 10GB
-architecture: x86_64

As you can see the problem is that the servers are running different architectures.

Q: Is there anyway I could somehow migrate the old to the new server in a few steps (or am I just dreaming I could) ?

I was thinking maybe I could:
-get list of packages and gems installed on old server and use for loop to install them all on the new
-copy the disk content from old to new server while excluding what is architecture-specific (the problem is that I don't really know what to exclude).

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    I don't see how this would be a painful migration; it's a pretty standard thing for a sysadmin to do.
    – womble ♦
    Mar 23, 2012 at 8:51

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

There is a step-by-step guide in the Debian Wiki to upgrade from 32 to 64 bit. http://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit This is really ugly plus you have the problem with your Ruby installation. Are you sure your Ruby libs are running with 64 bit? I would do definitley do a full backup/image/whatever of the machine, so you can rollback to a functional state in case things go wrong.

Improve this answer
4

dpkg --get-selections > /backup/installed-software.log should dump everything installed to installed-software.log

dpkg --set-selections < /backup/installed-software.log then dselect should restore it.

You may also need to copy config files from /etc/ - this will depend on your specific set up.

you may also want to install ia-32-libs for supportng ia32 software on x86

Up until this point, you shouldn't have too many issues.

Now, debian does support running x86 libs on x64, so its a matter of copying over the files, looking at what breaks, and installing the appropriate libraries should do the trick

Alternately, a trickier, but 'simpler' option may be to set up a 32 bit chroot in the system, then simply copy over the setup of the old server into the newer one. Another install guide here

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .