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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.

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want to clone my debian install so i can test updating to trixie (self.linux)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by bunitor to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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i want to test debian trixie (13) so i can report bugs and troubleshoot before the release later this year. i thought about simply installing trixie alongside my current bookworm installation, but that won't be my scenario when the time comes, since i've been updating my system instead of reinstalling it since debian jessie (8) and this time it won't be different. how can i clone my current system so i can simulate an update to trixie? do i simply create a new partition and copy my files over, then chroot to it and install grub?

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[–] mina86@lemmy.wtf 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] bunitor 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

rsync has a ton of options. any specific setup you'd recommend me?

EDIT: seems like rsync -av src/* dst is working for me

[–] mina86@lemmy.wtf 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

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)