CentOS - Nov 2008 - howto transfer all configuration between 2 remote dedicated servers?

Hello

I'm willing to change my dedicated server hosting provider, and transfer my
existing server to the new one.
I don't have kvm access, but both servers are centos5.2
I can boot a network image that is debian based and have access to the disk.
Then I tried to rsync -a my first server to the destination host, but it was
not reachable from the network (I modified /etc/fstab and
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 for the destination server). I
also copied /boot including grub configuration... (both are using grub)
As I don't have a kvm, I don't know why it is not reachable from net.

So I would like to get the list of all rpms (rpm -qa) install them to the
new server, then copy all files that were added/modifed

Most packages should be still in the yum cache, but I'm not sure.
For the rpm -qa I think there should be some special flags to get an output
that would be yum compatible?

But my real question is: How can I get a list of files in the whole
filesystem that were added or modified compared to all the files that come
from rpms?
Is there a script for doing such a thing?

Thanks
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Joe Barjo ha scritto:
> Hello
> 
[snip]
>
> But my real question is: How can I get a list of files in the whole
> filesystem that were added or modified compared to all the files that
> come from rpms?
> Is there a script for doing such a thing?
> 
I think that doing some scripting around rpm -Va (to find modified files from
rpms) and a 'comm' between "rpm -qla" and something like
"find /" (with some
clean-up to get files not coming from rpms) will do the magic.

--
Regards
Lorenzo Quatrini

Joe Barjo wrote on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:29:17 +0100:
> As I don't have a kvm, I don't know why it is not reachable from
net.
You still have the option of booting with that debian image and check the 
logs for obvious things. Might already help to find the problem. On 
another note your new machine might be missing an mbr or not having the 
correct mbr.

Kai

-- 
Kai Sch?tzl, Berlin, Germany
Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008, Joe Barjo wrote:
> But my real question is: How can I get a list of files in the whole
> filesystem that were added or modified compared to all the files that come
> from rpms?
> Is there a script for doing such a thing?
You may be interested in a tool I wrote some time ago that makes a 
hardware and software snapshot of a system, including the latent 
configuration in memory (like routing information or firewall rules).

It creates the snapshots in single compressed text files periodically 
(hourly, daily, weekly, monthly from cron) that can be diffed. And it 
allows to send out diffs to one or more email-addresses if configured to 
do so.

It was written with multiple use cases in mind:

  - compare identical systems (eg. nodes in a cluster, or when migrating
    servers)

  - mail changes to a group of co-maintaining sysadmins (so configuration
    changes are communicated and if needed acted upon)

  - backing up a complete system's HW/SW configuration and making diffs
    with past configurations for troubleshooting problems

  - taking system configurations with you (as a consultant or support
    organisation it is nice to follow-up on system changes made
    by the customer)

The tool is called dconf. You can find it in RPMforge.

The tool is as good as its configuration. The default configuration 
already contains a lot for RHEL/CentOS, but it could use more people 
defining more tools/configuration file. And I am open for improving the 
tool beyond what it does now.

Feedback appreciated,
-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]