Re: [LUG] Combining servers?

On 29/05/06, Grant Sewell < dcglug@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

I have a mail server and a web server, both running Debian Stable, and
both running out of harddrive space.  I don't actually need two separate
machines, I only did it this way so that I could play with the mail
server without fear of breaking the web server, and vice versa.  It is
now my intention to consolidate these two systems into one, and increase
the harddrive space whilst I'm at it.

What would be the best approach to this?  Can I safely (from another
machine) create the relevant partitions on the "new" harddrive and
simply copy everything across from the webserver's harddrive to the
"new" disk?  If so, then once I've done that can I then simply copy the
mailserver's files over afterwards?  Presumably, since they're both
running Stable (and they'd both be "apt-get upgrad"ed at the same time
just prior to this surgery) I can safely either ignore all identical
files or just overwrite them?

Or would it be "better" to get a list of all the packages installed on
both systems, install a fresh Stable system, install all the same
packages from both web and mail servers, and then copy over the relevant
/etc files (and /var/www files, and mail files, etc, etc).

Or is this going to be a pain-in-the-arse job?

Cheers.
Grant.

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html