Re: Howto migrate a FreeBSD cloud instance to another one without native FreeBSD support?
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 18:19:21 UTC
On 26/12/2023 15:22, Michael Grimm wrote: > Hi, > > I do run FreeBSD 14.0-STABLE instances in OVH's public cloud for some years already. Now, I do need to migrate my FBSD instances to new instances (old ones are no longer supported). > > In the past one could create new instances running FBSD from the start, but OVH has removed that option. I do have used Ubuntu rescue systems in the past for my FBSD instances, thus I am familiar in using Ubuntu's OpenZFS functionality. > > Sadly, OVH doesn't offer Linux systems installed on ZFS pools. Thus I do have to stick to Linux systems without. > > > Here are my questions regarding using Linux (Ubuntu) rescue systems: > > # What would be the closest equivalent to FBSD's gpart tool? > gdisk, …? > # Would it be possible at all to go for legacy booting of FBSD? > gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0 > > # Or, would it be better/easier to consider UEFI booting instead? > rsync /boot/loader.efi to rescue system > > # Are there other promising strategies for migrating feasible? I know nothing about OVH and almost nothing about what kind of FreeBSD setup you want to migrate (partitions, UFS vs ZFS etc.) but one thing I can imagine in you situation is creating everything from Linux rescue (partitions, formatting to UFS or ZFS, boot sector, rsync old FreeBSD instance to newly created...) And the second is: you can prepare small minimalistic FreeBSD image in Bhyve / VirtualBox etc. make a copy of it with dd and then write it by dd to your new instance's disk with the help of Linux rescue system. Then you can reboot to a minimalistic FreeBSD system, enlarge partition(s), use growfs or zpool / zfs enlargement and then finally move data from the old instance to this new instance by rsync, or zfs send, or whatever tool you prefer. Kind regards Miroslav Lachman