FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p7 i386 system drive imaging and migration

[David Christensen]

On 01/29/17 05:27, Warren Block wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, David Christensen wrote:
>
>> What is the proper way to clone a FreeBSD system image from one drive
>> to another?
>
> On encrypted ZFS?  I'm not sure there is a brute-force way that is
> trustworthy.  Using higher-level commands to recreate the partitions,
> GELI encryption, and then zfs send | recv are certain safer and won't
> duplicate supposedly unique IDs.

STFW

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/backup-basics.html

toor at freebsd:/root # gpart show
=>      63  31277169  ada0  MBR  (15G)
         63         1        - free -  (512B)
         64  31277160     1  freebsd  [active]  (15G)
   31277224         8        - free -  (4.0K)

=>       0  31277160  ada0s1  BSD  (15G)
          0   4194304       1  freebsd-zfs  (2.0G)
    4194304   4194304       2  freebsd-swap  (2.0G)
    8388608  22888544       4  freebsd-zfs  (11G)
   31277152         8          - free -  (4.0K)


It appears that my FreeBSD image lives within what Microsoft and Linux 
would call a single MBR primary partition (FreeBSD "slice"?), and that 
FreeBSD further subdivides that into boot, swap, and root sections 
(FreeBSD "partitions"?).


STFW RTFM there is information scattered in many places.  Is there a 
concise document that explains what is relevant for creating, cloning, 
migrating, etc., FreeBSD 11 r7 system drives -- what the on-disk data 
structures are, how to back up them and their contents, how to recreate 
the structures on a blank drive, how to restore  contents, how to deal 
with size, identifier, serial number, crypto key, etc., changes, etc.?


>> What is the proper way to move a HDD or SSD with a FreeBSD system
>> image from one computer to another computer?
>
> Provided the binaries have not been optimized for one CPU, just move the
> drive.  Disk drive names can change, which is not a problem when labels
> are used.

It looks like I got lucky on device names.  Where are slice/ partition/ 
filesystem labels documented, notably the strategies and procedures for 
using them?


> Ethernet interface names can change.  If there is only one
> interface, use ifconfig_DEFAULT in /etc/rc.conf.

Regarding the network interface, my /etc/rc.conf contains shell variable 
assignments.  What am I to assign to 'ifconfig_DEFAULT'?


RTFM 'ifconfig_DEFAULT' I draw blank:

toor at freebsd:/root # grep ifconfig_DEFAULT /etc/rc.conf 
/etc/defaults/rc.conf
toor at freebsd:/root # man rc.conf | grep ifconfig_DEFAULT


STFW

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/config-network-setup.html


Please advise on 'ifconfig_DEFAULT'.


The Xfce application issues appeared both when:

1.  The FreeBSD system drive image was copied to another drive and then 
booted in the source machine.

2.  The FreeBSD system drive was booted in another machine.


What is causing the Xfce issues?


David