ufs to zfs

[krad]

Personally, i would insert a usb stick or other new drive. Partition it up
with gpt layout, create the pool, install the boot blocks, then rsync the
system onto the zfs filesystems. Whilst doing this i would also make sure
the new layout is boot environment compatible. One this is done you could
test booting off the new drive, either with the machine its on, or another
one in a clean network environment. When you are happy with it, boot off it
in the production machine into single user mode, reinitialise the original
boot drive. Create the gpt layout you want on the old drive, then add the
zfs partition to the pool on the external drive so its a mirror. Finish up
sorting out the boot blocks and then split the mirror. You should now have
a zfs based system

On 26 October 2016 at 00:52, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Oct 2016 12:58:11 -0600, jd1008 wrote:
> > The OP says he does have an external drive which the bios does not allow
> > booting from.
> > He can he back up  (tar) the current system that is UFS based to the
> > external drive,
> > clobber the ufs partition by simply formatting it as a ZFS partition,
> > and at some
> > point, (after appropriate admin of zfs partition), tar the system back
> > into the zfs partition.
> > Is this "doable"? (Pardon the bad "english").
>
> Follow-up question:
>
> Would it be technically possible to obtain the UFS data using
> the "dump" program, then mount the (newly created) ZFS target
> and use "restore" to the target directory?
>
> I've been using tar and cpio, but would the dump | restore
> approach be possible too, even though it's usually intended
> for UFS? If I understand things correctly, dump operates
> block-wise on the file system level (and therefore prefers
> an unmounted partition), while restore works file-wise and
> needs an initialized and mounted file system to output the
> files. Would restore work if the target file system is ZFS?
> Does it care?
>
>
> --
> Polytropon
> Magdeburg, Germany
> Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
> Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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