Subject: Re: [vserver] Cloning a vserver
From: "Daniel Hokka Zakrisson" <daniel@hozac.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:28:14 +0100

Hello,

Tor Rune Skoglund wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> the wiki says
>
> "Building guests using the clone build method
>
> The clone build method copies the filesystem from one guest to another,
> much like the rsync build method, but the thing that separates it is
> that it knows about unified/hashified files. This means that it only
> creates new links for such files, and copies the rest, which can lead to
> significantly speedier builds."
>
> but that seem to indicate that the vserver that is being cloned has to
> be hasified in the first place.(?)  Wouldn't cloning using some kind of
> "hashification process" for the whole file system directly be a huge
> space saver (and faster)?

I'm not really sure what you're saying. You mean like using a COW-filesystem
layer and snapshots? That would be much faster.

> If I would like to clone a vserver, and at the same time saving disk
> space as much as possible, I guess I would have to hashify just that
> source server first, then do the clone operation.

Yes. Hashify your source guest, and clone will use hardlinks to build guests
quickly.

Daniel

> Any thoughts?
>
> Best regards,
> Tor Rune Skoglund, trs@swi.no
>