Migrating a running distro to Debian
====================================

  $Id: README 120 2004-03-20 09:54:49Z guillem $

  Copyright (C) 2003, 2004  Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
  Distributed subject to the GNU General Public License, version 2.

Introduction
------------

This document was created to help migrating a colo server. So it has been
used in the real world. The previous content that could be found here, was
non functional, only some initial notes I toke when doing the process by
hand. It has been converted since this summer into a proper scripts.
One thing that must be understood is that the script is not going to
convert the whole system to Debian, it will install a clean base system
keeping some configurations, but will not map all previous installed programs
to the Debian counterparts. It should preserve user data and backups of
old system configuration, though. The new system is a clean Debian system,
it's not a chroot, and no traces from the old distro should keep around,
but backups.

The final intention is to create a wide framework to convert anything to
Debian. The program is named debtakeover.

Implementation
--------------

Currently the script is in beta testing stage, I didn't wanted to release
a broken program that has to do such a critical operation, although by making
the initial draft public I did precisely this, sorry to anyone who has used
this previous inmature draft. I've tested the current script on a RedHat and
on a SuSE. It has some provisions now to be extended to any GNU/Linux
distribution. Next step will be to do cross-installs from for example a
FreeBSD to a Debian GNU/KFreeBSD or a GNU/Linux system.

Current implementation can be found on:

	<http://www.hadrons.org/~guillem/debian/debtakeover/>

You will need deboostrap, that can be found on:

	<http://packages.debian.org/debootstrap>

Usage
-----

Build debootstrap, and use "make install" to place it in the proper
directories and make sure the main script can be found in the PATH,
otherwise that will be checked by debtakeover.

Place debtakeover in any excluded directory (/root) and run it from there.

Take a look at debtakeover's --help option. By default it installs a stable
suite, and uses the colo profile.

