If you want to clone your machine in a particularly geeky way...

Try this:
Copy over your home directory to the new machine
Then install dselect on the new machine

Install debconf-utils on the old machine

On the old machine do:
dpkg --get-selections >dpkg-selections
debconf-get-selections >debconf-selections

Transfer the dpkg-selections debconf-selections to the new machine, as 
well as /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*

then run:
dselect update
debconf-set-selections <debconf-selections
dpkg --clear-selections
dpkg --set-selections <dpkg-selections
apt-get dselect-upgrade

The above commands will update dpkg's package database, since it it 
different that apt's package database.  debconf-set-selections will load 
the various configurations that you have for your packages from the old 
machine. dpkg --clear-selections will set everything non-essential to be 
purged from the system, clearing the way for a fresh list of packages. 
dpkg --set-selections will set to install all the packages that you had 
on your previous machine.  Finally apt-get dselect-upgrade will look 
over the package database that you have not messed with and make the 
system into the system that the database describes.

The end result is that you should have a system that closely resembles 
your old machine, but without any extra garbage that machine has picked up.

The above files are also a good way to backup a custom install that you 
want to be able to clone quickly.  You can save those files and hand 
them off to people as a starting point for a good install... be aware 
that the debconf selections may contain passwords, so you might need to 
clean those out before handing them off to anyone.

Brian Cluff

On 01/03/2013 02:20 PM, joe@actionline.com wrote:
>
>> There are a zillion ways to do what you want ...
>
> Thanks to all for all the excellent tips and ideas.
>
> At this point, I think I'm going to just use the Kubuntu 12.04 live-CD
> that I have to install it on the target machine (since I've done that
> successfully before a couple times with no problem), and then use 'rsync'
> (which I've also been using successfully for quite a while to copy over
> all the applicable files.
>
> May not be the quickest or most efficient method, but I almost know what
> I'm doing.
>
> Perhaps later, I'll try to figure out what is the most efficient method
> that requires the fewest steps to try again on another machine.
>
> Thanks again for all the valuable suggestions.
>
>
>
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