I just upgraded from a 2018 or 19 offer to a 2020 offer.... All better than previous (current) server except less storage.
I dont want to have to set up everything from scratch again so whats the best way to clone my Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS system to the new box and then retire my old server? Assume low level of knowledge of Linux please when advising me!! 
Thanks
I don‘t have the commands at hand but you should find a suitable tutorial easily if you search for them.
You just boot both servers in the rescue system and use dd to transfer the data through an ssh tunnel. It does sound very complicated but it‘s just a oneliner.
The only thing which is needed is that the target disk of the new system hast to be at least the size of the old system. After the transfer it will be exactly the size (and content) of the old system but you can resize it afterwards.
Okay, I searched for them. I used these the last time. Hopefully my smartphone won‘t scramble anything as it did las time!
dd if=/dev/vda bs=32M status=progress | ssh root@45.9.xxx.xxx dd of=/dev/vda bs=32MOkay, I searched for them. I used these the last time. Hopefully my smartphone won‘t scramble anything as it did las time!
Codedd if=/dev/vda bs=32M status=progress | ssh root@45.9.xxx.xxx dd of=/dev/vda bs=32M
Thanks! That works if the new server has LESS storage space???
QuoteThanks! That works if the new server has LESS storage space???
No, you need to prepare it, as the command only works if you have the same or more storage space.
So say, your current server has 40Gb and you want to migrate to an 20Gb server. Therefore you first need to reduce your partitions down to less than 20Gb (i would suggest 18Gb). You can use parted or (if you have graphics) gparted for this job. Then can use the above command to copy the contents. It will fail at some point, but that is ok, as you have ensured with parted that all your data is in the first 18Gb of the harddisk (or you can add bs=1Gb count=19 instead of bs=32M to stop after 19Gb have been copied). Then you start the new server and use parted to expand your 18Gb partition to the full 20Gb disk space.
Sincerely 7c00
Quotewell I failed already as I cannot type | in the damn VNC screen window
It works fine for me, but this may be due to different keyboard layouts (i have a German one).
You may try the display keyboard (button on the top left). There you can type | by using Alt Gr and the key next to the left shift key.
Seems that you are on the right track!
This seems weird, as the UUID shouldn't change if you've copied the partitions exactly.
Of course you can use the rescue system to check for the error. Just look up your partitions and mount them to /mnt or somewhere else. Then you can inspect the files and change them if necessary.
I would also advise you to look into the grub.cfg (somewhere in /boot, but probably it is located on another smaller partition and mounted to the final linux to the /boot directory). This file should also contain an UUID for the root partition.
My old server (resized partition to bring the contents under 480GB) is broken. It boots from Grub but reports file system errors and says to run fsck on /dev/sda3
Did you use parted to resize the partition? If yes, then parted seemed to just change the partition table and not resized the fs (i always use gparted, which does this, so I thought that parted should do the same). I would suggest to resize the partition on the old server back to it's original size (so the partition table is like before) and see, if you can access your data.
I would but dont know the exact size now 
This has not been as straightforward as suggested... Yes, I used command line parted as I dont have a GUI on my Linux.. all command line
Quoteresizepart partition end
Change the end position of partition. Note that this does not modify any filesystem present in the partitio
Damned, why is GParted called a GUI of parted, when it does those things by itself. I'm so sorry
.
But lets focus on getting the partition back... Parted knows percentages, so you should be able to just give all unallocated space back to the partition using "parted /dev/sda resizepart [partition number] 100%" (based on https://unix.stackexchange.com…e-using-parted-in-batch-m).
P.S.: Don't use resize2fs (yet), as this will modify the actual data on the harddisk. We only want to change the partition table to fully encapsulate the old filesystem (if the partition is greater, it shouldn't matter, but currently it is smaller, which looks like to the filesystem, as if it was cut in half).
Don‘t know if it‘s too late but you could simply have used a gparted live cd.
First I would suggest to try to rescue the partition table: https://www.gnu.org/software/p…ual/html_node/rescue.html
If this doesn't make anything better, we can use the file recovery utilities: https://wiki.archlinux.org/ind…ery#Testdisk_and_PhotoRec
As you don't want to touch the filesystem on the old server, you need to get some external storage (I would suggest from the new server), where the tools can put the recovered data. I would suggest SSHFS: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSHFS
