I currently have one linode and would like to purchase a second. Given the work involved in setting up a box from scratch (compared to my level of laziness) it would be infinitely convenient to have the second linode cloned from the first (at a profile & disk image level) so I can simply console in and make a few tweaks (network info, etc) to the second. I wanted to confirm this would be possible before I went about adding the second linode (which has to be treated as an entirely separate account, right?)
Thanks in advance.

I'm sure the Linode guys will be willing to do this for you on the server side, but if not, it would be a trivial process, using finnix, to download your disk image(s) and re-upload them to another linode. Many linode users do this semi-regularly for backup purposes.

-erik

Interesting, I've never used finnix. I take it this is similar to booting from a Live CD (or install disc in recovery mode.) How do the disk images appear to me? Do I dd them off from /dev/ubd's into a file or do I have access to the actual disk images in UML-native format that I can then sftp off to...somewhere (maybe even another linode booted into finnix?)
Thanks for the insight.

You just need to create a new config profile - select "finnix" in the kernel option and then assign the disk images as you normally would. Then you can use a combination of dd and ssh to move the disk images around...something like this:

$ dd if=/dev/ubda | ssh user@otherserver dd of=/path/to/disk.img

You'd probably want to throw some flags in there when you initiate ssh to turn down the encryption to "bluefish" or something a bit less CPU intensive or you'll find this process may take quite a while.

It's been a long time since I've done this, so there may be a better way, but this is the general idea.

If you use the Finnix kernel you'll also need to remember to select the Finnix initrd and the Finnix ISO image.

I recently faced a similar problem as the original poster and have posted a how-to on it here.

In this case it might be easier to set up a temporary small Debian installation on the new Linode to handle the incoming disk image.

Yes, I don't think the rescue image will give you an sshd, and I wouldn't want to dump a disk image across the network without encrypting it.

You wouldn't need sshd on the rescue image; just plain ssh should suffice. It doesn't matter which is the client and which is the server; your ssh command can either "push" or "pull".

To modify the previous example:

ssh user@originserver dd if=/dev/ubda | dd of=/path/to/disk.img