I've got less than a day until my old slicehost VPS is shut down permanently - since bringing my database server to Linode I decided to bring everything over and have all my servers in one place.

I'm trying to follow the migration article in order to get a copy of my old server on the new linode as quickly and painlessly as possible. The problem is the console won't launch.

I have a disk image, swap image, regular configuration and Finnix recovery configuration, which is currently booted. When I try to load the console, I get this:

md: multipath personality registered for level -4                                                   
 unknown partition table                                                                            
device-mapper: ioctl: 4.12.0-ioctl (2007-10-02) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com                    
TCP cubic registered                                                                                
NET: Registered protocol family 1                                                                   
NET: Registered protocol family 17                                                                  
RPC: Registered udp transport module.                                                               
RPC: Registered tcp transport module.                                                               
Starting balanced_irq                                                                               
Using IPI Shortcut mode                                                                             
blkfront: xvdc: barriers enabled                                                                    
 xvdc: unknown partition table                                                                      
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/console/0                                                     
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.                                                                      
md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.                                                                  
md: autorun ...                                                                                     
md: ... autorun DONE.                                                                               
VFS: Mounted root (iso9660 filesystem) readonly.                                                    
Freeing unused kernel memory: 212k freed                                                            
Write protecting the kernel text: 2568k                                                             
Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 605k                                                    
Warning: unable to open an initial console.                                                         
Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel. 

EDIT: I panicked, due to my tight schedule. I simply forgot to add the uncompressed initrd image to the configuration. Problem solved.

What? You didn't stick around to hear Slicehost's big mystery February announcement?

Me neither.

It's like those guys can't get past Chapter 2 of "Marketing for Dummies"

Hmm, that seemed smooth, but no go.

When I got to the point of chroot'ing in the howto, it gave me the following error:

chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bash': Exec format error
It let me run the mknod commands though so I figured it might work regardless. Rebooted into the default configuration, and tried to bring up ssh with no success, so I loaded the AJAX console and got the following:

ip_nat_pptp version 3.0 loaded                                                                      
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team                                                        
TCP bic registered                                                                                  
Initializing IPsec netlink socket                                                                   
NET: Registered protocol family 1                                                                   
NET: Registered protocol family 10                                                                  
lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions                                                                     
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver                                                                     
ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team                                                       
NET: Registered protocol family 17                                                                  
NET: Registered protocol family 15                                                                  
Bridge firewalling registered                                                                       
Ebtables v2.0 registered                                                                            
ebt_ulog: not logging via ulog since somebody else already registered for PF_BRIDGE                 
802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8 Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>                                       
All bugs added by David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com>                                                
SCTP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)                                         
Using IPI Shortcut mode                                                                             
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/console/0                                                     
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.                                                                      
md: autorun ...                                                                                     
md: ... autorun DONE.                                                                               
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds                                                      
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.                                                 
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.                                                       
Freeing unused kernel memory: 224k freed                                                            
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c                                                   
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c                                                   
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c                                                   
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c                                                   
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-464c 

Should I be starting this whole process over again?

Oh yes, that was supposed to be this month wasn't it? Pickled made it fairly obvious that the changes coming were probably not going to benefit any of us little fella's anyways.

Since I won't be spinning out a half dozen 1440's this weekend just to deal with a lunch hour rush, I don't feel like he cared about me.

Linode just feels more like home.

Could it be because I'm trying to migrate from a 64bit architecture to 32bit?

What, you're trying to run a 64-bit userland with a 32-bit kernel? Yeah, that doesn't work. You could switch to a 64-bit kernel, or just rebuild from scratch. It wouldn't be that hard, and you can keep a copy of all of your old data until you're done.

When I originally set up the slice node back in the day I didn't fully understand 64 bit vs 32 bit and I presumed that 64 bit was better.

I now know that for my purposes 32 bit is better. The problem is I think that caused the migration to fail using the rsync method, but I'm not sure.

I'd rather be using 32 bit. Is there any way I can pull this off?

Does it ever end? Now my rsync is bottlenecking on /proc/kcore, which according to ls is 127 terabytes big? That's umm...

-r--------   1 root       root       140737486266368 2010-02-07 22:58 kcore

I wish I had that much memory.

Why are you doing it that way?

Setup a Linode with the 32 bit distro of your choosing.

Install whatever apps you need.

Get everything working all by itself on the new VPS.

Then copy your config files over.

Then snapshot your database(s) and move them over.

Then drink a beverage of your choice.

Trying to copy everything over - especially going from 64bit to 32bit just won't work.

Because I *thought* it was going to be the easy way. I *thought* I had this in the bag.

My database and post office are already hosted on seperate nodes, so thankfully I haven't done any damage to them throughout this whole process.

I just stumbled across the article and thought hey! Snazzy quick!

So I think now I'm just going to set it up from scratch, tarball all my sites, and just wget them over the airwaves like I had originally planned. I think part of me wanted to do this to learn how.