Hello, when I got my Linode 360 a few weeks ago I installed Ubuntu 9.04 64 bits, then added Apache, PHP and MySQL to host six low traffic sites.

Now it seems I'm running out of RAM, my Linode crashed a couple of times during the last week, and I'd like to move to Ubuntu 9.04 32 bits.

How do I change my operating system while keeping my data intact? I'd like to avoid reinstalling everything, at least the websites files and databases.

Is there any way I can take an image of just my data and then reinstall the operating system and server's software and bring back the data?

Or should I just do a manual backup, mysqldump and recreate everything?

Thanks!

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Alexis Bellido

I'd make a tarball of your Web data and configuration files, mysqldump your DB, and redo.

You can plan for this sort of scenario in the future -- the way I run my Linodes is a separate disk image for service data. I host all of my services under /srv, and I have a disk image on my Linodes mounted as /srv; if I need to reinstall the OS, I just need to back up the configuration from /etc and my data is still there (with appropriate twiddling of the configuration profile).

Just like partitions on a PC.

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Disclaimer: I am no longer employed by Linode; opinions are my own alone.

Thanks!

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Alexis Bellido