Migrating a running distro to Debian
====================================

  Copyright © 2003-2004, 2006, 2008-2009, 2015
    Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
  Distributed subject to the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

Introduction
------------

This started as a document to help in migrating a colo server. It has been
used in the real world. The previous content that could be found here was
non-functional; only some initial notes I took when doing the process by
hand. It has since been converted into a proper script.

One thing that must be understood is that the script is not going to convert
the whole system to Debian. It will install a clean base system keeping some
configuration, but will not map all previous installed programs to their
Debian counterparts. It should, however, preserve user data and backups of
the old system configuration. The new system is a clean Debian system; it
is not a chroot, and no traces from the old distro should remain, except
for data restored from backups.

The intention is to create a wide framework to convert anything to
Debian. The program is named debtakeover.

Implementation
--------------

Currently, the script is in beta testing stage, be warned. It has been tested
on RedHat, SuSE and Gentoo. It has some provisions now to be extended to
any GNU/Linux distribution. Next step will be to do cross-installs from (for
example) a FreeBSD to a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD or a Debian GNU/Linux system.

Latest released code can be found at:

  <https://www.hadrons.org/~guillem/debian/debtakeover/>

Latest development code can be found at:

  <git://git.hadrons.org/git/debian/debtakeover.git>

You will need deboostrap, found at:

  <https://packages.debian.org/debootstrap>

Usage
-----

Build debootstrap, and use "make install" to place it in the proper
directories. Make sure the main script can be found in the PATH (however,
this will be checked by debtakeover.

Place debtakeover in any excluded directory (eg., /root), and run it from
there.

Take a look at debtakeover's --help option. By default, it installs a stable
suite (currently 'jessie'), and uses the colo profile.