[lug] lilo, dd, /boot

[D. Stimits]

I'm experimenting with upgrading a system to use XFS filesystem, and one
of the main problems with this is usually the requirement to have an
entire mirror of the original install (including being able to boot it).
I'm at the point where I have probably a good mirror on an IDE drive for
"/" of a scsi, now I need to make a valid "/boot" for the IDE based on
the scsi. Once I have them copied, I can do a chroot and run lilo to
install on the IDE; I then merely switch my bios to boot IDE before scsi
(they are both integrated controllers). What I'm interested in doing
here is avoiding what looks like a snafu in the making. During the copy
of /boot on scsi to /boot on IDE, I probably need to use dd rather than
cp or cpio or tar. Can someone confirm that? If so, what is the simplest
way to do a dd copy of all files in one /boot to all files in the other
/boot? Pretend the original is /boot/, and the IDE is /mnt/ide/boot/.
Can I specify just if= and of=, or must I specify block sizes or counts?

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com