My restores are clones as well. The only similarity between source and
target hardware is that both are x86. My distro is Debian so the
specifics will be a little different then Fedora/DredHat. But the
priciples are the same.
Because I do this so often most of the changes I have to do are
already in the config files. I just have to uncomment some lines and
comment out others.
The hardware changes are handled automagically (kudzu handles this
for Fedora/RH). I keep the disk config very similar so there are only
a few lines to change in fstab. It should be easier under Fedora/RH as
LVM is used. On the new machine you should be able to create logical
volumes that mimic the original. If you use raid you can create raid0
arrays of a single device to mimic your raid config. Both raid and lvm
configs are stored on the drives and read at boot time. The etc files are
no longer used (atleast on the last FC 3 box that was the case).
So by carefully setting up the target system most of the problems go away.
My check list after first boot is:
edit /etc/hostname
edit network config file (easy if the new clone uses dhcp)
passwd root
run script to generate new ssh keys
run grub to fix boot block
The problem I have with the idea of trying to copy over the few
different config files is that you are not making a clone. That may be
fine depending on the level of testing you want to do. I prefer to
have my testing boxes be feature and bug complete.
--
sg