Cloning installation

[sidis405]

Hey guys.

I already a fully-functional pfSense box (yea i jinxed it now  :D).
For technical purposes i need to create a second box identical to this one that will replace it.

What's the shortest painless way to do this?
Should i just do a fresh pfS install and import the config? This won't bring users, certificates and daemons, right?
Or is there another way to make an image from this install and restore it?

Best Regards and
Thanks in advance.

[wallabybob]

Save the configuration (pfSense GUI Diagnostics -> Backup/Restore) should save everything pfSense knows about. Then restore to a fresh install.

Depending on a number of factors, it might be easier/quicker to just clone your hard drive (e.g. pfSense shell command dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad2 bs=65536 where ad0 is your current pfSense install and ad2 is the copy). On first boot of the copied drive the OS startup will likely mention a few file system fixups. I have used variations of this procedure a number of times.