A few month ago, a user donated a server to us. The box died a few week ago (filesystem corruption after power failure...it was reiserfs).

We reinstalled Sarge on a ext3 filesystem using the rescue system and debootstrap. And last nigth I got the mysql replication working. Once you understand the principle it is quit easy to set up. It is explained in detail on the mysql homepage. I also found a german tutorial on tecchannel.de

You can summarize it in a few easy steps:

• give the master and the slave a different ID
• enable bin-log on the master
• put master in a read-only mode and mysqldump all databases; note log_file and position
• put master back in read-write mode
• copy dumped data to salve and load it into the database
• set MASTER Date on slave (host, username, password, log_file and position) and start salve;