I've done it myself, and have the process pretty well memorized now. As you say if you want to rsync "/" you need to exclude /proc, /sys, & /dev. Then on the n

I've done it myself, and have the process pretty well memorized now. As you say if you want to rsync "/" you need to exclude /proc, /sys, & /dev. Then on the new install you want to remove references to MAC address of any NIC that udev might have saved, update the hostname, IP, and similar static details. Finally ensure that your bootloader is correct, and that you don't refer to outdated fileystem UIDs, by either updating them or using device-names instead.