So should I just use dd or something? Or can I actually just rsync from one root to another and that will capture all of the dependencies, nginx config, literally everything? GPT-4 tells me I can just shut off everything that might change the file system in source (nginx sshd etc.) then literally rsync from root to root with
sudo rsync -aAXv --exclude-from=exclude-list.txt --delete --numeric-ids --rsync-path="sudo rsync" / user
(the exclude list is just /dev /proc /sys /tmp /run /mnt /media /lost+found).
At a certain point you start to wonder if saving the 50 bucks a month is even worth it....