Cloning a VPS into a local VM?

This will work perfectly for you ...
On the source VM instance ...

sudo su
cd /
tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

On the target machine (dedicated or VPS)

tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /

And make sure any dirs excluded are re-created

mkdir proc
mkdir lost+found
mkdir mnt
mkdir sys