Kent,
I can see where a LTSP boot floppy would work but I think you will
need to use dd to copy a drive image since the unzip/copy would not
restore the boot sector, partition table, etc.
Boot the terminal into runlevel 3 then, on the terminal run a
little shell script that:
a) Asks what image you want to use
b) Mounts the terminal's hard drive
c) dd if={image} of=/dev/hda (DON'T run this on the server!!!)
Pete
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Kent Collins wrote:
>
> On Saturday 08 November 2003 07:57, Peter Billson wrote:
> > Kent,
> > Do I understand you correctly that you want to boot into LTSP to sync
> > each client's Windows hard drive to a master copy?
> >
> > If so, why not use rsync from Windows?
> >
> > Pete
>
> I've just looked into rsync. If I boot into Windows and use rsync, I see
> that this could work, but in my situation I have no guarantee that Windows
> would be on the workstation (or rsync, for that matter) since the previous
> user may have been working in MS-DOS. Instead, I need to boot from floppy --
> are you suggesting a Win95 boot floppy with network support?
>
> <<<Example:
>
> Student A arrives for Block One and uses the workstation at the DOS command
> line. He partitions the hard disk a couple times, formats it and gets his
> CD-ROM drivers to work. Finally, he powers down at the end of class (90
> minute bell schedule).
>
> Student B arrives 45 minutes later and has the same assignment as Student A,
> only the hard disk now contains Student A's solutions -- i.e., config.sys,
> autoexec.bat, student folders, etc. -- that Student A did. In between
> classes, I need to reset the workstation to its original configuration so
> that Student B has the same experience as Student A.
>
> Student C arrives after lunch. She successfully installed Windows 95 on this
> workstation the previous class and should be able to continue her assignments
> on the new platform. Problem is, the other two students working here have
> not gotten beyond DOS, so I need to be able to load a "default" windows
> harddrive for her to use (using the 45 minutes between classes).
>
> >>>End of Example
>
> This is where I hope LTSP can assist me: I can rapidly boot each workstation
> to an image on the server and use that minimal linux kernel as a means to
> access one of several workstation configurations (DOS, Windows, etc) via NFS,
> download the <gzipped> tar from the server, format the local hard drive and
> restore the contents by gunzipping the tar. With 20 workstations on a 10/100
> Ethernet LAN and backed-up files of less than 200MB, the network bandwidth
> should enable me to accomplish this in the 45-50 minutes I have between
> classes.
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