On 01/29/2013 02:37 PM, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 07:48:56AM -0800, Yasha Karant wrote:
We have a limited, small, number of IEEE 802.3 connected hardware
platform identical workstations to clone -- no 802.11 nor any shared
(remote, distributed) disk storage (at this time). My plan was to
get one fully operational and configured, and then clone the hard
drive image onto the remaining machines one hard drive at a time.
I clone SL systems using both methods - "dd" (mdadm raid1, actually) and
"rsync".
The down side of cloning with "dd" is that all UUIDs become cloned (root
filesystem, etc)
and that can cause some confusion.
The down side of cloning with "rsync" is that things like "persistent ethX
naming"
become confused (but no more than if you replace the mobo) and you end up with
eth8
and eth9 instead of eth0 and eth1, and other similar artefacts.
When cloning using "rsync", you have to "make the target disk bootable", which
requires resetting all the UUID strings in the bootloader and in /etc/fstab,
a major hassle.
Overall, it is faster to create new boot disks by cloning than by doing
a fresh installation - because of all the required post-installation stuff
that has to be done manually.
My general SL post-installation instructions are here:
https://www.triumf.info/wiki/DAQwiki/index.php/SLinstall
Cloning using mdadm raid1:
https://www.triumf.info/wiki/DAQwiki/index.php/Cloning_raid1_boot_disks
Cloning using rsync manually:
https://www.triumf.info/wiki/DAQwiki/index.php/VME-CPU#Clone_disk_manually
Cloning using rsync using a script:
https://www.triumf.info/wiki/DAQwiki/index.php/DEAP#64GB_SSD_boot_disks
To defeat the "persistent naming of ethX" "helpful" "helpers":
https://www.triumf.info/wiki/DAQwiki/index.php/SLinstall#Configure_network
Thank you for the above suggestions -- your methodology is isomorphic to
my own. One of my students who works professionally as a systems
administrator has his own (personal, but work used) portable cloning
station that accepts two (identical) SATA hard drives and copies
(clones) one onto the other -- he has loaned me his unit. He claims
that it does a 1 TByte drive in well "under an hour" and requires no
computer (other than the built-in processor and software, assuming the
unit uses more than a FPGA or ASIC). I am going to test this method --
and after each clone is made, plug the clone into an external eSATA
drive adapter, mount the appropriate partition onto a temporary mount
point (empty directory), and modify the hostname, IP address, and
related files (e.g., /etc/hosts and other appropriate files) so that
each "clone" will be for a different static IP and DNS named (not DHCP
provisioned) machine. If this indeed works, it promises to be the
fastest method. I know that such hardware is used commercially for this
purpose -- but the box in question currently is available new for less
than $100, not the greater than $1000 I have seen for "commercial" grade
cloning hardware. If it does work, I am going to get one and will post
back to this list the specifics (or does it violate list rules to
mention a particular brand of hardware for a specialized purpose?).
Yasha Karant
