Re: Cloning a workstation
On Tuesday, 14.12.2004 at 22:02 -0600, Rodney Richison wrote: Partimage certainly works very well. You can create a bootable CD which (assuming your image fits on a CD) you can use to install your image. If the image is larger, you can use it across the network. Run partimage daemon on one box, then boot up your unconfigured box(es) with, say, Knoppix; the run partimage and it'll pull in the image. Use it all the time here, imaging Windows boxes and Debian workstations. Does it save the mbr as well so you don't have to repair grub after imaging? Ghost 7.5 does not. :( You can (separately) save and restore the MBR. See the docs page at http://www.partimage.org/doc.en.html Dave. -- Dave Ewart - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] All email from me is now digitally signed, key from http://www.sungate.co.uk/ Fingerprint: AEC5 9360 0A35 7F66 66E9 82E4 9E10 6769 CD28 DA92 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Cloning a workstation
Dave Ewart wrote: Partimage certainly works very well. You can create a bootable CD which (assuming your image fits on a CD) you can use to install your image. If the image is larger, you can use it across the network. Run partimage daemon on one box, then boot up your unconfigured box(es) with, say, Knoppix; the run partimage and it'll pull in the image. Use it all the time here, imaging Windows boxes and Debian workstations. Does it save the mbr as well so you don't have to repair grub after imaging? Ghost 7.5 does not. :( -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Hello Sarunas, a minor correction: Karsten Heymann wrote: A very low-level way to [clone a workstation] it is using netcat. boot both systems from cd (knoppix or similiar) and let them have access to each other over the net (a cross-cable and manual chosen 192.168.0.x IP's will do). Both systems need netcat (executable name nc). Now run nc -l -p 12345 | gunzip -c /dev/hda on the system to be installed to and on the master system run cat /dev/hda | gzip -0 -c | nc CLIENT-IP 12345 sorry it is gzip -1 Yours, Karsten -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Roberto Sanchez wrote: Sarunas Burdulis wrote: Thank you for all the input. Certainly more than one way to do it, as usual... For the single case a simple scp/rsync + grub install seems adequate. However partimage looks like something worth getting familiar with --- so I'll try that. Sarunas For your needs, systemimager may be a better choice. I have used it in a lab environment to install similar machines. You would need an image server (just a machine with enough space to store your images). systemimager has some really nice features. Roberto, Thanks for another suggestion. Yes, I looked at the systemimager too. Looks like a tempting option, if the project I'm working on really develops into something (numerous public Linux workstations in a college). Sarunas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
rs For your needs, systemimager may be a better choice. Does the 'updateclient' command in 'systemimager' properly/easily keep the clients current after making changes (packages, config files, etc) on the golden client? Allegedly (I haven't used any of these apps yet), 'replicator' provides this type of functionality with its 'repli-sync'. I can't seem to find any such capability in FAI. Clearly, once the clients have been created, we must keep them current! Thanks for your comments, -Kenneth -- Prof Kenneth H Jacker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computer Science Dept www.cs.appstate.edu/~khj Appalachian State Univ Boone, NC 28608 USA -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cloning a workstation
Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. Thanks for any suggestion! Sarunas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
I've been looking into doing the same thing at my office. After researching a bit, Partimage sounded like a nifty program (http://partimage.org/). I havn't tried it yet, but everything I've read about it sounded promising. I believe, however, that the project is dead. There hasn't been an update in quite a few months. I contacted the package maintainer and they said they hadn't heard from the developers in a while and believed the project was dieing. However, they said the program is very useable and works quite well in most cases. Seems like dd would be an option too? I don't have a lot of experience with dd, but it seems like a pretty powerful program. You could use dd to create an image of your drive. Boot up the clone computer with a knoppix or some other rescue disk. Then use dd to write the image from over the network to your new clone. Again, I havn't done it before but it seems reasonable. Anyone else have any ideas? Ben On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 10:14:56 -0500, Sarunas Burdulis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. Thanks for any suggestion! Sarunas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 10:14 -0500, Sarunas Burdulis wrote: Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. Ghost works well. We use it quite often for this purpose. It's not free but it's worth the investment if you do this type of replication on a regular basis. It's quick and easy. -- Eric Gaumer [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Cloning a workstation
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday, 08.12.2004 at 10:38 -0500, Ben Bettin wrote: I've been looking into doing the same thing at my office. After researching a bit, Partimage sounded like a nifty program (http://partimage.org/). I havn't tried it yet, but everything I've read about it sounded promising. Partimage certainly works very well. You can create a bootable CD which (assuming your image fits on a CD) you can use to install your image. If the image is larger, you can use it across the network. Run partimage daemon on one box, then boot up your unconfigured box(es) with, say, Knoppix; the run partimage and it'll pull in the image. Use it all the time here, imaging Windows boxes and Debian workstations. Dave. - -- Dave Ewart - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] All email from me is now digitally signed, key from http://www.sungate.co.uk/ Fingerprint: AEC5 9360 0A35 7F66 66E9 82E4 9E10 6769 CD28 DA92 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBtyGwnhBnac0o2pIRAoKhAKC0gB9sSsFdJcHmSEnXUn8a/NXGlACg1klI T0Zl2jrS35n7XFwBoj2x1B0= =2GKk -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Sarunas Burdulis wrote: Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. put the new ide disk into the new machine boot off the standalone cd p4# mkdir /mnt/oldPC p4# mount oldPC:/ /mnt/oldPC p4# partition new ide disk as you like p4# mount /dev/NewIDE /mnt/NewPC p4# mount /dev/NewIDE2 /mnt/NewPC/usr -- whatever your partition scheme is p4# cd /mnt/oldPC ; tar cf - DIRECTORIES | ( cd /mnt/NewPC ; tar zxvfp - ) p4# lilo or grub reboot and take out the knoppix/standalone cd DIRECTORIES=/boot /bin /dev /lib /sbin /root /var /tmp /opt .. remove old log info and cleanup as needed on the new pc make a script if yoou like.. but for one cloning, it'd be pointless .. :-) -- or boot and do install the minimum deb install first .. old# dpkg -get-selections * /mnt/floppy/old-list - do minimumal install to get the new box on the network new# dpkg -set-selections /mnt/floppy/old-list apt-get dselect-upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade apt-get upgrade - and get your cutomizations moved over -- or a gazillion other ways to skin the cat c ya alvin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Eric Gaumer wrote: On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 10:14 -0500, Sarunas Burdulis wrote: Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. Just for a quick/hard copy, I have sucessfully used knoppix to boot the 2nd machine, replicated the partitions myself and then copied everything from the main machine using scp -R [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/* . not very pretty but it worked... :-) Ps: I also needed to install grub/lilo by hand after the copy, I was forgetting about that.. just one more command line :-) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Cloning a workstation
From: Sarunas Burdulis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 9:31 AM I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. There have been many great suggestions already. Here are two more: 1. I have used mkCDRec (http://mkcdrec.ota.be). I unpack the tarball; cd mkcdrec; make test; make and answer a couple of prompts, then wait a while (long while). You might want to change the Config.sh, specifically SCSIDEVICE, nad BURNCDR. I think the image winds up in /home for some reason. Overall, it's not a perfect solution, but works well for me. 2. Also, I recently booted a new box (it has no CD, so I installed a minimal system on a small partition using woody boot floppies) by copying over the network. I booted the system, partitioned, like the other system, copied the filesystems over the network, and installed the bootloader. To copy I used something similar to: ssh [EMAIL PROTECTED] 'tar -C / -clf - .' | tar -C /mnt/root -xvf - The -l option to tar tells it to only copy files on the given parition. The /mnt/root is the partiton on the local system where you want the file to go. The syntax may be slightly off, I didn't write it down when I did it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Cloning a workstation
Try PowerCockpit. Allows you to copy an image of the original workstation (to a file) then deploy the image to another machine (which may be dissimilar). Ben -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Ben Bettin wrote: I've been looking into doing the same thing at my office. After researching a bit, Partimage sounded like a nifty program (http://partimage.org/). I havn't tried it yet, but everything I've read about it sounded promising. I believe, however, that the project is dead. There hasn't been an update in quite a few months. I contacted the package maintainer and they said they hadn't heard from the developers in a while and believed the project was dieing. However, they said the program is very useable and works quite well in most cases. Meaning updates won't happen too soon, but what is there: Package partimage * stable (non-US): Linux/UNIX utility to save partitions in a compressed image file 0.6.1-13: arm i386 m68k mips mipsel powerpc s390 sparc * testing (admin): Linux/UNIX utility to save partitions in a compressed image file 0.6.4-10: arm hppa i386 m68k mips mipsel powerpc s390 sparc * unstable (admin): Linux/UNIX utility to save partitions in a compressed image file 0.6.4-10: arm hppa i386 m68k mips mipsel powerpc s390 sparc certainly works for cloning. For some cases I like mondo better because that will adjust fstab and lilo, while partimage won't: you'll end up exactly with what you cloned. Seems like dd would be an option too? I don't have a lot of experience with dd, but it seems like a pretty powerful program. You could use dd to create an image of your drive. Boot up the clone computer with a knoppix or some other rescue disk. Then use dd to write the image from over the network to your new clone. Again, I havn't done it before but it seems reasonable. Anyone else have any ideas? Ben On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 10:14:56 -0500, Sarunas Burdulis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. Thanks for any suggestion! Sarunas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Cloning a workstation
On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 17:42, Croy, Nathan wrote: From: Sarunas Burdulis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 9:31 AM I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. There have been many great suggestions already. I successfully cloned a hard disc on a dual-boot win98/NT/Debian box using: Debian Packages --- util-linux (provides sfdisk) gcc make (needed to complile pcopy) Source package -- pcopy - faster than dd - (from ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/unix/pcopy) Brief method Compile and install pcopy Clean up existing systems -scandisk on MS Windows systems, fsck on unmounted Linux partitions. You might want to go to single-user /sbin/telinit 1 Stop network /etc/init.d/networking stop Copy partition table from old hda to new hdb sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk /dev/hdb copy the partitions eg: pcopy -d /dev/hda3 /dev/hdb3 Chris. -- Chris Lale [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Hello Sarunas, Sarunas Burdulis wrote: Hello, I need to clone a workstation (which has some custom configuration and scripts added to otherwise basic Sarge/KDE) into another set of absolutely identical hardware (Intel Pentium 4, IDE HD). Just one clone, not a massive install. What tools would you use? Easiest/quickest? Machines are on an Ethernet, have CD/DVD and floppy drives. A very low-level way to do it is using netcat. boot both systems from cd (knoppix or similiar) and let them have access to each other over the net (a cross-cable and manual chosen 192.168.0.x IP's will do). Both systems neet netcat (executable name nc). Now run nc -l -p 12345 | gunzip -c /dev/hda on the system to be installed to and on the master system run cat /dev/hda | gzip -0 -c | nc CLIENT-IP 12345 12345 is any unused port number. This will copy the content of the master system's harddisk bytewise onto the new systems harddisk. I suggest using a cross-cable and connect both computers directly for additional speed. I've copied systems this way using only tomsrtbt (although today I'd prefer Knoppix :) ). Yours, Karsten -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Thank you for all the input. Certainly more than one way to do it, as usual... For the single case a simple scp/rsync + grub install seems adequate. However partimage looks like something worth getting familiar with --- so I'll try that. Sarunas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cloning a workstation
Sarunas Burdulis wrote: Thank you for all the input. Certainly more than one way to do it, as usual... For the single case a simple scp/rsync + grub install seems adequate. However partimage looks like something worth getting familiar with --- so I'll try that. Sarunas For your needs, systemimager may be a better choice. I have used it in a lab environment to install similar machines. You would need an image server (just a machine with enough space to store your images). systemimager has some really nice features. The image of your system is stored on image server in a directory under /var/lib/systemimage (default). This is really nice because you can chroot into the image which is not running to, for example, update packages, etc. If you install a tftp server, you can set your machines to boot off the network and the tftp server will push the image out. I believe you can even configure to push a particular image from a selection of several based on IP or MAC address. The best feature, in my opinion, is that it can handle installing the image to machines with different hardware. E.g., you have an image which occupies only 5 GB. systemimager will install it to pretty much machine with sufficient hard drive space as long as things like the CPU arch and hardrive (IDE vs SCSI) are the same. You can also set it to exclude/include various parts of the image. For example, you image contains /usr/local/pkg1/ and /usr/local/pkg2 but you don't both installed on a particular machine. You can have it ignore /usr/local/pkg1 (or pkg2) as it pushes the image. This can be done for any part of the directory tree. -Roberto signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Cloning a workstation [PowerCockpit]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 2004-12-08 19:51: Try PowerCockpit. Allows you to copy an image of the original workstation (to a file) then deploy the image to another machine (which may be dissimilar). Are you sure it supports Debian? http://www.mountainviewdata.com/us/products/pwc/pwc_system.html The URL above says it supports these (only?) RedHat Enterprise Linux AS / ES / WS 2.1 (3.0 soon) RedHat Linux 7.3 / 8.0 / 9.0 TurboLinux 7 Server / Workstation TurboLinux 8 Server / Workstation TurboLinux Enterprise Server 8 (United Linux) SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 SuSE Linux 7.3 Professional / Personal SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional / Personal SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional / Personal SuSE Linux 8.2 Professional / Personal -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
