Re: [opensuse] speaking of cloning....

On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 12:18 -0400, James Tremblay wrote:
Dave,
I have four different model IBM's in my school ranging from pIII 1000Mhz
to pIV 2.8 Ghz , currently I use one Master WinXP image for Zenworks
imaging. I can't seem to find any documentation for creating this same
kind of "Master Image" for SLED. I understand that Imaging will be less
of an issue with Linux due to the severely lowered privilege's regarding
installing software into the core operating system, but I still need to
be able to overcome any form of corruption quickly. I would also like to
distribute a dual boot system image for few years. How do automate the
local host name change for Zenworks importing and management?

With different hardware any image of the windows part of the drive will
be a problem. You will need safe mode and to fuss with drivers. For
SuSE its much easier boot to mode 3; run SaX2 -l; init 5; login as root
at which point the different hardware will be found click yes for the
reconfiguration and your fine. I installed 9.2 this way on a PIII and
moved the disk to the PII because the PIII had the DVD.

As I remember Zenworks like VMware is for running multiple OS in
parallel.

But first you want an image for SLED and to dual boot. There I think
its easier first start with your XP partition on what we will call the
primary system which would be on hda1 and I assume no file exchange
partition as users will have flash drives. Second partition the rest of
the drive as an extended partition into which you will use Yast/Custome
partitioning for the logical partitions for Linux.
I recommend using the standard four, /boot / swap and /home as hda5,
hda6, hda7 and hda8 respectively.

Now here its tricky DVD backup will fail over time due to media failure
so consider it temporary, harddrives can fail but overtime they have a
longer shelf life than the ten years commonly assumed for CDR and DVDR.
So backup your backup at least yearly and make incrementals if you make
small changes. You can also mirror the drive onto another drive say in
a USB inclosure. Yes you want to be paranoid.

Now for that master image of the dual booting drive you just created.

As long as the target device is the same or larger than the source you
can use device-device to copy /dev/hda to /dev/hdb thats not just one
partition but the whole drive byte by byte partitions and all. All that
is needed is the target to be on the network somewhere hdb here is only
an example as I have a system with two caddy because for a long time I
only had one burner so I used sneaker net to bring the drive to backup.

If however you want to do this on systems which are remote or just not
on the network then you can use mondo-rescue to make an install set for
all the programs on your system. If you want the Windows partition
included it must be mounted at the time you run mondo. Then you will
have an executable setup which boots and installs the disks.


--
___ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _
| | | | [__ | | |
|___ |_|_| ___] | \/



--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: how to clone a Linux hard disk?
    ... > same model and size of hard disks. ... > 2) unmounting the master HD ... OR you write a 'new' partition table to the drive. ... Be careful when you buy the hard drives, ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)
  • Re: udev causing data loss?
    ... but then device scanning was non-asynchronous then. ... extended DOS partition. ... Assuming IDE drives on the same cable, ... partition of the Master was C:, as expected, the primary of the Slave ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Changing boot hard drive
    ... Perhaps because the drive wasn't MASTER. ... Many partitioning programs won't set a partition as ... get on with the job and change the drives. ... Use Fdisk to set it active while booted from a dos floppy (Win98) ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: Changing boot hard drive
    ... Perhaps because the drive wasn't MASTER. ... Many partitioning programs won't set a partition as ... get on with the job and change the drives. ... This will copy over the Windows files that determine the basic Windows ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: Dual Boot Instructions
    ... If "drive" means a single partition or logical drive, then the negatives you've heard are very true. ... But if "drive" means a physical hard disk drive, then I'm in big trouble because I have SIX versions of Windows installed on my 1 TB Disk 1, my second HDD! ... The name stuck when we added hard disk drives, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices)