Anyone know of a good disk imaging program, other than Clonezilla & DRBL, that will work with multiple systems, the image hosted on a single server, that tri-boot Windows XP, Windows Vista, and openSUSE 11.0 that they know works with openSUSE 11.0 and they are happy with?
I am currently setting up a server that will use Clonezilla and DRBL to host and deploy a disk image to an entire class. If it wasn’t for the fact that the program that is used in the classroom only works in windows, will not work under WINE due to its dependency with .NET Framework 3 and the Mono framework does not work and using a virtual machine does not work because the program needs the screen resolution higher than 1024 x 768 and its test does not play nice with Virtual Machines, the teacher would love to get rid of Windows and just use Linux (mostly openSUSE due to my influence).
“We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.” Karl Popper
How about handing out LiveCDs for install and an image of /home using PartImage. Use Parted Magic LiveCD which has PartImage (Parted Magic download - Parted Magic 3.1)
to partition and image the drives; put on /home & install using that /home.
All free.
>
> Have a look at PartImage.
>
> How about handing out LiveCDs for install and an image of /home using
> PartImage. Use Parted Magic LiveCD which has PartImage (‘Parted Magic
> download - Parted Magic 3.1’
> (http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/528520/Parted-Magic.html))
> to partition and image the drives; put on /home & install using that
> /home.
> All free.
>
>
Well he was wanting the image to be handled over the network but I can bring up the idea of PartImage, as long as it is able to get all the partitions in the image.
“We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.” Karl Popper
>
> ‘G4L’ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l) is another program. I’ve
> used it a few times & it also works over a network
>
> Andy
>
>
Ok because I just talked to him about it and he says that the deployment system needs to support PXE boot because the image will be used in 26 machines and we can use CDs on everyone and expect to get the imaging done in the set amount of time
“We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.” Karl Popper
Bootit NG (by Terrabyte Unlimited) still does a good job on my systems… It’s a Boot manager, makes images, has a load of partition tools (resize, slide, undelete, etc) and still fits on a floppy (or bootable CD/USB).
It handles reiserfs and extx (as also NTFS/FAT) natively but can also do a block copy/image of any other partition.
>
> Bootit NG (by Terrabyte Unlimited) still does a good job on my
> systems… It’s a Boot manager, makes images, has a load of partition
> tools (resize, slide, undelete, etc) and still fits on a floppy (or
> bootable CD/USB).
>
> It handles reiserfs and extx (as also NTFS/FAT) natively but can also
> do a block copy/image of any other partition.
>
> A one stop partition tool…
>
> Cheers,
> Wj
>
>
Ok I should have added needs to be free, the school won’t pay for anything else because they are still mad about the instructor buying 26 $1,200 Dell XPS systems. The only free program they have is CopyWipe and that is not what we need.
“We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.” Karl Popper
I think you would be remiss in not giving Parted Magic a try. Burn a copy & take to the prof for a trial.
It has PXE boot, G4L & Partimage on it. Version 3.1 has networking; at least, I was able, just now, to easily set it up & get online.
Of course, you can set all those up in openSUSE too; but, I would do the imaging from a LiveCD (which could be built using the build service – I bet the Devs on the mailing list would be glad to help).
dd and partimage are proven oss Linux tools for imaging. You can combine dd with netcat to image across the wire.
Another option you could also try is with using a ZenWorks 7 Boot CD - boot in manual mode and use the multicast image option to image multiple systems over the network from one host (system holding your master image). Does the job nicely and the BootCD then works standalone, no ZenWorks servers needed. Zenworks imaging files - burn the included bootcd.iso, other files are not needed.