to clone or not to clone that is the question

[john brennan-sardou]

hello everybody,
    here is my question for the day. Being sick and tired of windows but forced 
every now and then to use it, I have always put my faith in Ghost and it does 
seem to save those really awful moments in ones computor life. Is there a 
program under linux with which I can do the same thing? In other words can I 
clone linux onto a DVD or not? 
    Thanks for everything,
    				John Brennan-Sardou

[Scot L. Harris]

On Sat, 2004-07-31 at 14:08, john brennan-sardou wrote:
> hello everybody,
>    here is my question for the day. Being sick and tired of windows but forced 
> every now and then to use it, I have always put my faith in Ghost and it does 
> seem to save those really awful moments in ones computor life. Is there a 
> program under linux with which I can do the same thing? In other words can I 
> clone linux onto a DVD or not? 
>    Thanks for everything,
>    				John Brennan-Sardou

Check out partimage.  It seems to do a pretty good job.  The
systemrescue CD includes it so you can boot a system up and make a copy
of the drive over the network.

[Dexter Ang]

john brennan-sardou wrote:
> hello everybody,
>    here is my question for the day. Being sick and tired of windows but forced 
> every now and then to use it, I have always put my faith in Ghost and it does 
> seem to save those really awful moments in ones computor life. Is there a 
> program under linux with which I can do the same thing? In other words can I 
> clone linux onto a DVD or not? 
>    Thanks for everything,
>    				John Brennan-Sardou

Clone or backup to a DVD? I've just cloned 20 harddrives using g4u 
(Ghost 4 Unix) this past few days. Dumped the entire harddrive data to 
an internal ftp server. Then restored the image to all 20 harddrives. Of 
course, you need a separate computer with g4u.

If it's backing up your data that you want, look for other solutions 
that can backup your data incrementally and restore them as well. I 
think mondo rescue is recommended for this. I'm sure there are other 
solutions as well.

Just wondering... is Ghost able to dump an image of the harddrive 
straight onto a DVD?

dex

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am Sa, den 31.07.2004 schrieb Dexter Ang um 20:25:
> Clone or backup to a DVD? I've just cloned 20 harddrives using g4u 
> (Ghost 4 Unix) this past few days. Dumped the entire harddrive data to 
> an internal ftp server. Then restored the image to all 20 harddrives. Of 
> course, you need a separate computer with g4u.

Just because of interest: what does g4u do different than dd?
> Just wondering... is Ghost able to dump an image of the harddrive 
> straight onto a DVD?

mkisofs if you want to save mountable system content on a CD / DVD,
rather than doing a dd clone copy independent from what's on the source
media.
> dex

Alexander

[Dexter Ang]

Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> Just because of interest: what does g4u do different than dd?

Well it all comes down to the fact that I'm not that familiar with dd 
when it comes to cloning harddrives. It's probably as easy as dd 
if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb. In fact, g4u uses dd as well. And it compresses 
and puts the image on an ftp server. And it uses a bootable NetBSD disk 
(either floppies or a CD iso). Except I don't have to see all this, and 
have to type all the commands (or make a script for it).

So it all basically is because I'm lazy. And the fact that I don't have 
to teach those who were helping me. They just boot of a CD, and then 
type slurpdisk server image.gz.

It's just fun to use some new tool =)

dex

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am So, den 01.08.2004 schrieb Dexter Ang um 17:07:
> > Just because of interest: what does g4u do different than dd?
>
> Well it all comes down to the fact that I'm not that familiar with dd 
> when it comes to cloning harddrives. It's probably as easy as dd 
> if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb. In fact, g4u uses dd as well. And it compresses 
> and puts the image on an ftp server. And it uses a bootable NetBSD disk 
> (either floppies or a CD iso). Except I don't have to see all this, and 
> have to type all the commands (or make a script for it).
>
> So it all basically is because I'm lazy. And the fact that I don't have 
> to teach those who were helping me. They just boot of a CD, and then 
> type slurpdisk server image.gz.
>
> It's just fun to use some new tool =)
>
> dex

Thanks Dexter for explanation and your point of view. g4u sounds not
that bad and it is free software

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

I think I'll test it if I have an opportunity.

Alexander

[Paul F. Johnson]

Hi,
> Is there a 
> program under linux with which I can do the same thing? In other words can I 
> clone linux onto a DVD or not?

Ghost from version 7.5 is able to understand ext2 and possibly ext3
partitions.

TTFN

Paul

[John Thompson]

john brennan-sardou wrote:
> hello everybody,
>    here is my question for the day. Being sick and tired of windows but forced 
> every now and then to use it, I have always put my faith in Ghost and it does 
> seem to save those really awful moments in ones computor life. Is there a 
> program under linux with which I can do the same thing? In other words can I 
> clone linux onto a DVD or not?

Try "partimage":  http://www.partimage.org/