[wplug] Linux imaging

[Tom Rhodes]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:17:41 -0400 (EDT)
larry at daberko.com wrote:

> Hi, I've been tasked with installing 10 Fedora8 boxes.  I plan to make one
> master install and copy that to the 9 others.  The boxes are all the same
> model, if not exactly the same.
> 
> The data size is 5GB,  HDD size 80GB, network is 100Mbps.
> 
> I'm reading various methods of imaging Linux.
> dd - Will work, but copies every bit on the drive
> tar - have to partition and load bootloader.
> dump/restore - I've done in BSD, but never Linux.
> pulling drives - I'd rather avoid that.
> 
> The master will be installed in the shop, while the copies will be done at
> the customer's site.  I might have access to a windows laptop if needed. 
> I may be able to do multiple machines at once if any are available.
> 
> What would you recommend doing in this situation?

I really like dump(1) but it adds some complexity to it.  On
FreeBSD I just do this for backups:

mount /dev/da0s1a /mnt
dump -L -0 -f - / | ( cd /mnt && restore -r -v -f - )

IIRC, the Linux equiv is:

cd /mnt
dump 0f - / | restore rf -

A good way to copy the partition table over is:

/sbin/sfdisk -d /dev/sda | /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdb

Hope that helps,

-- 
Tom Rhodes