PC Cloning Solution? 115
pbaumgar asks: "Like many here on Slashdot, I'm a Systems Administrator. I have become responsible for maintaining about 300 laptops that I need to rebuild on a regular basis. I am looking for a solution to image them. I've been looking at Symantec's Ghost Solution Suite and am not too gung-ho on spending all that money for licensing. Can anyone recommend an better solution that would be cheaper?"
Simple DD (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Simple DD (Score:1)
Re:Simple DD (Score:4, Informative)
The problem lies in that for every user, machine, account, group, domain, ENTITY in a Windows environment, there is a globally unique identifier known as a SID. When you clone a machine, you also clone the SID. When you've got two or more machines with the same SID on a network, you WILL have problems. Renaming the machine does not change the machine SID, and Windows knows things more by the SID than by the name. (Think about having two users in your Linux
Secondly, dd is not ideal because it does a bitwise copy. If you are cloning a badly fragmented disk, your clone will be badly fragmented. You'll also get all the cruft left behind from deleted files. Ghost can do a dd-like bitwise copy, but in its primary mode it only copies the extant files. If you've got a 120GB disk with only 5GB used, dd will copy 120GB of bits whereas Ghost will copy 5GB of files. Think of the time involved. If your new drive/partition is not the same as the old one, you can't reliably use dd.
That being said, there are utilities available for changing the machine SID.
Re:Simple DD (Score:2)
As to your objections, why couldn't a person set up a single, perfect install, then make sure a copy of the SID-altering utility is available on the computer, THEN image the thing using DD?
Then it wouldn't be fragmented, and everything would be smooth and beautiful.
Run Sysprep to change the SID. (Score:4, Informative)
There is a download site, but Microsoft's search facility has never worked very well, and I can't find the URL now. Wait, I found it: Sysprep.exe for Windows XP Service Pack 2 [microsoft.com].
Use only the version of Sysprep.exe and Deploy.cab meant for your operating system and service pack.
When you run Sysprep, you automatically change the SID.
Re:Simple DD (Score:2)
Re:Simple DD (Score:2)
This:
Use a bigger block size (a few megabytes at least - bs=4m) and performance will increase dramatically.
Re:Simple DD (Score:2)
Re:Simple DD (Score:2)
' hdparm -c1 -d1 -u1
I commonly use " bs=1M " in DD operations.
Re:Simple DD (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe IHBT.
Re:Simple DD (Score:2)
Zenworks Imaging (Score:1)
Re:Zenworks Imaging (Score:2)
Re:Zenworks Imaging (Score:2)
The DeployCenter lets you get pretty sophisticated with picking and choosing application sets to install, etc.
That said, I'd do a search on sourceforge.net for "disk imaging" if cheap is the ultimate watchword, vs. capable.
Re:the solution (Score:2, Informative)
Re:the solution (Score:2)
Re:the solution (Score:1)
I'm not aware of one either, but there is CACLS.EXE which lets you set permissions from the command line (and therefore a
Re:the solution (Score:2)
Re:the solution (Score:1)
Re:the solution (Score:2)
Re:the solution (Score:1)
Look for an earlier copy of Ghost (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Look for an earlier copy of Ghost (Score:1)
G4U (Score:5, Informative)
Re:G4U (Score:5, Informative)
1) It's free.
2) You don't have to start the cloning process over if one machine fails.
3) Some versions of Norton Ghost do not catch the boot sector. This can be a problem when you want to have a boot loader on the MBR.
4) It does an actual disk dump. No proprietary format here.
Ghost 4 Unix Cons:
1) In some cases, it is not fast. Hey, it's faster than piping this over a SSH connection.
2) It doesn't do multicast, a benefit of Norton Ghost. Which lets you send the image out as a broadcast to all the machines.
My experiences with Norton Ghost: The multicast feature can crash some networking equipment. There is nothing more annoying than getting 97% done and having to start over on one or all of the machines. Norton Ghost can bring a large network to it's knees. You may need to carry the Ghost server around with you. Especially if your network spans more than one building or floor.
My experiences with Ghost for Unix: I setup an FTP server in the lab I was working in. There is no special server software, just a plain old FTP server. Dumped the master image on the FTP server. Started about 20 clients imaging. Go and grab a lunch or two. Come back and start any failed downloads later. It worked even on a dusty old switch known to crash with Norton Ghost. How cool is that?
Re:G4U (Score:5, Informative)
-Just needs ftp or ssh or whatever you can connect with (ftp by default)
More Cons:
-uses DD for disk dump - this means if you have lots of empty space on a big disk it'll come over too, and likely, it'll be junk (making it hard to compress an image). the G4U site has some ideas on how to get around that.
Recently I'm using FreeBSD, but my disks are slightly different between a few of the machines, so I'm using dump/restore and the livecd portion of disk1 of freebsd 5.4 (and now 6) to create the partition, ifconfig, then ssh/cat > restore on the new drive (then rename, rebuild host keys, etc). works like a charm.
Re:G4U (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just you, but it's not really Ghost's fault. I deal with multicast quite a bit, not just ghost. Multicast can be a pain. If you have network gear that isn't multicast aware (impliments IGMP), then you'll be a sad panda when you fire up ghost in multicast mode. One of the issues Ghost does have is the entire multicast goes at the speed of the slowest PC. So if you have a dodgy disk in a PC, your whole imag
Re:G4U (Score:3, Informative)
Re:G4U (Score:3, Informative)
Except for the fact that doing so puts you squarely in unsupported territory. The only supported way [microsoft.com] to duplicate Windows boxes is by using Sysprep (also free and already included on your Windows CD).
Re:G4U (Score:3, Funny)
Re:G4U (Score:3, Insightful)
Unattended is really nice for varying hardware. I used unattended in our lab at work, where we started out with quite a few different kinds of machines (imaging would have been nearly useless).
It uses dosemu to run the win32 installer under linux (and then there are a few reboots for the windows installer). It is sweet to w
Re:G4U (Score:1)
We also use partimaged and a custom shell script for our cloning. Build a box, grap the boot sector, the partition table, and use partimage (the client) to upload an image of each directory.
Then use a rescue CD on a blankbox, download the custom script and run it. Writes out the partition table, drops in the boot loader, and lays the image onto the n
Wh ynot Ghost (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, back in the day I got a free copy of Ghost with my motherboard. Now that they are completely owned by the Symantec umbrella, they are probably quite a bit more expensive, but I bet you can still get a single-user burn-to-a-dvd-with-the-image for relatively little. If that is to expensive, then go learn DD or some of the more advanced techniques that I am sure will pop up all over this board. Why buy the total solution when you aren't really going to use it anyway? Also, if you are in a windows environment, perhaps their RIS Server product would do what you need as well? Can the laptops boot from the network?
Google and I agree: Acronis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Google and I agree: Acronis (Score:1)
RIS for Windows is also the shit.
Re:Google and I agree: Acronis (Score:2, Informative)
DriveImage by PowerQuest is a great program.
Re:Google and I agree: Acronis (Score:2)
FYI, "...is the shit", as used by the grandparent, is the opposite of what you seem to mean, which is "...is shit."
Curiously, "flammable" and "inflammable" are still synonyms.
Re:Google and I agree: Acronis (Score:2)
By asking the question, people that are interested in the topic may find out an answer something and those with no clue may learn something. Otherwise those individuals may never have bothered looking it up.
Hard Drive Manufactures Software (Score:2)
Not a perfect solution because you would need to buy a spare hard drive for every laptop, but it's free.
Re:Hard Drive Manufactures Software (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hard Drive Manufactures Software (Score:2)
rofl, that's not even a good solution.
Why Imaging? (Score:5, Informative)
What may be a good solution that is adaptive to your needs is this solution : http://unattended.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Combine this with a good method for getting a PXE boot setup (and devices that support the feature) and you will be able to create a menu that will allow you to automate system installs of Windows, Linux, and possible other systems, plus installing their related applicaton software later.
With this setup you can do system installs for any type of hardware that comes your way. Laptop vendor change the network card chipset without bothering to change the spec sheet? No problem, just add the driver to the above build instructions and life goes on.
Re:Why Imaging? (Score:2)
http://www.nliteos.com/ [nliteos.com]
Once you have the laptops up and running, log into your domain and allow the Active Directory system to push additional software to the laptops. You can configure AD
Re:Why Imaging? (Score:2)
Re:Why Imaging? (Score:1)
Agree 100% (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at it this way. With unattended, you can assign different profiles to different computers, and they can inherit from each other. Say one group needs x apps, another group needs y apps, and another groops needs x y and z. With unattented that can all be maintained with three very small batch scripts. Wit
g4u will do it (Score:2)
I have successfully imaged ext3 volume sets, NTFS disks, and NetBSD disks with this tool. In spite of what you might think, it actually is quite fast and the drive images are relatively compact.
The key is to have a gigabit network at hand, if you can, and to have relatively modern hardware across the board.
dd AND gzip (Score:1)
slipstreaming and unattended (Score:2)
My network (Score:2)
Re:My network (Score:2)
Get Patchlink or some similar network application that can perform remote installs/upgrades from a central server.
The only time you should have to reimage a system is when installing new hardware or to recover a system that is too far gone to fix. Reimaging shouldn't be used for incremental upgrades. As you've noticed, it takes way too much time and effort.
Re:My network (Score:2)
dd+netcat (Score:3, Informative)
Knoppix + partimage (Score:3, Informative)
Since partimage is contained on every Knoppix CD, the easiest and cheapest solution is to boot your computer with Knoppix, save the file system image either to a local disk or over the network to another computer running partimaged.
Re:Knoppix + partimage (Score:2)
But if you're using any Windows systems with NTFS, you should know that NTFS support for partimage is still in the experimental stage. This is according to the Partimage website [partimage.org]. To quote them:
The NTFS (Windows NT File System) is currently not fully supported: this means you will be able to save an NTFS partition if system files are not very fragmented, and if system files are not compressed. In this case, you will be able to save
Re:Knoppix + partimage (Score:1)
Having said that, having a custom schell script to help automate the partitioning and such using partimage really helps a lot. "./install.sh " gets us a complete client image for our workstations (dual boot RHEL3/Win2K) in about 10 minutes on a 100mb LAN after booting from a Linux rescue CD.
good experiences with partimage and NTFS (Score:1)
I didn't use Knoppix, but a command-line based bootable Linux (Linux res
What about RIS? (Score:5, Informative)
FREE! (Score:1)
Being serious now, RIS is slick if you can get it set up properly.
Re:What about RIS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about RIS? (Score:2)
See unattended for an open source project with all these features as well as some good community support & the ability to integrate with a build/update system that actually does more than Windows.
Re:What about RIS? (Score:2)
Maybe you meant to qualify that, ie with "for Windows".
Since, all the major linux distros support this, all you need is a DHCP server and a TFTP server, and pxelinux, all of which ship with any distro.
We deploy all our Linux servers this way, including deploying all software required on the server (dependant on its role), hardending and configuration, so that it is ready for production on first
dd, crude but efficient (Score:2)
You're probably cloning windows whose config files are not as simple as those in unix but there are still a lot of tools out there that can help (e.g. openldap commands for manipulating Active Directory, adding new users, etc.).
Partimage (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to get really creative, maybe you could put a small linux partition on the systems that you can boot to for this purpose. Or maybe you could make a bootable system restore CD. Here is a faq to get started: http://www.digitalissues.co.uk/html/os/misc/parti
For Windows (Score:3, Informative)
G4U (Score:1, Redundant)
A supertool without doubt.
Why reimage? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why reimage? (Score:2)
Re:Why reimage? (Score:1)
and, it looks like you've already found your own solution, but you know that you can usually install the software and then remove the admin rights, right?
Re:Why reimage? (Score:1)
Re:Why reimage? (Score:1)
No permanent storage? (Score:1)
Altiris deployment solution (Score:3, Informative)
While it keeps track of all the packages and images deployed, it doesn't automatically restore everything.
CA also has a similar product, it doesn't deploy images, only the windows unattended install stuff. However in addition to keeping track of packages, it will automatically redeploy them. Useful for when a HDD dies. You start the base image deployment, CA takes care of everything done since then.
Both packages support PXE boot and Wake On Lan. So you can remotely boot up a bare metal machine and get it operational.
These are pretty large programs, you'll want to talk to a sales person at those places and get a demo. Even if a demo is available, get them to demo it to you, you can't hope to learn the stuff in a couple days on your own.
Re:Altiris deployment solution (Score:2)
Why older machines? If your machine doesn't support PXE, they have a solution which allows you to WoL boot up your machine and then switch over to a hidden drive image (the software manages switching between your OSes and its hidden drive image OS), which then allows you to image a machine as if you had PXE support. It's nice if you work for a school w
Easy.. (Score:4, Funny)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/your_hard_drive bs=512
And then, you can run netcat from the tun device
nc -i tun0 >
Be aware, your mileage may vary.
Re:Easy.. (Score:2)
Re:Easy.. (Score:2)
Hows about trying that command out first.. You know, the one that takes input from urandom and writes OVER your hard drive...
Re:Easy.. (Score:1)
>dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/your_hard_drive bs=512
Don't try this at home kids! If you want to find out why, try
man urandom
And know this: if=input file, of=output file
If flexibility is desired (Score:2)
Then start hacking your Thinstation dist around. Easy to maintain over time (just upload new Thinstation images). Write a quick shell script to ftp down an image off a server and use dd. The user could pick an image or alternatively use some hardware identifier (using lspci, etc.) to automatically pick one for a user.
Another idea would be to use a floppy-disk based Linux dist which does ef
Ghost + Scripting = Life Saver (Score:1)
What do you want? (Score:2)
Forget the imaging (Score:1)
Plenty of documentation is available on the Microsoft website and there is no extra licensing.
At an old job (Score:1)
Use Phoenix's recover pro (Score:2)
Lenovo (formerly IBM) OEMs this into all it's thinkpads. Theirs is linked to that "blue one touch restore button". I am a bid specialist for PC Mall, and I can get you in touch with one of our reps if you want. For 300 licenses, you should be able to get a volume discount.
Imaging (Score:1)
Acronis True Image (Score:2)
I didn't scrutinize their license agreement WRT
Phoenix Recover Pro (Score:1)
Some options from my Lab: (Score:1)
Windows:
-------------------
If your deploying Windows, then I would suggest you use M$'s free (as in beer) solution, Automated Deployment Services: [microsoft.com]
I've used this in my lab for cloning Windows 2003 instances. It's a PXE/tftp based solution. It works very similarly to IBM's RDM, LanDesk, e
Is Ghost really that bad? (Score:1)
Ok, so for 300 licenses you're looking at spending about $5,790 which works out to around $20/license. That's not that bad considering how much time it'll save you and exactly what you get, and you may be able to get it cheaper. I get Ghost licenses for $15ea through CDW-G because I work at a high school. You may want to check with a reseller to see if you can get a break on licensing.
Next to RIS I don't think there's any solution that'll roll out a Windows install with programs, updates, automatically
300 isn't too bad.. (Score:2)
You can probably handle that with a manual cloning process if the cloned image doesn't change too often and the machines carry DVD ROM drives in them. Clean install to a spare machine (there are some ways described elsewhere in thi
FAI for debian is the best (Score:2)
I use a 10GB partition with 5GB of data which Partition Image does in 3min, the exact same thing is done in 10min with FAI. On the other hand with FAI it is very easy to keep the image up to date, which is a very tedious process with Partition Image. Also growing filesystems aren't really that wasy in Linux
Re:No you're not (Score:2)
Ok I'll bite. (Score:4, Interesting)
Their support is excellent and their Database integration for centralized inventory tracking and software inventory tracking is very useful. Not to mention having the data in ready to use SQL form.
It's a step up from Ghost for sure, and for the enterprise it does integrate with HP OpenView. But, you're not supposed to talk about real closed source pay for solutions on Slashdot. *waves hand* This isn't the product you're looking for. It's certainly not cheap, and it's certainly not something you'd want to rush into.
And as long as I'm on a rant about good pay for solutions, if all the guy wants to use is ghost functionality why not use RIS? Other than the whole Microsoft Homogeny thing it seems to work nearly as well (if not better) than ghost.
Re:Ok I'll bite. (Score:2)
Re:Ok I'll bite. (Score:2)
Re:Ok I'll bite. (Score:2)
Re:Ok I'll bite. (Score:2)
Re:help me do my job (Score:2)
People like sysadmins and IT support staff frequently finding new and exciting problems needing solutions that someone else has already solved. Besides, I think it's normal and good practice to ask colleagues for suggestions in stead of tryi
Re:help me do my job (Score:2)
However, it IS wrong to assume that you don't need to ask questions because you've been in the field a long time and think you know everything. Once in a while, you need to think outside the box, and occasionally investigate the other side of the fence. If you don't, you'll just get stuck in a rut, using the same tools, without much clue about the alternatives tha