[luau] Ghost for Linux and Pattition Image

Jeff Zidek z-man at hawaii.rr.com
Tue Nov 5 06:51:01 PST 2002


I don't dispute what you said about Norton Ghost except one thing.  The
max of eight workstations.  I have used Ghost to multicast 64
workstations at once over a weekend.  We started them on Friday and left
and came back to 64 new workstaions on Monday.  This was on Windows 2000
systems though.  To deal with the fact that it makes them (ununique
systems) I run sysprep before I make the image shutdown without letting
it reboot and reboot onto ghost multicast bootdisk. If anyone is
interested I have a trick so that when the 2000 systems boot all you
have to do is enter a new computer name click next then next again and
your done.  To do this just use the XP setup manager to make your
sysprep text file and run it under 2000 sysprep.  Seem it's just that
the setup manager in 2000 doesn't have all the available features in the
XP version.  Don't use the sysprep program from XP just the setup
manager.  Works like a dream.  Won't even have to click that pesky EULA
or enter a Product Activation Number.
 
Jeff Zidek

On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 06:24, yuser at hi.net wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, MonMotha wrote:
> 
> > When cloning windows systems, Norton Ghost can modify the magic numbers 
> > associated with your NT install that are supposed to be unique (a plain 
> > disk image can't do this) as well as a few other things (people tout 
> > "ghostwalker" which is essentially a loopback mount of the fielsystem, 
> > but anyway).  However, on UNIX, I can't think of anything a specialized 
> > program would offer over dd and netcat :)
> > 
> > --MonMotha
> > 
> 
> I have not found the Multicasting with Ghost to be very useful in the real 
> world.  By the time you get everything set up and ready to roll you could 
> have used a normal network bootdisk and pulled the image directly to the 
> workstations from a server using normal methods.  Even if you have a lab 
> setup it takes time to hook up the max of 8 machines and get them all 
> ready for the multicasting and it still does not save time.  In my last 2 
> jobs 
> I have used PQDI and Ghost a lot.  I use a Samba machine (or Novell) with 
> the images 
> and a TCP/IP boot disk to connect to it.  It works great.  If you have 
> more then one image or different machines you can make a menu system to 
> automatically do the grunt work for you.  I guess one small advantage of 
> Ghost is it can create boot disks for you.  I am already familiar with 
> that concept thanks to Google and I highly recommend 
> http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/ for boot disks.  It can autodetect 
> network cards, DHCP, and just about anything you need.  
> 
> I have sample scripts for pulling and writing images to a network 
> server and boot disk images if anyone is really interested.
> 
> You can also use the boot disk for other things.  I have Duke Nukem on a 
> network share, run a batch file from my normal my boot disk, 
> pull down the game to a 64MB ram drive and run it from there.  I don't 
> use it often but my co workers and I have played Duke matches during 
> lunch.  When we were done simply reboot the computer and all is back to 
> normal!     
> 
> _______________________________________________
> LUAU mailing list
> LUAU at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
> http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/luau





More information about the LUAU mailing list