[LUAU] Open Source Ghosting

[Jon Reynolds]

Quoting Tom_Gordon/RISE/HIDOE at notes.k12.hi.us:

> I've partimage on netbooted thin clients to do imaging for windowsxp 
> partitions via ssh and nfs.  restored 7 machines in under an hour. 
> hopefully partimage loses the stupid ntfs/experimental warning so it can 
> be completely unattented.
> 
> parted did my ntfs resizing.  qt_parted will let you do it by manually w/ 
> a gui.
> 
> Tom
> 

I also use partimage to re-image my lab systems. There are a few problems with
partimage that I hope will be worked out eventually but so far it is the closest
thing to Ghost that I have found. If there is encryption or compression on the
disk it will not work, so says the documentation as I don't use either of these
I can't confirm or deny this. You have to image back to the same sized drive or
larger, easy enough resize the partition before imaging then use ntfsresize in a
batch script to recover the lost drive space after restore, completey automated.

It doesn't have true multicasting but I have it installed on a server and use
'systemrescue' to boot the machines and restore. I can do multiple machines at
one time as long as they all start re-imaging close to the same time.

One thing I do like about partimage, other than it's free, is that it only
copies the portion of the disk with data, g4u copies the whole thing regardless,
it can also use SSL and g4u uses FTP.

Knoppix has partimage on it and the SystemRescueCD does too along with part-gui
and qt_parted which let you resize and format NTFS. The SystemRescueCD is
located here: http://www.sysresccd.org/ PartImage can be found here:
www.partimage.org. 

Tom, check the 'Forums' at the partimage site, there are ways to completely
automate the install process and if you have the documentation on how you are
doing it or wouldn't mind giving a little more detail to your setup email me
off-list.

Jon