Looking for suggestions
Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Looking for suggestions
started by: clivesay
Posted by clivesay on July 21 2004,23:27
I am trying to get my hands around what a kid's PC would look like loaded with Linux. I will list my thoughts below and would appreciate your input. I am only about 7 months into Linux so I am sure I may be doing some things the hard way.Base boot up and do HD install.
I have had some issues with installing .dsl/tar files to live CD and then to HD so I figure safest to do a base HD install and then load applications.
Start loading .dsl/tar files.
I would have .dsl files that contain configuration files per roberts suggestion. My thought is to have a "My Documents" folder in the user dsl directory. This would allow a person to put all their docs in a place that will be familiar to most kids. I could have Rox open to this directory from the desktop. Another reason to create is that I can place a .xtdesktop directory in there that will allow me to have my own icon locations without editing .dsl files. If you restore into /dsl/.xtdesktop you get the default icons along with your own. This would require some configuring in the menu and such but I think it is the best option short of editing each .dsl/tar file.
After installing the .dsl files, I think I would be pretty much set. A nice option would be to have a script that would install all of the .dsl files in one sweep. Would this be possible with a bash script?
Anyway, this is a high level look. I would probably install most of the prepackaged software in the repository on PII 300 machines. I have about 3 dozen of them right now. I also have a couple hundred PI machines that would be scaled down.
I am really looking for some feedback on what would be the best method if you are doing A LOT of HD installs.
I appreciate your feedback. Thanks
Chris
Posted by ke4nt1 on July 22 2004,03:48
| Quote |
| Base boot up and do HD install. I have had some issues with installing .dsl/tar files to live CD and then to HD so I figure safest to do a base HD install and then load applications. Start loading .dsl/tar files. |
BIG YES !! Install to HD from a pristine copy of the DSL .iso FIRST !
Build and startup your swap partition...
Then, add your apps to the HDinstall ...
| Quote |
| Anyway, this is a high level look. I would probably install most of the prepackaged software in the repository on PII 300 machines. |
The entire repository of extensions, short of the large .ci files or the openoffice,
easliy fit on a 700 MB cdr.... at the moment !!
The ones in the repository dated 7/18/2004 or later are pretty good-to-go.
Several of the older files still need work, or don't run at all - still alpha..
| Quote |
| I am really looking for some feedback on what would be the best method if you are doing A LOT of HD installs. |
If the hard drives are similar in design, I would consider cloning them from a prebuilt master drive.
73
ke4nt
Posted by clivesay on July 22 2004,12:20
Kent -Are you talking about creating an image or having a master HD that you plug into a machine and copy the contents to the receiving PC's HD?
Chris
Posted by ke4nt1 on July 22 2004,12:45
There are various methods for cloning drives...Usually, I have connected both drives to the same motherboard
A = Primary Master - Prebuilt drive
B = Secondary Master - Empty Drive
Connecting them to the same cable as master/slave works too,
but I believe thruput is increased by giving each drive its own bus.
These are a number of softwares for doing this...
Many utilities boot and run from a dos floppy...
73
ke4nt
Posted by clivesay on July 22 2004,13:19
Kent - I will throw my lack of knowledge out there......
If I had a master HD, I would connect it to the receiving PC as a master and connect the receiving HD as the slave. Then I would boot to the master (hda1) and do a mke2fs /dev/hda2 on the slave. Then would it be a simple cp /mnt/hda1/KNOPPIX/* /mnt/hda2/KNOPPIX/ and I would be in business? That sounds too simple!
Chris
Posted by ke4nt1 on July 22 2004,18:01
Nope....That would make a great data backup, but it's not gonna boot.
Cloning involves copying the partitions, not the data.
That includes the MBR, bootloader, etc..
Find a program that will do disk-to-disk cloning...
Norton "Ghost" used to run off a bootable single floppy..
You could select master, select target, and go drink coffee.
When you come back, pull target drive out, insert into new box,
and reboot... voila!
Insert another target drive into your first machine,
select master, select target, go drink coffee......yadayadayada.
Many other cloning programs out there that run from either bootable CDR or floppy.
Tha's what I'd do if I needed to make a couple hundred clones.
73
ke4nt
Posted by clivesay on July 22 2004,18:08
Wow! That would be alot of coffee! I wouldn't sleep for a week!! 
I will do some investigating. I think this would probably be the best route for me.
So if I delete the .xserverrc file before I do the cloning then each install would prompt me for the setup options upon the first boot or sould I have to run xsetup.sh for each install?
Sorry for all the questions. I am trying to visualize all of the steps.
Thanks
Chris
Posted by cbagger01 on July 22 2004,23:14
With a bootable linux distro and network cards you can do your hard drive cloning for free and without the need to physically install or remove a hard drive.Basically, you would do something like this:
Manually install and customize 1 PC until you have your "perfect PC".
Boot up a second PC and use it as a file server to store a copy of your "perfect PC" hard drive partition. You will need to boot up your "perfect PC" using a linux livecd because you do not want the contents of the hard drive to change while you are doing the hard drive backup.
For a simple solution, you can use the "dd" command and combine it with the netcat or "nc" command to transfer your image without the need to set up a network file share and all that stuff.
Then all you need to do to clone a PC is:
Boot your "blank pc" using a linux livecd.
Create your hard disk partition using a program like cfdisk.
Use "dd" and "nc" to copy the "perfect PC" image from your fileserver over to your new "blank PC".
Run "lilo" to make your new "blank PC" allow a bootup into Linux.
Reboot computer and let it boot up from the hard drive.
Change the computer name so that your new computer will have a unique name on the network.
Repeat this process for every "blank PC" that you wish to clone.
See this links for more details:
< http://www.rajeevnet.com/hacks_hints/os_clone/os_cloning.html >
You can also use the "partimage" program on knoppix or system rescue CD to do your disk cloning over the network.
Also, you can use the Ghost for Unix or "g4u" bootable bsd disk to do network drive imaging.
And if you don't have the ability to do the transfer over the network you can use CD-R disks to do your hard drive cloning via a program like Make CD Rom Recovery
< http://mkcdrec.ota.be/project/ >
Posted by clivesay on July 22 2004,23:30
cbagger01 -As usual, you are just a wealth of information. I wish you were my neighbor!
I will take a look at all of these options. Thanks so much for the input. You have helped me tremendously the entire 7 months I have been into Linux and I really appreciate it!
Take care
Chris
Posted by ke4nt1 on July 22 2004,23:55
Addendum to cbagger01's excellent post..| Quote |
| And if you don't have the ability to do the transfer over the network you can use CD-R disks to do your hard drive cloning via a program like Make CD Rom Recovery |
I have used the Acronis True Image software,
Powerquest Drive Image, Paragon, and Symantec.
All are good backup/restore utilities...
Most of them are way too FAT in my opinion..
( Powerquests' PQDI boot-cdrom wants 128Megs RAM to boot ! )
...screw that...
I'd go with cbagger's choices, especially if your network cards
aren't too weird, and don't require crazy configs to make them go..
And whichever method you use, get a BIG coffee cup..
ke4nt
Posted by cbagger01 on July 23 2004,02:00
FYI,If you are going to do a compressed raw image 'dd' backup, before you begin the backup you should overwrite all of the free disk space on your "perfect PC" partition with a bunch of zeros, instead of the random data that is currently saved inside your unused sectors.
One way of doing this is to type something like:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/username/file_of_zeros.bin bs=1M
this will create a big file of zeros in your home directory. The file will stop growing when there is no space left on the disk. Then you should delete the file with:
rm /home/username/file_of_zeros.bin
One of the advantages of using a live Linux distribution for network image backups is:
(1) You can use 100Mbps network speed if available and your card supports this.
(2) Linux ide kernel supports DMA acceleration which speeds up hard drive access.
(3) Because the 'dd' backup is a raw backup tool, you can grab any type of disk partition, including future filesystems that have not been invented yet like EXT5, Microsoft Windows 2012 NTFS7, reiserFS 6.0, etc. Tools like "Ghost" or "DriveImage" or "partimage" that learn the filesystem type and only copy the in-use sectors quickly become obsolete beause the filesystem types change with every next generation OS and they are incompatible with future filesystems.
These features are not always true for the old MSDOS based imaging utility programs.
On a lowly 10Mbps network, with compression I was able to back up a 3GB partition (full) in about 25 minutes.
Posted by ke4nt1 on July 23 2004,05:37
cbagger.....Wow !!
Everytime you explain things in detail like your last post, it truly feeds my head.
The " file_of_zeros.bin" would be exceptionally useful for old hard drives that
will find new homes in others boxes and systems. I can't tell you the number of
hard drives I have purchased, either loose or in a machine, that are full of stuff.
I choose to at least format the drive, but who am I foolin, my grandma?
Your list of advantages to using a linux liveCD for network backups is
some powerful medicine.. Where can I locate more details on these methods ?
I have many systems on several networks, which I am responsible for keeping
intact, bug free, and archived. ( I know,.. rotsa ruck )
I have been backing up data over 100baseT to DVD-R.
Bare metal backups only locally direct-to-DVD-R - no network capability.
Very few packages will do this natively.
Most require some third party "packet writer" plugin or UDF filesystem app. ........."yuck"..........
I also backup audio/video CD/DAT/DVD masters and data to DLT, mostly
for pressing/replication masters, but again, no bare metal backups....
Got any ideas for taking the ideas from your last post, and being able to
get from backup to bare metal for full restores? ( or visa-versa? )
Of course, these are mostly NTFS/winXP/win2K systems with large drives
for editing and producing multimedia, DVD content, and Music CD masters.
73 de Kent
ke4nt
Posted by cbagger01 on July 23 2004,12:00
If you are going to do a RAW backup of a Windows NTFS partition, you should do the equivalent of the "file of zeros" trick on this drive. Since you can't write to an NTFS partition with the standard Linux NTFS driver, you should use a command line utility like "zapfree" to do this from the computer while it is booted up under Windows. See this link for details:< http://www.virweb.com/wintools.htm >
If you wish to break your image backups into manageable chunks, you can pipe the output through the "split" utility.
See the following example of backing up a TIVO hard disk in Linux for more details:
< http://tivo.samba.org/index.cgi?req=edit&file=faq02.018.htp >
If you want to be able to restore your backups directly from the DVD drive (no networks), all of the files need to be saved to a temporary hard drive location so that they can be "cat"-ed back together into one file.
However, if you don't use gzip compression you can restore them directly from the DVD or CD drive one at a time with a sequence of commands that work something like this:
cat /mnt/cdrom/file.aa | dd of=/dev/hda count=650M
<removes first disk and inserts second disk and mounts it>
cat /mnt/cdrom/file.ab | dd of=/dev/hda count=650M skip=650M
< removes second disk and inserts third disk and mounts it>
cat /mnt/cdrom/file.ac | dd of=/dev/hda count=650M skip=1300M
etc...
I probably am giving you a bad example of the syntax of the "dd" command, but you should get the general idea that I am trying to convey. I don't remember if you can specify the dd size and the dd skip commands with human readable values like "650M" but the overall concept is still valid.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: If you are restoring a Windows computer that is part of a corporate WINDOWS NT DOMAIN and the image backup is old, you will need to get the PC to rejoin the domain. This is true regardless of the image backup program (Ghost, Driveimage, Partimage, 'dd' command, etc).
Posted by hasty on July 23 2004,19:18
Chris As an addendum have a look for a free CD called the ultimate boot disk at < http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ >
This has a load of hard disk utilities from the major hard driver makers allowing you to test format/low level format etc., as well a lots of other file stuff. Saved my bacon on a number of occasions when things didn't go according to plan (eg neither linux or win would look at a drive).
hth.
Posted by clivesay on July 27 2004,17:47
Hasty - That looks like a great CD utility to have available!
Thanks
Chris
Posted by AwPhuch on July 27 2004,18:47
Absolutely it is....nothing better out there Brian
AwPhuch