Just the few last things
Forum: HD Install
Topic: Just the few last things
started by: Daxziz
Posted by Daxziz on Mar. 03 2005,13:20
Okay.. I've successfully installed, tweaked and finished my DSL system. Removed and added icons, installed GRUB instead of LILO and all such things... last mostly because I like GRUB better.Anyway I got 2 problems and some of your guys input is really needed here.
The small thing first.
1. Is it, and if so.. how, possible to install a custom bootscreen which is displayed instead of all the boot text with "configuring devices" and all of that before and after.
I've never done this before, so I'm totally blank here. I need to make a bootscreen which displays the company's logo instead and add.
2. The worst problem however is this: I can't make a ghost ( Norton Ghost 7.5 ) of the harddisk. If I used LILO I got the L 99 99 99 99 thing and after I switched to GRUB, it simply boots and displays "GRUB" and then stops.
HOW do I make a working image of my DSL setup.. do I need another utility than Norton Ghost ? Is G4U better for this ?
Sincerly
-Daxziz
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 03 2005,21:55
1.Search google for KNOPPIX AND SPLASH
2.
Use RAW image backup for Ghost. I don't know if 7.5 supports this. Ghost 2000PE does. G4U will also work but if I remember correctly it needs a G4U image server to work.
Posted by - on Mar. 03 2005,22:31
Will do that for the bootscreen. Thx.I thought about RAW for Ghost too, but I couldn't find an option in either 7.5 or 2003 for RAW. Any help here ?
I tried G4U - made the floppies and booted. After second floppy was initialized ( or whatever to call it ) it died in a fatal error. I think it wrote something with Trap 6. I guess it by all means rules G4U out.
-Daxziz
Posted by Daxziz on Mar. 03 2005,22:45
Ars forgot to login before Anyway... after searching google with those 2 keywords I stumbled across this:
| Quote |
| The file logo.16 is located on the boot floppy image (/KNOPPIX/boot.img) on the Knoppix CD. The file format is lss, a special format readable by the Syslinux bootloader. Two conversion tools (lss16toppm, ppmtolss16) exist on the CD to convert from/to the more popular ppm format. Note that the image can have only 16 different colors and has to be 640x480 or smaller. The lss format is compressed (runlength encoded). |
Now I once did make a small "banner" like image in another custom Linux edit, but I thought it was just an image which was shown to begin with, but would later on be replaced when the boottext flushed down the screen.
Will this be the way to add a bootscreen which hides the boottext ?
-Daxziz
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 04 2005,13:13
No.That is the initial boot screen, not the splash screen.
Maybe a better search term would be
knoppix AND splash AND screen.
FYI,
You can use DSL to do your image backups. Something like this:
< http://www.sysdesign.ca/guides/partitions.html >
Posted by Daxziz on Mar. 08 2005,11:50
Right I thought as much as I was in the wrong direction regarding the splash screen.Anyway.. I tried using G4L and that gave me the exact same problem as Norton Ghost gives me.
Now I'm so far that I can do a copy of the harddisk including MBR and all that, but when it boots, it makes a Kernel Panic because it can't mount the disk at hdc1. I saw that it had been renamed to hda1 after Norton and tought I could play smart and made a new boot entry in GRUB where I set it to boot from hda instead. This sorta works actually, but it gives me an error saying that the sector is incorrect or damaged and that I should run a fsck or e2fsck - doing so passes everything and I can actually start X or an X application from command line, but rebooting brings me to the exact same problem with running fsck.
I'm of the belief right now that if only I could fix the new hda install which I've ghosted over from the hdc1 computer, and remove the unneeded stuff like the entry which goes to hdc1 in GRUB for in the end making a new Ghost Image of this harddrive, Norton would not name the harddrive different and the partitions would stay the same so even if Norton renamed'em to the same, DSL would still be able to boot next time since it would be the same.
Am I smoking something or could this workout ?
It's quite a problem making it the dd way for me
No extra harddrive and nowhere exactly to put it 'cept a share on a 2k server... and then.. how would one restore it to the new computer in a fast way ?-Daxziz
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 09 2005,03:07
I don't really understand what your issue is with booting, but I can answer the last question.You CAN store an image on a Win2K server. Just install the samba package and mount the MSWindows network share and then "dd" your image file over to that location.
Restoration is the reverse of the installation... Boot from the DSL livecd and then "dd" your image back to the new computer's hard drive.
With a 100Mbit network, it should go pretty fast provided that
(1) Your partition isn't too big
(2) You use "gzip -1" or "gzip -2" compression to shrink the image file.
(3) You zero out the unused space on your partition by creating a big file full of zeros and then delete this file. For a linux or vFAT partition, you can use "dd" or "cat" to do this. For an NTFS partition, boot into Windows and download and install a utility like "zapfree" to zero out your unused disk space.
Keep in mind that two EXACT cloned computers on the same network can cause problems like duplicate machine names and duplicate Windows IDs that must be overcome by the knowledgable sysadmin.
Good Luck.
Posted by Daxziz on Mar. 10 2005,09:33
The idea is great but sadly I have some issues regarding this too.. perhaps it's best that I tell you what computers I'm actually working with here.It's all Pentium 166 MHz machines, 32-64 MB RAM and all 2 GB HD. Around 3 actually has a CD-Rom drive, the rest ( around 50 ) doesn't.
The system I've currently build up is based on one of those with a CD-Rom drive ( of course ). This computers harddisk has then been ghosted / imaged by using Nortons RAW function for drive copying. This also works when the target machine recieves the image EXCEPT that the partitions are renamed... this is where I said that the source machine has hdc1 as the partition and the target machine gets hda1. It's clear when the 2 systems boot that the partitions are NOT the same.
So if I could just find a way to setup the system so when it is ghosted, it is ghosted right. Sadly this doesn't seems be that easy or possible. When I say easy I think easy like ghosting a Windows harddisk.
So my problem with dd'ing the system from the source to a server, like you suggested, is not a problem... the problem comes when I have to ghost one of the machines which doesn't have a CD-Drive to boot DSL with
I've been playing with the idea of copying the DSL CD onto the server and then start the CD over the server with a bootfloppy or something from the target machine. With a little playing, I should be able to write an extra part of the installer script so it copies some modified files over to the HD AFTER it has made the actual DSL install. But it seems a little heavy to do this IMO.
Suggestions are very welcome.
-Daxziz
Posted by aveline on Mar. 10 2005,10:08
try QParted I think its called ... it has a utility called PartImage that will make an image file of your partition itself.aveline
Posted by Daxziz on Mar. 10 2005,11:33
Right 
I'll download Knoppix and see if I can drag use of its version of this utility. If it works I'll have to find a solution for the computers without CD-Drives :SThx everybody for trying to help me out on this
-Daxziz
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 11 2005,03:34
I don't know if you will like it, but there is an ugly solution for computers without CDROM drives.1) Boot with tomsrtbt or with the native os. FYI, with tomsrtbt floppy, you can boot linux, connect to the network AND "dd" over your hard drive image so you don't even need to use DSL or a CDROM drive. However it is harder to configure tomsrtbt because it doesn't have the KNOPPIX autodetection feature.
2) Copy the \knoppix\knoppix folder using a network connection and place both the folder and the file inside /dev/hda1 or in C:\
3) Create a DSL boot floppy.
4) Boot the machine with the boot floppy.
5) Use dd to clone your partition.
Another option is to pull the hard drive and temporarily insert it into a computer with a CDROM drive and do the cloning and then put it back in the original computer, OR you can temporarily hook up your CDROM drive to the computer and use it to boot DSL.
Posted by Daxziz on Mar. 11 2005,11:26
Actually I think I managed to get it working with Norton ( also made around 10-15 attemps if not more ).What I did was to create a new prototype computer. Boot in DSL and use cfdisk to create 2 partitions - a 82 and a 83. The last was at 200 MB the rest was configured for.. well.. swap of course. Thus I used the entire disk like this.
Then I made all teh mkswap stuff on hda1 and finally installed DSL on hda2.
Now by doing this ( which is also descriped somewhere here ), I got the hda drive instead of hdc which is where Norton normally screwed up. I made the modifications to the system ( copied files from the old prototype ) and finally rebooted the system to secure that it worked.
After having comfirmed it worked, I used Norton Ghost 2003 with the -id ( Image Disk ) switch to grap a copy of the entire harddrive including bootsectors and all.
Only difference is that I made lilo be the bootloader instead of GRUB which I normally tend to use.
Anyway I just ghosted two of the computers which only features a floppy drive with the image over network and they booted just perfect
Now all I really need to get is these few things.
Get a splashscreen - I sorta got stuck last I tried.
Possible hide some of the boottext.. isn't theresomething with console=ttyl2 or something ?
Thx for everybodies input
-Daxziz