A Very quick and easy way to setup Dozens of PCs or nodes...

[Joel Jaeggli]

normally I just buy all the same disks, build one and use dd to dupe the
raw device to all the others...

joelja

On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Christopher Snyder wrote:

> Hey there,
> 
> A great product I use for quick duplication of PC setups is called GHOST.
> 
> http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/index.html
> 
> Trial Copy of Ghost:
> 
> http://shop.symantec.com/cgi-bin/trialware/Core/Core.pl?SECTION=Norton+Ghost&subsite=na&MODE=1&KDATA=KKKK
> 
> If you have questions, Ghost Knowledge Base:
> 
> http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/ghost/kbase_ghost.html 
> 
> Ghost builds a compressed image of a Hard Drive, sector by sector, at very fast speeds.
> 
> The compression doesn't work for Unix / Linux though...this will slow you down a bit - maybe all of you guys and gals could e-mail Norton and ask them to work on the compression for Linux!!!  [PLEASE!]
> 
> PC builds in a few Simple steps: 
> 
> 1.  You create one Node, then shutdown, 
> 
> 2.  Reboot with a Network DOS disk,
> 
> 3.  Run ghost to copy the whole hard drive into a compressed file, Done!
> 
> To use the new Ghost drive image:
> 
> 1.  Get a node with the SAME hardware configuration as the first node,
> 
> 2.  Boot with the network DOS disk,
> 
> 3.  Run ghost to copy Down the whole hard drive, just one PC or multicast to many PCs at once.
> 
> 4.  Boot each new Node and reconfigure IP address, name, etc other unique items as needed.
> 
> Very Fast, Very easy.
> 
> I currently use it in plain old office configurations, saving hours of time for each PC.
> 
> Currently, I can install a (end user) Windows NT, Office Pro, Netscape, and several supporting Mainframe utilities in about 4:40 (minutes, seconds) - it seems faster than the first reboot of NT (zzzz - slow - zzzz)
> 
> So I thought, hey, could this be helpful for beowulf nodes?
> 
> I asked the question: Can I use Ghost for Linux?
> 
> And this is the Official answer from Symantec:
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> GHOST will copy or transfer most derivitives of UNIX, such as Linux, on a sector-by-sector copy basis. For this purpose, you would not have the option of compression when creating an image file that contains a Linux partition, nor would GHOST allow you to resize the Linux partition/drive onto a new larger or smaller drive. [use same hardware config for each node]The destination drive would have to be the same size or larger, and when transfering to a larger drive, the Linux partition would be the same size on the destination as it was on the original.
> 
> However, if the source drive also has a partition that is formatted as FAT16/32, then GHOST would transfer the Linux partition as its original size, but then have the option of resizing the FAT partition(s) to fit the newer, larger drive.
> 
> For sector-by-sector copies, there are three related switches to be used when starting GHOST, or in GHOST command lines:
> 
> -IA = tells GHOST to do a sector by sector copy of the disk area
> 
> -IB = tells GHOST to do a sector by sector copy of the boot track ONLY (good for boot managers)
> 
> -ID = Tells GHOST to do a sector by sector copy of the disk area AND the boot track (-IA + -IB, in effect)
> 
> There are further explanations in the WHATSNEW.TXT and SWITCHES.TXT file for these switches and other GHOST switches.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, I have found this VERY useful, and have used it at various locations for dozens upon dozens of PCs.
> 
> Each configuration is exactly the same, and if a hard drive blows, just drop in a new drive and ghost down a new image onto it....  (there are other products that can do the same thing, but Ghost works the best and fastest for me.)
> 
> I am just learning Beowulf so I add in what I can, so...
> 
> Please let me know if you try Ghost and find it helpful! 
> 
> - Christopher Snyder,  University of Pittsburgh, PA , USA
> 
> 
> 
> 

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Joel Jaeggli				       joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu    
Academic User Services			     consult@gladstone.uoregon.edu
     PGP Key Fingerprint: 1DE9 8FCA 51FB 4195 B42A 9C32 A30D 121E
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the right, 1843.