[ltp] One More Question: Drivelink

[unlisted]

On Mon, 2002-08-05 at 09:09, Tino Keitel wrote:
<snip>
> > 	1) We've got more than just Linux here in the office.  The business folks 
> > need Windows, the tech folks need Linux and our job is building a device that 
> > runs NetBSD.  Luckily, we run NetBSD under VMWare, so I don't have to worry 
> > about that one.  Good thing, too - try to find *ANY* disk-management software 
> > that supports ffs filesystems!
> 
> Have you tried partimage? It should support ext2, reiser, FAT16/32 and
> NTFS. However, I don't know if it features a restore over the network
> to a clean hard drive.

knoppix <http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html>, a live-cd based
on debian, contains partimage and partimage-server (listed here
<http://download.linuxtag.org/knoppix/packages.txt>).  knoppix runs
completely from cd and doesn't touch your harddrive (though you can
override that and have it put a swap file on a dos partition, etc, but i
digress).  so, this combo (knoppix w/ partimage) might work.

the previous version of knoppix (beta) did pretty good at autodetecting
my workstation at work (dual processor, scsi hard drive, usb cd-rw)
which i tried it on just out of curiousity.  didn't ever think (or need)
to try it here on my thinkpad.

i don't know about partimage support as all i've used it for is backing
up a windows 98 installation, but i believe through the newer partimage
server-client setup that it supports network transfers.  or even more
simply, you should be able to use knoppix to access/mount windows shares
where you could have the image stored.  for my experience: on my
thinkpad it's strictly linux except for a fat16 partition that contains
command.com, ps2.exe, and the hibernation file.  when i take my laptop
in to tech support (or just for my own testing/verification) i replace
the fat16 partition with a fat32 partition with windows 98.  the
partition is around 340 MB (to account for my 320 MB of ram).  i just
switch out partitions, change the partition type in the mbr (or
something like that; can't remember specifically, but there was/is a
small step in there), and that's it.  i can even change grub to only
boot that partition (so tech support doesn't hurt their heads trying to
figure out what to do at a linux login prompt ;-).

honestly, i don't know if the above will be practical in this scenario,
where you'll have to become familiar with knoppix and partimage.  time
is money and it might just be cheaper to buy software/hardware to do it
for you.  but, if you are doing this a lot (overhead of learning spread
across many installs/relocations), then this might be worth it, or for
someone who has the free time or interest to just try this out.

hope this helps (someone).


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