[KLUG Members] Re: drive ghosting -- RedHat "bootnet" disk, afio/cpio, etc...

[Bryan J. Smith]

Bruce Smith wrote:
> do you tar each partition to a file?  Then later do you
> create the file and then untar the tarball to it?

Er, tar ... yuck!  Especially if you compress.  I like the
cpio-compatible "afio" utility, because it does per-file compression
inside the archive (much more recoverable after an error). 
Compressed tar and cpio don't.

> Depends on what I'm doing.  You can tar each partition to
> a file, a tape, or put it on a CDR or other removable media
> of the required size.

Mondo Rescue anyone?  It uses afio.

> (cd /home; tar clpf - .) | (cd /mnt/backhome; tar xpf -)
> (cd /; tar clpf - .) | (cd /mnt/backup; tar xpf -)

I believe find|cpio using cpio's "pass thru" (-p) operation is
faster.  E.g.:

  cd /srcfs
  find . -depth -mount -print | cpio -pmdv /dstfs

> I guess I would need a linux boot diskette for  that right?

RedHat "bootnet" works great for me.

I create the partitions at the "fdisk" menu (select "Custom"
install), switch to the virtual console with Alt-F2, mount the
partitions under /newroot, connect to the NFS server and find|cpio
as necessary.

When done I "chroot /bootnet", edit /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf
and then run /sbin/lilo to install it.  Don't forget to type "exit"
to exit the chroot and umount all the partitions _before_
rebooting.  We want a "clean" filesystem.  ;-P

-- Bryan

-- 
Bryan J. Smith, Engineer        mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org   
AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.     http://www.linux-wlan.org
SmithConcepts, Inc.          http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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