Do we have any cloning software for Linux platform?

[sasj0e]

Hi,
I need to setup a server,which contains several images of different Operating systems.I found Ghost software to clone and put the image of the MS windows image into a file.But the same doesnt work for Linux environment.Do we have any kind of software,that would do this work?
Please help me out in this,
Thanks in advance,
Sathya

 

[hads]

I don't know of any sofware but...

If you create the partitions on the new disk you can copy linux to fairly easily using:

tar cpfl - /dir | tar xvpf - -C /mnt/point

Where /dir is the directory to copy and /mount/point is the mount point of the new partition you wish to copy to.

You will also need to install the boot loader to the MBR of the new disk if you intend to boot from it.

You could replace /dir with / to copy the entire installation but this will also copy /proc etc. and asumes you have a single partition.

I presume that you could create a tarball of the system instead of copying it to a new drive if you like but I have never done so.

I believe rsync can do this aswell.

You could script the whole process if you were doing multiple indentical installations.

Hope this helps.
01101000011000010110010001110011

 

[sasj0e]

I didnt get,how to make tarball could you please elobarate a bit?I am new to Linux so need some guidance in this regard.
My requirement is like this:
I need to install a RH linux OS in a system.Then keep the image of the OS for further installations on different machines of same make.I do not want to keep installing the OS everytime for every machine.In windows,we have certain software,that make an exact copy of the original HDD.Can this facility be implemented in Linux also?If not pls suggest me on this.
Regards,
Sathya

 

[hads]

There's a typo in my earlier post.

tar cpfl - /dir | tar xvpf - -C /mnt/point

should be:

tar cplf - /dir | tar xvpf - -C /mnt/point

Anyway, If the drives have the same geometry you could use dd to copy them:

dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hda bs=???k

Where ???k is the drives cache.

I haven't done this.

Or, if you would like to create a tarball for later extraction you would do it in two stages like so.

# Create the tarball
tar -cpvlf os.tar /

# Extract the tarball onto the mounted new drive
tar -xvpf os.tar -C /mnt/newdrive

You would then need to delete /mnt/newdrive/proc/* and install a boot loader into the MBR of the drive.

Keep in mind that this will only work with one partition (the l switch will stop tar traversing patitions you may be able to omitt this but I haven't tried with multiple partitions)

Oh... and you would need to change the hostname of the new box too.

I think this should work, I usually do it individually for each root dir but that wouldn't be very fun for lots of installs.

Someone please let me know if this has any errors or there is a better way.
01101000011000010110010001110011

 

[sonofepson]

There is a unix ghost type program called g4u (ghost for unix) that you could use, it is located here:

http://rfhs8012.fh-regensburg.de/~feyrer/g4u/

 

[fluid11]

You can clone Linux machines with Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition 7.5 using Ghostcaster. With Ghostscaster, you boot from a floppy and connect to the machine that is running Ghostcaster. You then select to image an entire hard drive or partition and send the image up to the Ghostcaster machine. Since its cloning an entire disk and is booting from a floppy, the OS its running shouldn't matter.

http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/products.cfm?ProductID=3

*I haven't used Ghost CE75 to clone any Linux machines yet since I just got it (only Windows so far), but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Ghost 7.5 also includes support for Linux EXT3 partitions, so I'm sure that its designed to allow you to clone *nix machines as well as Windows.

ChrisP