On Monday 14 February 2005 16:44, Raphael Melo wrote: > same, I want to install it in one, and then just copy the image of it > to all the others. Yet, I do not know any tool besides Norton Ghost > and we don't have the license for it. > So, I'd appreciate if anyone had any suggestions of open source > programs that do the same task as it does. It's very easy to make an image of a harddisk (full harddisk incl. bootsector or a single partition, or a CD, ...) because Linux (and any other UNIX OS) is mapping devices as device files located in the special directory '/dev'. Advanced Linux users can use the simple but powerfull command 'dd' (data duplicator) for this purpose.
For example I make images of my Windows XP installations on my first harddisk at partition 2 with the following command: dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/home/backups/winxp.image bs=8M compressed alternative: dd if=/dev/hda2 bs=8M | gzip -c > /home/backups/winxp.image.gz Reinstalling (rescue) with the command dd if=/home/backups/winxp.image of=/dev/hda2 bs=8M or zcat /home/backups/winxp.image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda2 bs=8M In the case of many computers you have to access this images of a network or a external drive / DVD, of course. When you are looking for a nice graphical program which can be used by everyone without Linux/Unix skills forget this idea. Greetings Martin -- [email protected] mailing list
