Looks like you have some cd drive moveing to do. Althrough copying disk to
disk under linux can be done, its not going to be easy. You would have to do
a raw copy of the drive. This assumes the drives are all the same model.
First you have the problem of connecting them together by parallel. I tried
that, a plip needs you to recompile the kernal.
What you could do, if the drives are big enough, is to install from a fat
partition. That way you could use trusty interlink to connect them. I have
never dont that, but it can be done under some distros. Possibly mandrake.
The only catch is you might have to install windows along the way. I dont
know.
Final option: do they have network cards? ftp install?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kirby J. Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2000 8:13 PM
Subject: [newbie] Cloning Drives?
Has anyone had success in cloning Linux from one PC to another? I'm fairly
new to Linux so I definitely consider myself a "newbie"....
This is my situation... our private school had 8 identical IBM PC's donated
for the students and teachers. Seeing as we had the hardware but no software
(and no funds for the software) I decided that I would try to set up
Mandrake on the computers and let the teachers use Star Office for their
work.
The problem is that none of the computers came with CD-ROMs. I went out and
purchased an inexpensive internal drive and used it to set up one of the
eight machines like I wanted it and now I want to set up the other seven
machines.
Ideally, I would like to be able to set the other machines up without going
through the same process all over again (i.e., open the PC up, temporarily
attach the CD-ROM, etc.). I've attempted to use Norton Ghost 6.5 and use the
disk-to-disk copy via the parallel ports and the supplied null cable but it
doesn't seem to be working as I get an error message when I try to boot up
the "slave" PC.
Can I clone/copy over the hard drive via the parallel ports from within
Linux using "dd" or something?
Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
... Kirby
