Clone workstations help
 

Can some one dumb down the process of cloning a workstation.

I have a working workstation that I want a image of and I have a server to put the image on then I want to take that image and apply to two other work stations....

trying to use the dd command but I was unsuccessful.

Perhaps if you told us what version/distro of Linux you're using, what you actually did, and what the results were, we could help. Just saying "tried the dd command, and was unsuccessful", tells us nothing.

You may want to check out mondoarchive, systemimager, and mkcdrec.

Requirements:

Bootable Linux CD or OS that has dhcpcd, coreutils, and ftp. Could simply issue static ip's.

A FTP Server (with a valid username and password). Lots of free disk space.
Warning: This is relatively safe if used correctly. I accept no responsibility for damage to your system!

Step 1. Boot your system using the bootable CD or go to command line.

Step 2. Verify your system is on the network. # ifconfig

Step 3. Connect to your FTP server and upload the image. # ftp 10.131.8.102 Connected to 10.131.8.102 (10.131.8.102). Name : install Password: XXXXXXXXXX 230 Login successful. Using binary mode to transfer files.


ftp> put |"dd if=/dev/hda bs=1M|gzip -1" diskimage.gz


gzip can be from 1 to 9 or left off. It is the compression. Older computers 1-3 maybe. Average 3-7 and faster processors 7-9


Now you just wait for the image to finish processing. This could take some time depending on the speed of you CPU, disk, or network.

Then reverse the process.


There also clonezilla and redobackup and g4u and others like backula that may work.

Well the server option is not working for me so I went and put the hard drive I want to clone into a working linux box. The slave hard drive is showing as /dev/sdb in the hardware but fdisk cannot write to it.... i tried dd=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb and that did not work. The i tried cp /dev/sda /dev/sdb and I have

Current sdb : sense key Medium error
additional sense : format command failed
end_request: I/O error , dev sdb , sector #######
scsi 0: error on channel 0, id 2, lun 0, cdb: write ########

I tried fdisk /dev/sdb but i get Buffer I/O error.

Pages seem to suggest a drive or controller going bad or maybe a terminator issue if I assume scsi.

Drive was bad. Thank you. Got a new one and now I am good 2 go