So I think I've seen every page on the internet trying to solve this problem. (or at least it feels that way ;-)

I'm creating a Ubuntu/Xubuntu network of computers. My 2 image machines (1 for Ubuntu, 1 for Xubuntu) are both using ext3 filesystems, with 2 partitions (HDA0 = Swap, HDA1 = Linux) with varying size hard drives.

I would like to make an image I can push onto other machines. I would prefer it to be an all-in-one program, but we all know how that goes.

DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A PROGRAM THAT DOES THIS? I don't need anything extravagant. Just to do the job.


THANKS!!!!!!!

We've used Disk Image to image our Red Hat servers. Imaged and restored servers. You must use the same basic hardware for this to work, but I believe that is the case with all the imaging software.
Here is a link to there website: http://www.disk-image.net/

Edit to add:
After using Disk Image and realizing that we had many variations of Dell hardware, we opted for using scripted Kick Start network installs.

I used PartImage to create images a couple of times and was quite happy with it.

I've used PartImage with no great sucess. I might be using something. Do you have any HowTo or walkthrough for it?

And the disk-image you mention looks good. But the problem is with budget cuts I can't purchase anything. :/ We have altiris, but apparently we need Symantec Ghost to be able to image linux. Which OF COURSE, costs.

Sorry, should've added in the original that I need something free.

At work I deal with one system that has about 70 PCs, all running the same image. They boot up and look at their own MAC address to figure out what to do, pretty neat.

It was put together by some top dogs, and here are some ideas about how they set it up:

Backup (put tarball of image on remote drive)
tar -C / --exclude=./proc --exclude=./sys --one-file-system -czf - . boot | | ssh user@repository_server cat > /pathto/image.tar.gz

Restore (boot Knoppix and set your IP address first)
First they wiped out the MBR, set up partitions using parted and mounted them.
ssh user@repository_server "cat /pathto/image.tar.gz" | tar -C /mnt -xzf -
Then they used grub-install to sort out the bootloader.

This isn't a recipe that you can apply without some tweaking and testing, but it's an incredible demo of the power of shell scripting.

clonezilla - Open Source - Complete solution..

Acronis True image - Commercial Solution