Looking for a 'snapshot' programme, similar to InstallRite for Windows
 

Hello everyone,

I'm new here, but I've used your forum numerous times to find a solution for problems I've faced with using Linux. It's great that there are people that take the time to help others. Maybe you could give me some advice considering the following:

As a system builder, I would like to give customers an alternative to Windoze. I've used several distro's of linux for some time now and learned that when I pre-configure them properly, non-linux users and people that only know how to use their (micro$oft-based)computer for word processing/e-mailing, were able to start using Linux without problems. Modifications included simple things like setting the standard open office file format to Microsoft Word format (so they could open/save documents that their family/collegues could read) and more advanced settings like driver installations and changing window-managers.

Anyway, to get to the point:

For Windows-installations, I use a programme called InstallRite to install standard software and make changes in settings. (check out their website here: http://www.epsilonsquared.com/) It's a brilliant freeware programme that takes a 'snapshot' of the windows registry and all files on the harddisk before the installation of a certain programme and then does thesame afterwards. All the differences in file/registry settings are saved in a self-executable file that needs one click to install everything. Using this, I make custom pre-installations for Windows.

Now I was wondering if someone knows a comparable programme for Linux.
It would really make stuff easier for me, since I'm now spending several hours of setting up linux and installing packages.

Thanks for your suggestions!

Cheers,

Roy

I reckon you could always take a snapshot of the linux filesystem using either dd, partimage or plain tar. I tar my system and pipe the tarred file thru bzip2 to compress it a much smaller portable size so i can burn to a cd and transfer it to another pc and untar it on another system. This has one potential problem in that you may have to fix permissions afterwards if you're changing the default user and hostnames. Otherwise if you're setting them up with a standard hostname and username, then you're pretty much done. Any changed file you make after tarring the system can be added to the tar file and updated either with an archive tool like file-roller or using the command line. See man tar in a terminal/console for details.

You can untar to different filesystems as well, however with dd or partimage you'll most likely be stuck with the filesystem that you imaged with those tools.

HTH,

Titetanium

Thank you for your comment titetanium, but I think I wasn't clear enough on what I wanted to use it.

For instance, when someone wants (ie.) openoffice installed on their system. For this example, let's say it's not included in the distro. I would first make a snapshot before the installation, then apt-get install openoffice, make shortcuts on the desktop, change some settings in the programme itself. After that I make another snapshot to gather the files and settings that were changed during the installation/changing settings process. I'd then like to save all these files and settings in something like a self installing file (like a .deb package or something) which I can put on a memory stick/CD, so that when the user wants openoffice installed, I'd just have to click the self-installing file and everything would be there how I've set it up to be.

I hope you got what I just typed, since it sounds confusing to me too:).

Anyway, thanks for the tip; the way you discribe the dd/tar process, it should be quite possible to list the changed/added files to an output file or something. Maybe it's possible to make some sort of script for it, which then automates the cp'ing of the files in the output list to a .deb file.. Too bad I'm not that much of a programmer:)

I know the kickstart tool can be (is) used to create identical Linux installs. Not sure if you can (ab)use it to just install 1 app, but it's worth looking into.

Hi Chrism01,

Thank you for your comment, I immediately checked it out. As far as I've seen now, it's pretty close to what I meant, but unfortunately it only works with installing an entire distro... If I got it right, it is indeed possible to select packages to install, but not to change settings.

Recently I found a programme that auto-installs non-free software for linux, like google earth and adobe reader. I can't remember where I found it, but it just needed one click to install the software and it changed settings automatically via a script, I recon. I'll try to find it, it was quite helpful to me.