Ghost Solution Suite

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  • 1.  Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 27, 2012 08:57 AM

    Does anyone know how to disable spanning in GSS 2.5?  I have read just about every article that references spanning/splitting and none have worked for me.  I have already tried entering in the -split=0 and I receive and invalid value error; GSS says that I must enter a value from 1-some other number.  I have unchecked spanning in the gui and that has not worked.

    I am capturing and image of a windows 7 x64 machine and the Ghostcast server is running on Windows 7 x64 as well.  The image is going to a harddrive that is formattted as NTFS so this should not be a problem (if I am correct).

    Here is the START.BAT file I am using... where and what do I add?

     

     

    START.BAT:
    @echo off
    set path=%path%;x:\ghost
    x:
    cd \ghost
    rem --- This will create primary OS drive configuration ---
    ghost32.exe /setosdrives /blind >> x:\ghost\startlog.txt
     
    Rem This will start Ghost, attach to Ghostcast session vbs2 and clone to drive one.
    start /wait ghost32.exe 
    Rem After the client finishes imaging Ghostwalker will start and change the SID.
    start ghwalk32.exe /sure
     
    Rem Then the batch file pauses so the boot media can be removed before rebooting. 
    echo Press enter to reboot or Ctrl+C to exit to command prompt.
    echo If present remove Ghost boot CD of boot device before continuing.
    Pause
    wpeutil reboot.


  • 2.  RE: Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 27, 2012 11:57 AM

    Use the -split=0 switch along with ghost32

    i.e., like below

    start /wait ghost32.exe -split=0
     
    In the above mentioned batch file the remark states , "This will start Ghost, attach to Ghostcast session vbs2 and clone to drive one".
    Are you automating the process with additional switches , which you havent mentioned ?


  • 3.  RE: Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 27, 2012 12:46 PM

    The start.bat file was an old one... here is the current one:

     

     

    START.BAT:
    @echo off
    set path=%path%;x:\ghost
    x:
    cd \ghost
    rem --- This will create primary OS drive configuration ---
    ghost32.exe /setosdrives /blind >> x:\ghost\startlog.txt
     
    Rem This will start Ghost
    start /wait ghost32.exe 
    Rem After the client finishes imaging Ghostwalker will start
    start ghwalk32.exe
     
     
    I am not sure if you saw my initial statement but in GSS 2.5 the "-split=0" throws an invalid value error.  I am not sure what would cause this either since all the documentation I have seen says this is the command to disable spanning...??


  • 4.  RE: Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 27, 2012 01:35 PM

    Since you are running under DOS, there will be an automatic split at 2Gb regardless of what you have set, and regardless of the filesystem you are connecting to, as DOS cannot create a file greater than 2Gb.

    If you want to create ghost files greater than 2Gb, you will need to use WinPE as your boot environment instead of DOS. This natively supports NTFS file partitions and does not have the 2Gb file size limitation.



  • 5.  RE: Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 27, 2012 02:18 PM

    I am running WinPE.  My boot environment that I have created was made with WinPE 512.



  • 6.  RE: Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 27, 2012 03:37 PM

    What networking protocol are you using between the booted machine and the Ghost server?  

    The real test is to stick an NTFS USB drive onto the machine you are trying to clone and image to the local drive. If that works without spanning, but you cannot do the same to a network share, then the most likely reason is that the network protocol is not allowing the NIC client to establish the capabilities of the target file  system and therefore it is defaulting to 2Gb spans.

    If you can create a local image on a USB hard disk that is greater than 2Gb then try uploading the file to your Ghost server from the USB drive and see if you can restore an image from the server.

    By the way, the sid changer utility does not work on Windows 7. Sysprep is the only way to change SIDs on Windows 7. 



  • 7.  RE: Disable Spanning

    Posted Jun 28, 2012 02:13 AM

    Hi,

    If you are creating image over network ghost will by default create image with span size of 2GB, even though you had passed -split=0 it will not work in this scenario. In this scenario you can create image over local NTFS partition or as EDT suggested you can stick to NTFS USB drive.

    Thanks