Ghost Solution Suite

Hi All,

I was wondering if anybody has any information/ recommendations for imaging Ubunto on to up to 50 client machines?

The hard drives that are in the machines are 320Gb but the image is only around 20Gb.

As i understand, as this is a Linux based OS and doesn't use Windows partitioning, we would have to do a 100% of disk copy. Is this correct?

If so, then i imagine this would take an extremely long time to image and the turnaround time is not very long at all.

Can anyone suggest another way other than creating the image on a smaller HDD?

If anyone can help asap, i'd be very grateful!

Many thanks in advance,

Mark

Are you looking for solutions based specifically on Ghost?  If so, what version?

This tech note may help: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH130961&locale=en_US

Look for the -IAL switch.

No doubt there are many Linux based imaging utilities that can be had for free - have you asked in any Linux forums or googled?

Hi EdT,

Thanks for getting back to me. I checked the link you posted and saw found the -IAL switch.

"Forces a sector-by-sector copy of Linux partitions. Other partitions are copied normally".

Does this mean that it would still have to copy the whole contents of the disk?

We are using Ghost 11.5 to image for an instructor led lab. The instructor will be bringing the main image with them, so i am unable to test beforehand unfortunately.

This is why i want to find out the best option that will take the least amount of time to complete.

That's a good point about trying other utilities though, i'll also try in there.

If you have any other recommendations/ suggestions i'd be very grateful

Thanks,

Mark

I have not worked on Ubuntu so cannot give you specific advice. On the other hand, you could consider installing Ubuntu onto a test system or in a VM and then try imaging it.

Alternatively, if the Instructor is bringing the main image with him/her, why not ask the instructor how they plan to install the image?  Presumably they will be bringing a Ghost image otherwise you are wasting your time planning to use Ghost yourselves. If they are bringing the image in another format, then they should be the ones to bring their imaging utility along and also specify what they need already installed (if anything) on your lab systems.