[H-GEN] Ghost for Linux or *nix for that matter

[Russell Stuart]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
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On Thu, 2003-06-19 at 15:30, Ewan Edwards wrote:
> On Thursday 19 June 2003 01:32 am, pyrotek wrote:
> > Sorry to but into the Topic but on the subject of cloning machines, is
> > it possible in Linux to give a full set of drivers needed to work on
> > different systems but still be the same base image, What I am trying to
> > say is there a Linux = to Sysprep from windows?
> > OR am I on the wrong track here lol

I am not familiar with Sysprep, but I am guessing from your description
that it installs an image and then customises it to your target
machine.  If so, then this is a problem sysadmins have to solve over and
over again, and yes there are solutions for Linux.

The one that immediately comes to mind is something I wrote to do the
job after I conducted the same search as you are doing now and failed. 
So I wrote my own.  I have not formally released it as that would mean 
writing lot more documentation.  But you are welcome to try it out - the
documentation may suck but I can vouch for the support.

Of course, after writing it I immediately found other programs that try
to solve the same problem.  You might try looking here:

  http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai
  http://www.gnu.org/software/cfengine/cfengine.html
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/systemconfig

> I'm not aware of anything for Linux even remotely like Sysprep from Windows.    
> I suspect that such a tool is quite unnecessary due (I guess) to the 
> different OS architecture.  
> 
> In the past I've found that I could take the hdd out of one machine and stick 
> it into another quite different machine and it would still boot and run okay.  
> That even included booting a desktop box on a hdd from a laptop (with 
> suitable cable adaptor).  This is how I used to get ISOs downloaded at Humbug 
> onto my server at work.
> 
> Some caveats.
> 
> I only did this with Redhat 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2 running 'as installed' kernels.
> 
> This does not work putting the hdd from an Athlon based machine into an Intel 
> based machine.  I never tried the other way around, so I don't know.
> 
> I only ever ran the 'foreign' system at run level 3 (ie: no X).
> 
> You need to monitor the boot so that when kudzu finds different hardware 
> (network adaptor etc.), you can start the re-configure process.

Yes, this does work much better under Linux than it does under Windows. 
The kernel in particular has no difficulty adapting to any motherboard
you put it on.  Windows on the other hand tends to load various
motherboard drivers that freeze the OS when loaded on different
hardware.  The only sticking point for Linux is hardware it may need to
boot - such as a RAID driver.  But again I found the Linux way of doing
this - customising initrd, much easier to grok than the Windows way. 
And even here Linux tends to be nicer - modules will gracefully refuse
to load if they can't find the hardware they are meant to control.  

The Kudzu's of the world are nice, but are not strictly necessary for
the task at hand.  Usually you want a "silent install", meaning the user
doesn't get asked too many questions beyond "are you sure you want to
erase the hard disk on this machine".  Beyond that they get what IT
gives them - no questions asked.

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