[nycbug-talk] g4u

[pete wright]

On Aug 21, 2004, at 3:21 PM, Kevin Reiter wrote:
>
> Would that include all the backups of config files from a working 
> system,
> user accounts, etc., or is that more like a fresh install?  I've never 
> tried
> PXE so I don't know how it works (yet.)
>

one thing to think about would be using the cfengine 
(http://www.cfengine.org/) or something similar.  You can include the 
cfengine with your base RamDisk image that would be loaded via PXE.

> One of the reasons I mentioned partimage is because when I used g4u, 
> the
> image size was *huge* and I was looking for a different way to clone a 
> box
> in case of a major failure (for a quick restore) without having to 
> have a
> spare 19GB free in a directory somewhere.  Since partimage basically 
> ignores
> unused space on the drive, the image tends to be a lot smaller, and in 
> my
> case, able to fit on a CD.  For me, booting to a CD and having the 
> image
> restored is a lot simpler and a huge time saver.  If PXE can do that, 
> I'll
> give it a try..

not sure you want to use PXE to load that much data.  it can dole out a 
bootable system image.  to restore from there i'm not sure what you 
would do, i guess it depends on what your system layout is.  I like to 
use bacula or (even XFS dumps on linux/irix) for system restores 
because each provide fairly quick searchable restore procedures.

anyway thought i'd throw my 2bits in.

-p