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i have a request from everyone; like open source, a thousand heads are better than one.
i work in a lab with about 450-ish machines (down from about 600 a couple months ago). these systems are sent out on a loan basis for companies, events, etc. they are sent out for less than (typically) 30 days at a time. generally, when they come back i reimage them and make them all clean and happy for the next go.
we use corporate norton ghost 8.3 to handle all of our imaging (and ghostcast) currently. there are some investigating an alternative software, but that's what we have for now.
what i have embarked upon, and would like some ideas for, is building an automated recovery system for when these boxen are in the field. i have had some success, and have a working prototype. unfortunately, it's not quite what i'd like.
here's how it works now:
the system has 2 partitions on the drive. one is a fat32 partition running a minimal windows98-based DOS, ghost, and contains the image files. windows xp is installed on the second partition. i have set up windows' boot manager to handle the booting operations. right now it's set at a 3 second timeout to default to windows.
if a user/operator/whoever likes, they can boot into the automated recovery system. this is done from the boot manager, which boots into the minimal DOS install. then via the autoexec.bat, it directly loads ghost via command line, and immediately sets forth the reimage. once you select to boot into recovery mode, the only thing stopping the system from reimage is a single keystroke (pause in autoexec).
this works well, for the prototype. in under 5 minutes, the user has a completely fresh "factory" install.
as i said, this is not perfect. i have done a few things, like rename ghost files to be less conspicuous, make several files system files, and set windows to hide system files. this also means windows must be installed on a secondary partition, making the c: drive the 'recovery' drive; also not ideal.
here's the actual requirements we're looking at for such a system:
i have been investigating using a linux distro for this. ghost says it can read an ext2/3 file system... so i may be able to (if i can emulate properly) run it from linux. so far, this has not gone well. i have tested ghost briefly on rhel 4 as using DOSEMU, and ghost crashes in DOS due to a segment fault or somesuch. i have not investigated exactly why it is crashing.
another issue is the prototype system uses a standard ide drive. i chose this because of the lesser requirements for special drivers. we are phasing these systems out, most of our systems use the ich7/8 sata with raid 0 or 1. while a standard windows98-DOS boot cd will not see the hard drives, i have not tested to see if i can boot the 98-DOS and run ghost from the cd. it may have the drivers built in (there is no evidence so far that the ghost drivers for raid are in the DOS install).
anyways, any hints, helps, or been-there-done-thats would be greatly appreciated. this project would be very helpful to our group, and probably other groups in our department. thanks all.
i work in a lab with about 450-ish machines (down from about 600 a couple months ago). these systems are sent out on a loan basis for companies, events, etc. they are sent out for less than (typically) 30 days at a time. generally, when they come back i reimage them and make them all clean and happy for the next go.
we use corporate norton ghost 8.3 to handle all of our imaging (and ghostcast) currently. there are some investigating an alternative software, but that's what we have for now.
what i have embarked upon, and would like some ideas for, is building an automated recovery system for when these boxen are in the field. i have had some success, and have a working prototype. unfortunately, it's not quite what i'd like.
here's how it works now:
the system has 2 partitions on the drive. one is a fat32 partition running a minimal windows98-based DOS, ghost, and contains the image files. windows xp is installed on the second partition. i have set up windows' boot manager to handle the booting operations. right now it's set at a 3 second timeout to default to windows.
if a user/operator/whoever likes, they can boot into the automated recovery system. this is done from the boot manager, which boots into the minimal DOS install. then via the autoexec.bat, it directly loads ghost via command line, and immediately sets forth the reimage. once you select to boot into recovery mode, the only thing stopping the system from reimage is a single keystroke (pause in autoexec).
this works well, for the prototype. in under 5 minutes, the user has a completely fresh "factory" install.
as i said, this is not perfect. i have done a few things, like rename ghost files to be less conspicuous, make several files system files, and set windows to hide system files. this also means windows must be installed on a secondary partition, making the c: drive the 'recovery' drive; also not ideal.
here's the actual requirements we're looking at for such a system:
- recovery partition not visible in windows (either via umounted drive or alternate file system unreadable by windows)
- boot manager password-protected for recovery boot only (default OS no pw)
- small recovery OS, very fast boot
- windows installed on C: drive
i have been investigating using a linux distro for this. ghost says it can read an ext2/3 file system... so i may be able to (if i can emulate properly) run it from linux. so far, this has not gone well. i have tested ghost briefly on rhel 4 as using DOSEMU, and ghost crashes in DOS due to a segment fault or somesuch. i have not investigated exactly why it is crashing.
another issue is the prototype system uses a standard ide drive. i chose this because of the lesser requirements for special drivers. we are phasing these systems out, most of our systems use the ich7/8 sata with raid 0 or 1. while a standard windows98-DOS boot cd will not see the hard drives, i have not tested to see if i can boot the 98-DOS and run ghost from the cd. it may have the drivers built in (there is no evidence so far that the ghost drivers for raid are in the DOS install).
anyways, any hints, helps, or been-there-done-thats would be greatly appreciated. this project would be very helpful to our group, and probably other groups in our department. thanks all.