[plug] "Ghost" for Linux?

[Trevor Phillips]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Nick Bannon wrote:

> There's lots of options depending on what exactly you want to do.

Maybe I should've been less vague. ^_^
I know I can use dd, etc, but I'd rather have a tool that doesn't archive
unused disk space, and also a complete management tool... and my PRIMARY
reason for using this is to back up my old Win98 partition. Or more to the
point, back up a fresh clean install of Win98.

I still need Win98 in some form, mostly for games (even tho DiabloII runs
OK under WINE - but that WINE also uses that Win98 install), and as we all
know, Windows in time degrades, with the registry and file system filling
with crap, and crashing more and more.

So I've been entertaining the idea for a while to do a fresh install of
98, and back it up with Ghost - except I don't own ghost and yes, I prefer
to do things legally. -_^

I have a friend who loves using Japanese Win95, but something doesn't run
under it properly (his DVD player/card I think), so he has Ghost images of
both system installs, and whacks on in a matter of minutes whichever he
wishes to use at the time.

> The best option is probably to backup (you were already doing this in 
> preparation for fiddling with your partitions, right?) and restore
> after changing drives/partitions/filesystems. You can use
> dump/restore/tar/cpio or others.

Oh yes. What's prompted this right now (that I've been putting off for
ages) is that I have another HDD with a FAT drive that Linux works fine
with, but Windows no longer recognises and keeps asking if I want it
formatted!! (Has anyone seen this before?) So it's time to back everything
up (borrowed DDS2 tape drive), and reinstall Win98.

> Two automated installtion systems (like Ghost) are ;
> http://systemimager.sourceforge.net/
> http://jacal.sourceforge.net/

Cool! I'll check them out too. ^_^

> ...and now you've replied and added http://partimage.sourceforge.net/
> to the list. ::-) Sourceforge is getting pretty popular these days...

Sure is. ^_^
partimage is still "beta" and "use at own risk", although the fact that
they have a Debian packaged version as well as floppy images is a
plus. ^_^

...

Of the two you mentioned, systemimager seems more to be just Bulk Linux
installs, rather than image backup. Jacal seems to be similar, but at
least is designed to support other images (windoze). Maybe I could set up
something like it on my home Lan. ^_^

--
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: CWIS Systems Administrator     -           T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                       -               Murdoch University | 
 >------------------- Member of the #SAS# & #CFC# --------------------<
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