[olug] Cheap ghost alternative...

T. J. Brumfield enderandrew at gmail.com
Wed Jun 2 14:18:22 UTC 2010


I've used it. I found it a little confusing at first, but it really is a
great program. You can even set up a server and push images to multiple
boxes at once with it. It can also do compression of images, and unlike dd,
it will just image the used portions of partitions if you want.

-- T. J.

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Kevin <sharpestmarble at gmail.com> wrote:

> I personally haven't used it, but I've heard that Clonezilla is a free
> alternative to Ghost.
>
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 08:56, Jordan Fox <vmifox at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't know if the project still exists, but a couple years ago I
> > played around with G4L (I'm guessing Ghost for Linux).  You use it
> > nearly the same way as norton ghost.  It worked pretty well.
> >
> > Jordan
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Dan Linder <dan at linder.org> wrote:
> >> Over the weekend I needed to copy the partitions of one virtual machine
> to
> >> another over the network (moving HDDs wasn't an option).  For some
> reason I
> >> couldn't quickly find a free tool to do this (I thought the gparted
> tools
> >> use to do this...) but I found a page showing how to use NetCat and DD:
> >>
> >> Source machine:
> >>  dd if=/dev/sda | nc $DEST_IP $DEST_PORT -q10
> >>
> >> Destination Machine @ DEST_IP
> >>  nc -l $DEST_PORT | dd of=/dev/sda
> >>
> >> I was getting ~8MB/sec on in-home lan switch.
> >>
> >> To make the transfer more visible and see the speed in real-time, use
> the
> >> "pv" program - Pipe View.  It goes in-line between the nc and dd
> commands to
> >> show speed of data with output like this:
> >>    1.61GB 0:08:11 [7.63MB/s] [      <=>                                ]
> >>
> >> Place "| pv" between the nc and dd commands like this:
> >>  dd if=/dev/sda | pv | nc $DEST_IP $DEST_PORT -q10
> >>
> >> I didn't try this, but they also suggested to use "gzip" between nc and
> dd
> >> to compress network bandwidth:
> >>  - source: dd .... | gzip  -cf | nc ...
> >>  - destination: nc ... | gzip -dfc | dd ...
> >>
> >> Combining them all together:
> >>  dd if=/dev/sda | pv | gzip -cf | nc $DEST_IP $DEST_PORT -q10
> >> Should show the rate of the raw data being sent across the network.
> >>
> >> Hope someone else finds this useful.
> >>
> >> DanL
> >>
> >> P.S. I booted from a Ubuntu ISO 10.04 image which has dd, nc, and gzip
> by
> >> default - I had to install pv using apt-get IIRC.
> >>
> >> --
> >> ***************** ************* *********** ******* ***** *** **
> >> "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
> >>   (Who can watch the watchmen?)
> >>   -- from the Satires of Juvenal
> >> "I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them."
> >>   -- Isaac Asimov (Author)
> >> ** *** ***** ******* *********** ************* *****************
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and
> > petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the
> > peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your
> > hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."  Phil 4:6-7
> >
> > "The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the
> > distance between your knees and the floor."  Anonymous
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