Creating a CD/DVD iso backup from a new install

[LuisC-SM]

Hi

 

As stated in the description, I will buy some new machines and I want to install Mandriva 2008.0 with GNOME,I want to enable NFS in all of them (or at least hae all the packages installed) and some other software I wil use like varicad, lotusnotes and an administrative softwre named factura lux.

 

So my idea is to install in one machine the GNOME DVD, then the rest of the software, I will create all the users accounts and tweak the system to have NFS support and some other things...

 

The rest is to make an iso image of this computer (all of them will have exactly the same hardware) and to install in the rest of the computers with a DVD and/or CDs..

 

I've read these threads:

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=10191

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=47424 and

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=43241

 

but neither one of them gives me an idea of how to create a DVD/CD iso image of my complete system

 

is there any way to do this?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Luis

[daniewicz]

What about mondo?

 

http://www.mondorescue.org/

[mindwave]

What about mondo?

 

http://www.mondorescue.org/

Dude if you can figure THAT out oin 2008 youre a hero.

 

Look at MCNL for some hints.

 

there is a forum here as well as at:

 

http://www.mandrivaclub.nl/site/index.php?showforum=30

 

I am p[ersonally trying to learn draklive now for 2008, as far as i know, thats the best route

[LuisC-SM]

Hi guys

 

Thanks a lot for your fast response...

 

In one of the links I provided, there is a MOndo thread.

 

I've read a lot (before reading your reponses) about mondo, but I don't see the way to make a complete System and Home backup which will install directly from boot without asking any parameters, just copying the iso image directly to the HD. (including all kernel parameters, partitions, etc)

 

opeSuSE and SLED 10 have these tools (YasT CD creator) but I want to use Mandriva this time.

 

I've read a little at MCNLive but I really don't understand the project. I'm not new to linux but I'm also not too wise to understand some of these techie stuff..

 

There is a project together with gParted (I don't remember the name), which has a boot cd to do these things directly to a server but I remember last year when I wanted to do this, I had a lot of headaches and at the end of the story I got only not usable tar.bz files

 

I've installed Mondo more than one hour ago and I've not been able to get it running... I really have no idea on how to make it work.

 

Any other ideas?

 

Thanks in advance and Kind Regards

 

Luis

[daniewicz]

Well, the truth is, I have never used mondo :blush:

 

We have a member here named RVDowning who has some expertise with mondo.

[pmpatrick]

I think I could do it if the entire install isn't too big and you have identical hardware. I would use a slim linux livecd that you can easily modify; slax would be ideal as it's only 191 MB and contains scripts for creating customized isos:

 

http://www.slax.org/

 

http://www.slax.org/documentation_customize_slax.php

 

You would also need an extra hard drive that you would use to make the livecd with your installation on it. The basic procedure would be:

 

1. Do your installation of mandriva with all the configuration and additional software you want;

 

2. Boot up slax and create a backup of the MBR on your hard drive with the mandriva installation using the dd command. You will need this to recreate the partition structure and grub bootloader on the target boxes. The backup would be made to a file your second hard drive;

 

3. At the same time while in slax, make a tar gzip archive of each partition containing your mandriva installation to your second hard drive. The main limitation here will be the size of the tar archives since you ultimately want to transfer them to your customized slax livecd iso. In the past, I've had troubles creating a single file greater than 2GB within an iso. That used to be an iso file size limitation which I believe has been eliminated in the newer iso spec but I still see some people reporting problems with it;

 

4. Boot back into mandriva and create a customized slax livecd containing your MBR backup and your mandriva backup tar archives. Burn your customized slax livecd iso to dvd. Boot up with it on a new box to receive the installation and verify that you can recreate the partition structure/bootloader from your backup of the MBR and successfully extract your tar archives to your new partitions. Reboot the box and make sure you can boot into mandriva and that everything is working properly;

 

5. If everything went well, boot backup into mandriva on your original box with your second hard drive and create a bash script to automate what you did in 4 above for the transfer of the mandriva installation to the new box. Add this script to your customized slax livecd. Test to make sure your customized livecd with bash installation scrip works.

 

That's a lot of work requiring a fairly high level of skill. If your not that familiar with linux and the commands I mentioned, I would not attempt it. Unless you have a large number of identical boxes to install mandriva on, it would probably not be worth the effort. Also, rather than cutomizing a livecd, it would probably be easier to backup your mbr and tar archives to an external usb hard drive while using a livecd like slax and then use the external hard drive backups to do your new installs.

 

Another easy alternative is to put a blank hard drive in your box with the your mandriva install that you want to reproduce and copy it over with the dd command. Assuming your drive with your mandriva install is on sda and the blank hard drive is on sdb, you would run:

 

# dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

 

and then go get yourself a cup of coffee. This will work perfectly if sda and sdb are the same size.