[K12OSN] Server Clone

[J. Theriault]

Doug Gough wrote:
> This discussion is making me think about the following possibility:
> 
> A CD based distro with GUI and full hardware detection, with the
> specific purpose of replicating hard drives and re-imaging


Sounds like a good idea, here are some things you might want to think about:


Write Blocking (mounting the drives ro for forensically-sound images)

Network Backup Client (sometimes it's useful to backup a system over a 
network to another computer, you should add an option for this)

Network Backup Server (not all computers have netcat [for example] ready 
and installed) - of course, using this method of client/server would be 
best achieved by having the CD copy the files it needs to RAM on the 
server so the same CD could be used on the clients (such as the CHAOS 
bootable-openmosix-cluster CDs http://itsecurity.mq.edu.au/chaos/about/ do)

OPTIONAL graphical interface (not every computer you'll meet has enough 
RAM for Xwindows, ideally you should have a small command-line 
menu-driven interface as well)

USB-Key support for swapspace (again, some systems don't have enough RAM)


That's all I can think about for now, I expect to be credited in the 
documentation :P (just kidding). I doubt it would take much effort to 
set up a dedicated CD for this purpose (a simple bash script should 
suffice for the non-graphical part).

Cheers,



J. Theriault
administrator at maginetworks.com