[K12OSN] (OT) K12LTSP/XP dual partition: working ghost image

[Julius Szelagiewicz]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 06:51 -0600, Alan Hodson wrote:
>> Faced with budgetary constraints and pressured by inquisitive minds
>> there is a need at the district level to look into using PCs (mostly
>> Dells) as dual partition machines. While Knoppix and other forensic
>> tools provide a way of partitioning, and K12LTSP provides an ideal dual
>> desktop environ, the quest for an image tool (not necessarily Open
>> Source) is on. Norton/Symantec ghost tool (huge district license) will
>> not provide a working image that out techs can "just drop" into a
>> machine and have it be reborn as a dual boot system... Is there anybody
>> in the list that has had any luck creating a working image of a
>> dual-partitioned hard drive? Please share your experience - Even though
>> I have been a strong advocate of Thin Clients for years, there is now an
>> opportunity to advocate K12LTSP, and I am convinced that if a working DB
>> image is available (something the techs can easily manipulate), the
>> students would embrace the "new" operating system right away.
>
> First, you might want to consider accessing the k12ltsp system with
> X running on the windows box instead of needing a separate boot. You
> may not be able to get sound or the extra features of teachertool to
> work but it should work fine otherwise.  There are at least 2 free
> versions, cygwin and this: http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/.
> With X in fullscreen and -query mode you would see little difference
> from a thin client boot.
>
> However, if you really need dual boot from the hard drive and the
> drives are all identical, a simple dd copy of the whole device
> should do it.  For example, if you connect the disks up as
> the primary on each ide controller so they become /dev/hda and /dev/hdc
> you can boot about any run-from-cd linux (for example the k12ltsp first
> install disk with 'linux rescue' at the boot prompt) you can
> dd bs=1M if=/dev/hda of=hdc
> and get an exact copy.  There are any number of ways to do the
> same thing to/from a file accessed over the network if you don't
> want to swap drives.  You'll either need an enterprise licensed XP
> or you have to sysprep the source before the copy and go through
> the license process on each copy.  If there are hardware differences
> you may need the sysprep anyway. On the Linux side the only likely
> problem is that you might have to remove the HWADDR line from
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 so it will work on
> a different machine.
>
> --
>   Les Mikesell
>
There is another option, that obviates the need for imaging many drives:
Use thin terminals only on K12Ltsp, configure them with rdesktop as the
second app (or run rdesktop as a user program). This presumes that setting
up beefy enough windows servers is in the same ball park as running
windows locally. In my experience it is cheaper, when I account for
maintenance involved with  local copies of windows.
julius


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFElr5h2LhlZOaj6vURAvMrAJ47G6tgS7iSsGdpZw8i0YhbmlbaewCgkGsH
dViTObH541zK0qZLLayUOEY=
=q4m5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----