[K12OSN] Cloning drives, no network or compression

[Scott S.]

Barry R Cisna wrote:
> Scott,
> 
> Sounds like you are trying to keep the superiors happy there and that's
> the name of the game.
The immediate boss is cool, he is interested. The higher-ups just shrug 
off the (much) greater cost of Windows as necessary. I understand some 
of the frustration many of you have expressed here about bucking the 
system with something new, even if it is much better and cheaper.

> the same :-) A couple things to keep in mind. On the older hd's like you
> are dealing with some of them had 15 heads per sector. If your master is
> on a conventional 16 heads per sector hd and you clone to a 15/sector hd
> you'll always get the grub error like you were mentioning. I never could
> figure out a workaround for this caveat.
Again, good hints to check on. I chose a small 4 gig HD originally for 
the master thinking of space, I wasn't thinking about drive geometry. 
Perhaps I can prepare an image from a more modern HD, and have two 
choices available.

> Also You'll probably run into
> an hd that is smaller than your master and will result in the grub error
> as well.
I have one foolproof way? I have the modified distro on a CD that is a 
bootable liveCD. As long as I can bump the RAM up to 384 it will boot as 
a liveCD. It's partitioning then sets everything up OK. It's more hassle 
to remove each one, open it up hang a CD on it but it works, and is 
actually the fastest install.

> Say your master is on an 4gb and you have a one off 3.2gb.
The physical disk the master is on is a 4 gig, but the install image is 
about 2.6 gig, so at least spacewise it should fit anything I will come 
across. There is a large graveyard of old machines I can harvest for 
parts as well.

I am still holding hope that a small trial of a terminal server would 
convince them to start rewiring. Rewiring alone would be a huge project, 
and somewhat disruptive, but a needed step for the sake of the 
network(s) no matter what they put on it.

Thx all for the tips, I have several things to check tomorrow!
Scott S.