[K12OSN] Cloning Acer Aspire One

[R. Scott Belford]

I have had, and continue to have, great success using Clonezilla from
either a usb/cd bootable image, or launched from DRBL.  For portable
installs I use a macbook booted into debian.  Mass imaging via
udpcast, single imaging, launching memtest, and even loading the OS
from the server, all make this a scary good tool for social
entrepreneurship.  I'll be knocking out about 120 donated computers
with it over the next few days.

I have not used sysprep before, but it appears that once you perfect
your golden image, you have several good options for achieving your
imaging goals.  For mass imaging gnu/linux boxes, I start with a small
golden image made from an older drive, ~4 gb, and then resize / to
fill the bigger drives.

--scott

2008/11/28 Paul Satherley <pauls at tclcommunications.co.nz>:
> Hi ,
>
> I've used UDPCast with a Sysprep'd image  etc  but I'm going to use FOG
>
>
>
> sourceforge.net/projects/freeghost/
>
> It combines all the goodness of G4l, udpcast auto setup configuration, and
> much more for long term management of apps and images!.
>
>
>
> However.. most important is to spend as much time as possible sorting out
> the base image for all uses,
>
> ie after its on the Domain, offline files, wireless ,dialup,
> proxy,printing,firewall, virus/malware protection AT and AWAY from school,
> full install of standard apps, .net,java,sql and other librarys,   and then
> test and test, test the abilty to re-image, maybe partition the hard drive
> so that user data is separate as mush as windows will allow etc.........give
> it to others to break.. fix it. and then image it once..
>
>
>
> cheers
>
> -----Original message-----
> From: Barry R Cisna <brcisna at eazylivin.net>
> Sent: Sat 29-11-2008 06:14
> To: K12LTSP <k12osn at redhat.com>;
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Cloning Acer Aspire One
>
> Hi Brian,
>
> Use G4L. Download the latest ISO and burn a few copies to CD. It is
> about 80mb's. If you are setting these Acer's up with Windows, use the
> sysprep tool that is on any Xp cd(under the Tools folder) for this. Put
> all the applications,printers you think you *might* use on your
> 'master'. Then after this copy the -blank6-(two files from the g4l CD)
> onto the master HD, -run blank6-. It will take about 20 mins on an 80gig
> HD. This writes nulls to each empty sector of your cloning HD. This will
> reduce your saved master .img to about 3gig!. After doing the blank6 run
> sysprep on the master HD. This will in essence ,once cloned to the
> second,, third pc,,lets you run a mini-setup program,to pick out
> name,join domain etc after you have cloned to one of the laptops.Now,
> pop in the g4l cd into your master laptop,and have a directory already
> setup to save your master.img on a server at your building then go
> through the steps,to 'backup' the master. This will be saved in lzop
> compression by default. It will take about 2 hours to save the
> initial .img to your server. The upside,once you start cloning the
> master.img to the rest of your laptops,it will take about 25 mins( for
> one at a time). there is even a multicast option on g4l,but i always
> just start each cloner one at a time myself. This will work fine for
> linux,winders,mac partitions.
> Hope this helps getting you started.
> Sidenote: G4l runs 'outside' of the OS, This is what gets most people in
> trouble using Norton Ghost,,:-)
>
> Take Care,
> Barry Cisna
> WestCentral School #235
>
>
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