Re: [Nolug] Cloning hard drives

integral@integralsecurity.com writes:

> I have some pc's that my kids are fixing to be sent to an orphanage
> in Guatamala. It takes over 4 hours to install the distribution on
> each pc.

To do this, I would use tar.

The master disk (the one you are copying from) is mounted under
/mnt/master. If you have separate partitions, they are mounted under
there as well (e.g. /mnt/master/usr for the /usr partition). The
disk you are copying to is mounted under /mnt/slave and has
partitions large enough to hold the data that is on the master.
Following the above example, the slave disk's /usr is mounted under
/mnt/slave/usr.

Copying the data is fairly simple:

    # (cd /mnt/master; tar cf - .) | (cd /mnt/slave; tar xf -)

That should take significantly less than four hours.

(You could use cpio if the tar copy is problematic. But GNU tar
should work.)

Of course, you still have to have something on the MBR, but I guess
you knew that. (I recommend grub).

Mark.

-- 
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery
you create morbidity.			     -- G.K. Chesterson
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