Clonezilla Stomps That Other OS at Robert Pogson

That other OS is very popular but I am tired of “fixing it”. M$ keeps making life harder for fixers:

WGdisA
entering product keys from Hell
re-re-reboots
updates upon updates

I have been doing my part to help M$ keep its empire going but I am tired of all these silly things that have to be done above and beyond installing and running the OS. I have been using dd and ssh to distribute images of XP around the building and updating keys but today, M$ decided one of my machines did not deserve to run. This was compounded by a mysterirous delay upon reboot and failure of the firewall to run. After wasting a lot of time, I decided to wipe the machine. I was using it as a repository of images but I could do that with Clonezilla and not have to bother with the “Activation” thing.

I made a minimal installation of Debian Lenny, about 400 MB. I even deselected the “standard install”. I only took 14 files form the web for updates. The rest came from drbl.sourceforge.net. APT brought in drbl and drbl scripts brought in clonezilla. Installation is clunky but the system works/feels just like Ghost when it runs. I started accumulating 5gB backups for these systems. The beauty of it that now that I have “perfected” the image I want to distribute, it is a fairly simple matter to turn Clonezilla loose and re-image a bunch at once. Clonezilla can broadcast to the LAN and the clients can boot PXE to slurp it up. I can either command the operation from the client or the server.

Even better, if staff choose to migrate to GNU/Linux, I can have it cloned around the building in an hour or so. All the teachers use one of two models of PC. I could also just change their BIOS to boot PXE and give them a choice of configuration with DRBL like running one distro or another or acting like a thin client from the server. The complexity of Clonezilla pays off when you have a complex system. Our needs are fairly simple so using Clonezilla to install a bootloader or changing the BIOS to boot PXE would be all that we would need.

Thanks, steven_shiau and partners, for a wonderfully useful tool.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.