[CentOS] Duplicate computers

Fri Feb 10 20:19:00 UTC 2006
Eduardo Grosclaude <eduardo.grosclaude at gmail.com>

>
> On 10/02/06, Jim Perrin <jperrin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I need to do an install on 12 identical computers. Once I have
> > > done the install on one of them, is there a simple way to
> > > duplicate the drive to the next computer.
> > >
> > > I do not have access to Ghost, any suggestion?
>

Provided you're on a switched network (as everyone is these days), the
'nettee' utility is great for these situations. The disk image to be cloned
will get out to the network just once, so you'll not consume 12x time to
stream an image. The trick is to build a virtual chain with the stations,
giving each nettee process the next host's ip address. Nettee behaves like a
'tee' command but spits output to the network.

- download nettee utility to your source machine (there is a DAG RPM
package)
- on your destination hosts, boot with installation disks in rescue mode or
use a tool as System Rescue CD (you can eject it and proceed to next host)
- copy nettee to the destination hosts
- on your source machine do dd if=/dev/sda | nettee -in - -next
my_next_host_ip
- on all your destination machines but the last, do nettee -out - -next
my_next_host_ip | dd of=/dev/sda
- on the last, nettee -out - | dd of=/dev/sda

Of course you will want to look at nettee's man page to verify my syntax and
usage. Here my_next_host_ip is always changing, as it is the IP address of
the next host in the virtual chain nettee will create. This example assumes
you want to clone /dev/sda on source to /dev/sda on every other host. Nettee
has many other features, well worth a look.
--
Eduardo Grosclaude
Universidad Nacional del Comahue
Neuquen, Argentina
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