Cloning Hard drives using G4L and Knoppix
This document outlines how to use G4L(ghost for linux) with knoppix.
Disclaimer :- Please
use this
document carefully and with your own responsibility.I cannot be handled
responsible for any data loss corruption or damage of any sort.By
referring to this doc you own complete responsibility of your
actions.In case of doubt of liability/responsibility pls do not use
this website.
Problem Description
- You want clone a hard drive especially in cases
like you
bought a bigger hard drive and you want to migrate your old data as
well as settings etc from one machine to another machine.
- You are looking for Free/Open Source alternatives
to proprietary solutions like Norton Ghost.
- You are looking for a solution which is
platform/OS/filesystem independent
- You are looking for a bit-by-bit cloner of hard drive..
Existing alternatives and
shortcomings
As always people have thought about the above problem
description
and found various kinds of solutions with varying level of
success in different environment/scenarios.
- Alternative 1 : g4u
- Pros - Very light weight , fits on a floppy or a USB
drive and on CD.Hard Drive to be cloned can hold any type of filesystem
including ntfs/fat etc.Since it is a bit by bit copy it does not matter
what OS/filesystem is on the hard drive.
- Cons - Since it is so small it obiviously cannot fit all
the
drivers required for accessing all the different harddrives/network
cards and also is very very weak in auto-detection of hardware.If it
cannot detect your hardrive obviously it cannot clone it.Since it is
bit-by-bit copy of the harddrive the image is a little bigger then
other alternatives and it is slower also , but this can be overcome to
some extent.
- Alternative 2 : g4l bootable ISO
- Pros - Lightweight can fit on a small USB drive or on a
mini-CD disc.Hard Drive to be cloned can hold any type of filesystem
including ntfs/fat etc.Since it is a bit by bit copy it does not matter
what OS/filesystem is on the hard drive.
- Cons - Hardware/Network card detection is very weak
compared to Knoppix.If it cannot detect your hardrive obviously it
cannot clone it.Since it is bit-by-bit copy of the harddrive the image
is a little
bigger then other alternatives and it is slower also , but this can be
overcome to some extent.
- Alternative 3 : Partimage
- Pros - Works on partitions as opposed to entire drives.So
the
image created by partimage of the partition is smaller as it is
intimately aware about the filesystem on the partition.
- Cons - Ironically the Pros of partimage are its Cons also
because it cannot create an image of filesystems it which it does not
support.You will be responsible for manually creating partition tables
/ MBR etc.Currently it does not work on LVM.
G4L and Knoppix
Using G4L along with Knoppix solves one of its important
shortcomings of auto-hardware detection.Knoppix is one of the best
live-CD's with a very very good automatic hardware detection.
Another advantage of using it with Knoppix is that a lot of folks
already have Knoppix CD/DVD which they use as their swiss knife and
this script fits very well in the arsenal without having to install
anything.
How-to use G4L with
Knoppix
Here is a list of software which you will need
- Knoppix live CD or DVD : Download the ISO from http://knoppix.net/get.php
- Download source code(it is just shell script) of g4l from http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
Step-By-Step
Instructions(Steps look long as they are detailed but the whole process
will not take a long time)
- Boot with knoppix CD on the machine which has the hard
drive to be cloned/backed up/restored
- On the command prompt of knoppix do "su"
- Goto to the /tmp folder by typing "cd /tmp" as root
- Make a directory named g4l by typing in "mkdir g4l"
- Download g4l sources from sourceforge.net using wget into
the g4l directory created in step 4> like "wget http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/g4l/files3.tar.gz"
- In step 4> I have used the v0.21 as the source , you
can use whichever is the latest version.
- Untar the files by issuing the following command "tar -zxvf
files3.tar.gz" into the /tmp/g4l folder
- Now add the path of jetcat-mod to the path variable by
typing "export PATH=$PATH:/tmp/g4l/"
- Now go back to the folder which has the g4l scripts by
typing "cd /tmp/g4l/"
- Now you are ready to run the g4l scripts , so just type in
./g4l.
- Now you are all set and if everything goes well you can
start cloning hard drives and use the functionality of G4L in knoppix.
- Since g4l is a bit by bit copier of hard drives , in order
to
achieve better compression it is highly recommended that you follow the
steps on http://fbim.fh-regensburg.de/~feyrer/g4u/#shrinkimg otherwise
the image creation will be very slow and the files will be very very
big.
Other Notes
- You can copy the g4l scripts(just the scripts from the
g4l/bootcd/rootfs/ )
and the jetcat executable to a usb stick and then just plop in the usb
stick along with knoppix CD and then you dont have to download the
files again
- Since g4l needs ftp server you can always use the
ftp server which comes with knoppix.The docs are locaed here http://knoppix.net/wiki/FTP_FAQ
- Once you have a local ftp server setup on knoppix you can
also
use a secondary hard drive to clone to the second hard drive which has
a different geometry.Currently I do not know of a way in g4l to write
the cloned image to a file.
- If future versions of knoppix carry the G4L scripts and the
jetcat executable , it will become very very easy.
- The above instructions might also work for other Live-CD's as long as ncftp is already there on the lice-cd.
Other Alternatives
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