Clone Xubuntu with Knoppix partimage

[seshomaru samma]

Hi
I would like to install Xubuntu on a couple of computers. I want to first install on one , download several programmes and utilities , tweak it and set it the way I like and then clone the installation to the other machines. Luckily all machines have the exact same hardware.
I would like to use Knoppix partimage to clone the installation into a removeable harddisk and then copy it into the other machines.
Did anyone ever try that? Can you foresee any difficulties?
The removeable harddisk's label says " designed for Windows" and it's FAT32 , is that a problem. Should I (/can I) reformat it to ext3?
Thanks....

[ockham23]

There shouldn't be a problem if the removable hard drive is recognized by Knoppix and xubuntu uses a file system that is supported by partimage (e.g., ext2, ext3, reiserfs). Just set partimage to compression level 1 and check "split files". This will generate compressed image files of about 2 gigs each. Otherwise you might create an image file exceeding the 4 gig file size limit for FAT32 partitions.

By default, partimage will only save an image file of the partition. So don't forget to copy the MBR too and write it to the destination drive. You need to partition the destination drive before restoring the image to it. partimage won't do this for you, but you can use a partioning tool such as qtparted, which is also on the Knoppix cd.

If the computers are on a 100MBit LAN and support PXE boot, you can run the Knoppix terminal server on one machine and do the restores over the network. This will make things much easier because you can do several restores simultaneously without having to burn additional cd-roms. You could even run freenx server on the clients and do all the work from one machine.

By the way, I recommend Kanotix for hd installs. It's much closer to Debian than Ubuntu.

[seshomaru samma]

Thanks
But I just downloaded the latest version of Knoppix and couldn't find partimage in any of the menues.
Can you tell me how to access it?

[ockham23]

Open Konsole and enter:

man partimage

partimage is a shell application; it doesn't have a graphical user interface. You also have to mount the destination drive before you can save a partition image file to it.

[seshomaru samma]

Ok ,thank you very much