Send in the Clones

[utu]

I have a 2 Gb SD Chip of Knoppix 6.2.1 that works just about right.
My portable has a hard drive, a cdrw drive and a usb slot for
one-and-one-only SD Chip. I also have another physically identical
2 Gb SD Chip.

I'd like to end up with a second 2 Gb Chip identical to the first.
I don't want to go to all the trouble of re-mastering. Isn't there
some (simpler) way to utilize the capabilities I've indicated to
get what I want? Utilizing dd, toram and other majic words, perhaps?

[krishna.murphy]

I have a 2 Gb SD Chip of Knoppix 6.2.1 that works just about right.
My portable has a hard drive, a cdrw drive and a usb slot for
one-and-one-only SD Chip. I also have another physically identical
2 Gb SD Chip.

I'd like to end up with a second 2 Gb Chip identical to the first.
I don't want to go to all the trouble of re-mastering. Isn't there
some (simpler) way to utilize the capabilities I've indicated to
get what I want? Utilizing dd, toram and other majic words, perhaps?

One way to do it is to use (for instance)

knoppix tohd=/dev/sda1

Once that's running, you can unplug the flash drive and then plug in the new one, after which you could use the flash-install feature. There are lots of ways to skin that particular cat...

Cheers!
Krishna
p.s. If your partition is NTFS-formatted, you run a small risk of glitching it if you write with Knoppix. I've done it many times, though, and only once had a serious (but recoverable) problem.

[utu]

@krishna

Thanks, Krishna.

Keep in mind, I want the clone to boot, and I want it to remember
all my clever tweaks in persistant whatever.

[krishna.murphy]

@krishna

Thanks, Krishna.

Keep in mind, I want the clone to boot, and I want it to remember
all my clever tweaks in persistant whatever.

AFAIK, this procedure will do that. Let us know how it goes!

Cheers!
Krishna

[klaus2008]

I would create a directory on the hard disk and copy the persistent image from the first SD card to that directory. Afterwards I would boot Knoppix from CD and do a flash install on the second SD card. Then I would copy the persistent image from the hard disk to the KNOPPIX directory on the second SD card. The two SD cards should be identical.

[krishna.murphy]

I would create a directory on the hard disk and copy the persistent image from the first SD card to that directory. Afterwards I would boot Knoppix from CD and do a flash install on the second SD card. Then I would copy the persistent image from the hard disk to the KNOPPIX directory on the second SD card. The two SD cards should be identical.

Yes, this would certainly work, too. If your CD is slow, though, it would probably be faster to do it from the first flash drive, as I described. And the caveat about the filesystem remains. One option is to create another partition for Knoppix, and/or a swap partition (using GParted, probably.)

Cheers!
Krishna

[utu]

Greetings from a clone.

I ended up using Klaus2008's method, and that works just fine.
I did the cut and paste parts in Win7 with no ill effects,
at least none I've observed so far.
I also now have a Pearl Harbor .img file, albeit on ntfs premises.
Editing a Fat32 file on an ntfs system for use with Linux seemed
to me a juggle unlikely to come to a good end. But it did.

I struggled to get the reserved space size right, since I'd
forgotten a minor edit of the non-image part of the equation.
As a consequence, my clone didn't at first have enough room to
hold the original's .img
I suspect if the clone had more than enough room, that also might
have worked, but I've not proved this.

Thanks Klaus2008.

[krishna.murphy]

Greetings from a clone.

I ended up using Klaus2008's method, and that works just fine.
I did the cut and paste parts in Win7 with no ill effects,
at least none I've observed so far.
I also now have a Pearl Harbor .img file, albeit on ntfs premises.
Editing a Fat32 file on an ntfs system for use with Linux seemed
to me a juggle unlikely to come to a good end. But it did.

In essence, a file (in and of itself) is not tied to any particular filesystem - it's just stored under that filesystem (NTFS, FAT32, etc.) So copying files from one to another is perfectly kosher, albeit reputedly risky when the destination type is NTFS. But it works (mostly), as you showed.

I struggled to get the reserved space size right, since I'd
forgotten a minor edit of the non-image part of the equation.
As a consequence, my clone didn't at first have enough room to
hold the original's .img
I suspect if the clone had more than enough room, that also might
have worked, but I've not proved this.

Thanks Klaus2008.

Are you saying that you took too much room with the KNOPPIX file within the KNOPPIX folder? Or was the FAT partition itself too small? Just curious...

Ciao!
Krishna

[utu]

I decided when I made the original 6.2.1 that I didn't need isolinux, and could gain a few bites
for the persistent image by deleting isolinux before allocating the maximum space to the .img.
When I went to apply Klaus2008's idea, I'd forgotten about this edit, and as a consequence
was a few bites shy of enough room for the original's .img.

aka shooting yourself in the foot.

[kcah]

so the basic idea is to make a brand new fresh live install on the 2nd sd card.

and then just simply copy every thing inside the 1st sd card into the 2nd one.

am i right?