[OT] System Imaging

[J. Epperson]

On Tue, March 27, 2007 13:54, Sam Flory wrote:
> J. Epperson wrote:
>
>> If you binary-zero-fill the free space on the target before shutting it
>> down, you'll approach the performance of a "used blocks only" solution.
>>
>
>   In case people don't know what binary-zero-fill means.  Either you
> write zeros across the entire disk before creating your gold master
> image.  Or you create a file filled with zeros that consumes the
> remainder of space on every partition.  (cat /dev/zero >zeroed_file)
> Swap partitions can be unmounted zeroed then mkswaped.
>

Doing the second option is preferred.  You're likely to create and remove
a lot of files in the course of building the golden image, leaving random
data in the freed space.  The point is that binary zeros compress very
well.  Don't forget to remove the zeroed_file(s).

Also, I said

"I just NFS export the image directory, boot
the target machine with a live CD like Knoppix, then
mount server:/home/install/img /mnt;dd if=/dev/hda|lzop|dd
of=/home/install/img/image.lzop"

That should be "dd of=/mnt/image.lzop" in the last pipe, of course.