Announcing PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

[Tomcat76]

@natan770:

Thanks for the reply. That sounds good.

Concering the NTFS partitioning... I should've mentioned this in regard with the partitioning, but I forgot: also of importance to me is the drive letters. Since this is Linux, will the Windows installation CDs (2K and XP) receive pre-defined drive letters or will they still have to assign their own?

This is what my system drive looks like:

C:- 20GB, primary, NTFS

D:- 20GB, primary, NTFS

E:- 20GB, primary, NTFS

F:- 14.5GB, primary, FAT32 LBA

The opticals are G and H, and the data drives I, J, K and L.

Whenever a system re-install is needed, I do this:

1) Disconnect the data drives

2) Boot with a Win95 floppy (custom version without CD support) and start Norton Disk Editor to kill the system drive for roughly 15 minutes

3) Reboot with Win95 floppy (custom), start EFDISK.EXE (from MasterBooter) and create the four primary partitions but in FAT32 LBA

4) Reboot with Win95 floppy (custom) and format each partition one by one. They are now C:, D:, E: and F:.

5) Reboot and start installation of Win2K onto the C: drive, formatting it as NTFS.

6) When Win2K and all drivers are installed, reconnect the data drives; they're automatically assigned the requested drive letters.

7) Much later: disconnect the data drives and start installation of WinXP onto the D: drive, quick-formatting it as NTFS.

I don't like the idea too much of changing drive letters post-installation, if that wasn't obvious...

Edited December 3, 2005 by Tomcat76

[rikgale]

There are two service components: DHCPD on one side, and TFTPD (trivial ftp) on another side. The problem is, they are linked in the boot sequence of your client. I mean, the DHCP server has the ability to tell the name of the boot file (in our case, pxelinux.0).

So, if you make use of another DHCPD, the clients will not know about your TFTP server.

Depending the OS running on your router, you might be able to setup a TFTPD on it. Can you tell me more about your router ?

Another way could be to burn a bootable CD with PING on it. It's quite easy and the procedure tells about it

My router is an old 3com thing, its about 2 years old now, and not one of those fancy Linksys linux based things, sadly, but I can see what you are getting at. I'll tell you up front that my linux knowldge is pretty basic. I might have to go with the bootable CD option, althought I'd rather have the images sitting on a HDD somewhere.

Thanx for your reply

Rik

[rikgale]

Hey

More Questions (Possibly nOOb type)

1) When running the Ping CD, it asks me to enter the IP for a SMB server, after I have entered an IP, subnet and gateway, so I put in the IP address of the host. Is this ok, or should I have a SMB server running on my W2K machine? I know SMB is a server to allow linux and windows to share files.

2) When it says enter a vaild user name e.g. mydomain\johndoe. For some reason I am unable to enter the \ between the domain and the username. If I use the \ key on my keyboard I end up with < Any ideas how to get arround this? As I am stuck at this point until it can be figured out.

Look forward to your replies

Rik

P.S. I tried lots of other keys and held down the shift key with lots of keys and still no joy

[natan770]

Hi there!

Thanks you Rik for waking me up about this topic... replies on their way.

1) When running the Ping CD, it asks me to enter the IP for a SMB server, after I have entered an IP, subnet and gateway, so I put in the IP address of the host. Is this ok, or should I have a SMB server running on my W2K machine? I know SMB is a server to allow linux and windows to share files.

I've not been clear, my fault. SMB means Samba, and this is the unix implementation of Microsoft's proprietary sharing protocol. This means that all you have to do is right-click a folder on your Windows box, and share it.

The linux-based PING will then need to know how to connect to this shared folder, which means having IP, share name, subdirectory (under the share), user name, and password.

Example: if you make your share on C:\temp, call it MyTemp, and create a C:\temp\partimage\ folder, then your share is MyTemp, and path is \partimage.

2) When it says enter a vaild user name e.g. mydomain\johndoe. For some reason I am unable to enter the \ between the domain and the username. If I use the \ key on my keyboard I end up with < Any ideas how to get arround this? As I am stuck at this point until it can be figured out.

Well, this is Qwerty. The \ should be left the right shift key. Well, the / instead of the \ is accepted.

P.S. I tried lots of other keys and held down the shift key with lots of keys and still no joy

LOL Hope these explaination will give you more success.

Regards

Natan

http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

[natan770]

Concering the NTFS partitioning... I should've mentioned this in regard with the partitioning, but I forgot: also of importance to me is the drive letters. Since this is Linux, will the Windows installation CDs (2K and XP) receive pre-defined drive letters or will they still have to assign their own?

This is what my system drive looks like:

C:- 20GB, primary, NTFS

D:- 20GB, primary, NTFS

E:- 20GB, primary, NTFS

F:- 14.5GB, primary, FAT32 LBA

The opticals are G and H, and the data drives I, J, K and L.

Whenever a system re-install is needed, I do this:

1) Disconnect the data drives

2) Boot with a Win95 floppy (custom version without CD support) and start Norton Disk Editor to kill the system drive for roughly 15 minutes

3) Reboot with Win95 floppy (custom), start EFDISK.EXE (from MasterBooter) and create the four primary partitions but in FAT32 LBA

4) Reboot with Win95 floppy (custom) and format each partition one by one. They are now C:, D:, E: and F:.

5) Reboot and start installation of Win2K onto the C: drive, formatting it as NTFS.

6) When Win2K and all drivers are installed, reconnect the data drives; they're automatically assigned the requested drive letters.

7) Much later: disconnect the data drives and start installation of WinXP onto the D: drive, quick-formatting it as NTFS.

I don't like the idea too much of changing drive letters post-installation, if that wasn't obvious...

Hello... what I understand is that you want a C: with Win2K, a D: with WinXP, a clean E:, a clean F:, and no change nor on G and H (optical), nor I, J, K, L (data).

Concerning 1, 2, 3 and 4:

Your method is not bad. Personally, I'd prefer to boot the linux distribution, then get a shell, and do it the unix-way, since it's now possible to ntfs-format with linux. On the shell, I'd do:

fdisk -l /dev/hda

fdisk -l /dev/hdb

fdisk -l /dev/hdc

fdisk -l /dev/hdd

fdisk -l /dev/sda

...

because you need to identify the device of your apparently numerous hard disk drives.

Assuming there's only one disk drive, and it's on hda, and we don't need to repartition, but only to format:

mkntfs -Q -L Win2000 /dev/hda1

mkntfs -Q -L WinXP /dev/hda2

mkntfs -Q -L MyE /dev/hdq3

mkntfs -Q -L MyF /dev/hdq3

Concerning 5, 6 and 7:

I've no remark over the installations of Windows 2k and XP. But I see you're concerned about the naming of drive units. Be aware that under XP (and normally 2k too), you can right-click My Computer, go to Manage, and change the letters of everything except systemdrive (ie. C:). You can also do it with the DOS diskpart.exe, which can be found on Windows Resource Kit (free).

Hope this helps...

Regards

Natan

http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

[rikgale]

Thanx for your relpy Natan

I'll give it another go when I get a chance, which may not be until after Xmas, as I have two assignment for my course due in before then which I have yet to start. I'll let you know how things go when I try though. I really really want this to work!! :-)

[rikgale]

Ok I had another go and still no joy.

I'll give you as much info as poss.

I have a router which acts as DHCP, but the computer (W2k) with the shared folder on it has a static IP of 192.168.1.2, subnet 255.255.255.0 and a gateway of 192.168.1.1.

I am trying to run the ping CD from another machine, so I put the disk in and it runs up and I get the welcome window and then I get the following windows in the following order and I shall list them and my response for each of them, then you can check that I am not doing something stupid.

1)Enter your I.P. for this I entered 192.168.1.2 (although now thinking about it, should this be the IP of the machine with the PING CD in, and not the IP of the computer with the share on it)

2)Enter Netmask -->255.255.255.0

3)Enter Gateway -->192.168.1.1

4)Enter SMB Server IP -->192.168.1.2 (I guess that that would be the machine with the share on, but it run W2k and has no SMB server. I'm now feeling like a n00bie all over again)

5)Enter a vaild SMB share name --> PartImage (as that is what the shared folder on the W2K machine is shared as)

6)Enter valid username --> Pedigree/Richard (Pedigree is the name of my network, it beats MSHome, and my \ button still maps to < under the PING distro. Richard is my user name on that machine, and I am an Admin)

7Enter password ---> xxxxxxxx (where xxxxxxx is my password, hehehe)

After all of this I get the message

Trying to mount //192.168.1.2/PartImage

BAD Server Share User or PWD TRY AGAIN

and this is where I get stuck. So I must be doing something stupid somewhere.

If you need anymore info pls ask

Regards

Rik

EDIT: For window 1) tried the IP that the router give my computer when in windows which is 192.168.1.11, and after entering all the info, it had a bit of a think this time before throwing the same error.

Also FYI on the computer with the share the Folder is C:\PartImage and the four sub folders are all under that, and I have shared the PartImage folder as PartImage

Edited December 12, 2005 by rikgale

[natan770]

I have a router which acts as DHCP, but the computer (W2k) with the shared folder on it has a static IP of 192.168.1.2, subnet 255.255.255.0 and a gateway of 192.168.1.1.

There's no problem about this.

1)Enter your I.P. for this I entered 192.168.1.2 (although now thinking about it, should this be the IP of the machine with the PING CD in, and not the IP of the computer with the share on it)

There are 2 problems here.

Firstable, you said you had a dhcp server, so the PING should have been able to get an IP automatically. It asks you for an IP because it did not succeed in doing this. We must have a closer look at this. Boot the PING, then ask for a shell (X when prompted for, then login as root, no password).

Then, try:

1) dmesg |grep -i eth (to make sure a ethernet card has been detected by the kernel)

2) dhcpcd (to get an IP from any available dhcp server)

3) ifconfig (the equivalent to windows' ipconfig)

1 should say something like that (YMMV):

eth0: registered as PCnet/PCI II 79C970A

And 3 should be explicit:

eth0	  Lien encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:7F:76:B2
		  inet adr:10.160.22.111  Bcast:10.255.255.255  Masque:255.255.254.0
		  adr inet6: fe80::20c:29ff:fe7f:76b2/64 Scope:Lien
		  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
		  RX packets:912867 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
		  TX packets:698305 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
		  collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000
		  RX bytes:204812248 (195.3 MiB)  TX bytes:153071356 (145.9 MiB)
		  Interruption:10 Adresse de base:0x1080

If your ethernet card is detected, but you could get no IP from dhcp, then affecting a static IP is easy (example):

ifconfig eth0 up 192.168.1.111 netmask 255.255.255.0

Then, try:

ping 192.168.1.1

Secondly, as you put it, you should really not take a static IP that is already used on your network.

2)Enter Netmask -->255.255.255.0

3)Enter Gateway -->192.168.1.1

4)Enter SMB Server IP -->192.168.1.2 (I guess that that would be the machine with the share on, but it run W2k and has no SMB server. I'm now feeling like a n00bie all over again)

5)Enter a vaild SMB share name --> PartImage (as that is what the shared folder on the W2K machine is shared as)

6)Enter valid username --> Pedigree/Richard (Pedigree is the name of my network, it beats MSHome, and my \ button still maps to < under the PING distro. Richard is my user name on that machine, and I am an Admin)

7Enter password ---> xxxxxxxx (where xxxxxxx is my password, hehehe)

All this seems fine.

If that does not work, and you want to test, go on with the shell mentionned above. (We suppose you finally connected that eth device to the network and got an IP).

You can manually mount remote Microsoft shares (btw, your W2K that shares files using MS's protocol is a SMB server... I definitely was not too clear.) Commands:

smbmount //192.168.1.2/PartImage /mnt/smbfs -o username=Pedigree\\Richard (sorry, real \ needed).

Good luck!

Regards

Natan

http://updater.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://updater.windowsdream.com/why_msi.html -- Understand why installing packaged MSI is better

[rikgale]

Hey Natan

After our talk on MSN this evening I shall do a quick summary for you, as I said I would.

After trying on a Marvell Yukon 88E8001/8003/8010 PCI Gigabit, and a RealTek 8139 NIC cards and discovering that these would not work with the distro provided.

Having a laptop with a Intel® PRO/100 VE in it helped as this was proved to be working with the distro provided.

An image was started to be copied over to the server machine, which seeemed to work, althought I was unable to stop it (Resorted to the power button)

So somethings to note/change/alter/ignore as you see fit.

1) Support for non-intel cards (I know that you said the distro supported lots of cards, but we are working on a 2/3 failure rate here at least) I'll try it on a forth computer later. Then I am out of computers. Possibly a more major thing than point 2, as this is going to rule out alot of the newer mobos with Marvell Cards and alot of the old machines as well

2) The ability to only save and restore seleceted Partitions on a harddisc.

3) Me getting a cheap and nasty PS2 keyboard might help as well (cheap and nasty PS2 keyboard made no difference, the key mappings are all odd)

Thats about as far as I got with testing, due to space constaints. When I figure out some more space I'll take it further.

Many many thanks for the time you spent this evening, I hope that you got as much out of it as me, and did not get home too late.

Regards

Rik

EDIT: Tried on 4th machine NIC Netgear FA310TX Fast Ethernet (NGRPCI) - It worked after a bit of prompting and checking of the syntax that you sent me.

I shall try and run a test this week from the Netgear machine as this has a small disc, and see if I can't presude my NAS to act as a SMB server (DiskStation DS-101) What do you think?

Edited December 12, 2005 by rikgale

[rikgale]

Hey Natan

Yes me again. I have been playing somemore and hit a few snags.

On the 4th Machine, the one with the Netgear NIC. I tried running PING again just now, entered all the info as I did last night and after entering the password and the possible folder for my backup, which I leave blank I get the error msg

* Found SRC: [/mnt/smbfs/]

!!! No Entity could be found

Any ideas? I am just about to try again on the Laptop.

Cheers

Rik

EDIT: OK got it to work, it was an isuue with the \ / <> keys that we had last night. I must rember to use / as that seems to work

EDIT2: trying to run it off my NAS, seems to be able to see the share but then throws an error when it starts to save the image. I may have messed up typing stuff in and will have a go again later, but the user of the computer wants it back for the time being. But I thought that I'd update you on Progress sofar:)

Edited December 13, 2005 by rikgale

[natan770]

Hi there!

Thank you Rik for this quality feedback. Seems to me you're on your way to have the NAS store the images. There are good chances that the user you used doesn't have enough rights to write on the share, in fact.

I'll compile a new kernel soon, with even more NIC drivers, so maybe your Marvel cards will be soon supported.

Regards

Natan

[rikgale]

Hey Natan

I may get a few hours 2morw am to work with the NAS and the netgear NIC computer and I'll post back my success etc...

If you could also stick in the Realtek drivers for the 8139 cards, i'd be over the moon. Also as many generic drivers as u can would be good as well as this will broaden the base on which ping can be used.

Once I get it all working and I have played about with it a bit and restored a few images. I'll try and provide some more detailed feed back.

I did have some other questions for you but I have forgotten them since I thought of them......

Cheers

Rik

[Andzha]

Hi,

At first thank you very much for nice tool,

After some successfull tryouts have some questions:

1. Are is possible to save connection settings aka server ip, share name, login infos, somewhere to make system bit more automated

2. About NIC support, are is possible to add UNDI driver, which would make ping working with almost any PXE-enabled mobos without worries about nic card drivers?

[natan770]

Hi,

At first thank you very much for nice tool,

After some successfull tryouts have some questions:

1. Are is possible to save connection settings aka server ip, share name, login infos, somewhere to make system bit more automated

2. About NIC support, are is possible to add UNDI driver, which would make ping working with almost any PXE-enabled mobos without worries about nic card drivers?

Hi there;

Yes, it is possible to save the credentials. But, because this is a RAMdisk image, you have to write this information within the package. To do this, you need to :

• - un-gzip initrd.gz
  - mount initrd (it's an ISO)
  - modify the file etc/rc.ping (it's a Perl script) that is within the rootfs.tar.bz2 archive file
  - umount initrd
  - gzip initrd.
  

You will need an unix system to do this. But, hey! you've got the PING Linux. If you've got enough RAM, you can follow all these steps and modify rc.ping accordingly to your needs. This point definitely needs to find its way in the Howto, I think.

Regards

Natan

[Bachus]

Interesting project you've got going here. I just have one question...does PING support NFS shares?