Best way to 'image' a Solaris 9 X86 install

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

Currently installing on an X86 laptop which we are planning to use a
jumpstart server.

After I've installed the first one I'd like to somehow 'image' the
whole system so that I can easily produce another jumpstart server
laptop (same hardware).

Whats the best way to do this?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

See man flarcreate (hope I spelled that correctly).

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Sep 23, 5:53 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber...@comcast.net>
wrote:

I thought about flar but dont I need to boot off install CD then and
point to flar?

What if I used a tool like acronis backup and restore? I know its
meant for windows machines but is there any reason why it wouldnt work
if it just takes a dump of the disk?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Something similar worked with "Norton Ghost". Years ago, I used it to
"clone" several PCs. The procedure was to install Solaris 8, make a
Ghost "image" and restore that image to several PCs. If I had a clue
then I would have used flarcreate and jumpstart. It worked in spite of
my ignorance and was faster than installing Solaris six or eight times.

Since I didn't know about sysunconfig, I edited all the files by hand. .
. . Barbarous but it got the job done and in less time than would have
been required to do the install by hand on each PC

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Sep 24, 10:07 am, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber...@comcast.net>

> been required to do the install by hand on each PC- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Hmmm. All the machines I've got to load would be standalone so it
makes no difference if they are identical in terms of configuration.

They're laptops which are used as jumpstart servers to load our other
solaris systems (single card Sun machines).

[Gary R. Schmidt]

I've used "Ghost 4 UNIX" to do this: <http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/>

Cheers,
Gary B-)

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Sep 24, 1:16 pm, "Gary R. Schmidt" <grschm...@acm.org> wrote:

Thanks Gary. I'll take a look at this...

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2009-09-24 09:44:01 +0100, "BertieB...@gmail.com"
<bertieb...@gmail.com> said:

> I thought about flar but dont I need to boot off install CD then and
> point to flar?

No. Well, you need to boot from *something* to point to the flar. But
the machine you're cloning *is* a jumpstart server, so you just set up
the second machine as a client, and install it using flar (which is a
supported method of jumpstarting boxes). Be careful however: this kind
of self-replication can result in criticality incidents.

[Richard B. Gilbert]

What do you mean by "criticality incidents"?

[YTC#1]

As you are using it for a JumpStart server, as suggested take a flar and
JumpStart the clients you want to image from that.

I can highly recommend the use of JET (JumpStart Enterprise Toolkit),
available from the Sun downloads page.

The manual is contained in a package called SUNWjetd, or you can go to
the wiki home for it.
http://wikis.sun.com/display/JET/Home

HTH

--
Bruce Porter
"The internet is a huge and diverse community and not every one is friendly"
http://www.ytc1.co.uk
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