[ale] Ghosting software

[Jeff Hubbs]

Eric -

I don't disagree with the letter of what you're saying, but what I was
trying to say in so many words is that the process relies on a big
assumption that isn't necessarily true - namely, that the target machines
are all identical.  The question then becomes, to what extent do the tiny
differences between machines matter to the OS/drivers?  What I recall
reading some time ago reagrding Ghost on NT is that this guy took some
superficially identical machines, did identical NT installs on them, and
observed minor differences in some file or files that were created and he
was able to trace the differences to chipset variations.  He then surmised
that had one variation of machine been Ghosted to another, there would be a
very clear mismatch between what was in the box and what the OS thought was
in the box and that in some cases, that could lead to serious flakiness.
The nature of this pathology would be such that yes, there could be times
where you could Ghost 100 machines from 1 and never ever have a problem -
but there also could be times where you do the exact same thing and all 100
machines bathe their users in deadly blue rays on a regular basis.  

What makes this problem rather inscrutable is that it would be hard to tell
that Ghosting was the root cause.  Some people get BSODs rather regularly
and live with it, but I have to ask myself, how many techies routinely Ghost
Win98 machines that regularly BSOD (like my officemate's) and they'll never
make the connection.

- Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Z. Ayers [mailto:eric.ayers at mindspring.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 8:03 PM
> To: Jeff Hubbs
> Cc: Carl Forsell; Nassar Carnegie; ale at ale.org
> Subject: RE: [ale] Ghosting software
> 
> 
> It has its place...  If you need to 'manufacture' dozens of boxes for
> a single order, you want something like that.
> 
> 
> -Eric.
> Jeff Hubbs writes:
>  > I'll also take the opportunity to throw in my standard 
> Ghost admonition:
>  > 
>  > IMHO, you're playing with fire whenever you take a Ghost 
> image from one
>  > machine and implant it into another, regardless of OS and 
> regardless of how
>  > "identical" you think the target machine is to the source 
> machine.  I would
>  > surmise that the risk is less with Win95/98 than it would 
> be with NT or
>  > Linux, but if the target machines start acting weird every 
> once in a while -
>  > i.e., locking up, oopsing, or giving you the ever-helpful 
> "Aiee,..." (I love
>  > that one!) it could be because a minor difference in rev 
> level within
>  > chipset, etc. existed that might have otherwise made the 
> running kernel,
>  > driver, module, etc. do something a little differently.  
> One could mitigate
>  > this a bit by recompiling kernel and modules post-Ghost, 
> I'd imagine.
>  > 
>  > When I was researching the use of Ghost for NT across a 
> set of supposedly
>  > identical desktops, one thing I noticed was that a couple 
> of them had
>  > different CD-ROM drives from the rest.  I thought that 
> this would be a
>  > difference that probably wouldn't amount too much, but it 
> made me wonder
>  > what less-obvious differences might exist that could 
> really cause a problem
>  > that would be nearly impossible to actually attribute to 
> one specific thing?
>  > 
>  > Having said that, do any of you think I'm being paranoid 
> about this?  I'm
>  > open to flames.
>  > 
>  > - Jeff
>  > 
>  > > -----Original Message-----
>  > > From: Carl Forsell [mailto:cforsell at roman.net]
>  > > Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 1:25 PM
>  > > To: Nassar Carnegie; ale at ale.org
>  > > Subject: Re: [ale] Ghosting software
>  > > 
>  > > 
>  > > I recently used Norton Ghost 5.1D (personal edition) to ghost 
>  > > a couple of
>  > > SuSE machines.  Price was about $60.00 or so.
>  > > If you look back at the ALE archives about a week ago, we had 
>  > > a dsicussion
>  > > concerning alternatives...
>  > > -----Original Message-----
>  > > From: Nassar Carnegie <nassar at linuxgeneralstore.com>
>  > > To: ale at ale.org <ale at ale.org>
>  > > Date: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 1:10 PM
>  > > Subject: [ale] Ghosting software
>  > > 
>  > > 
>  > > >Does anyone know of any ghosting software for Linux/FreeBSD?
>  > > >
>  > > >--
>  > > >-----
>  > > >Nassar Carnegie
>  > > >nassar at linuxgeneralstore.com
>  > > >Linux General Store
>  > > >--
>  > > >To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe 
>  > > ale" in message
>  > > body.
>  > > >
>  > > 
>  > > --
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