[ale] Ghost for Linux

[Dylan Northrup]

A long time ago, (28.09.04), in a galaxy far, far away, James P. Kinney III...:

:=The absolute BEST tool I've ever seen for restoring systems to pristine
:=state was only for the Mac. It was called Assimilator. I kept 25+ Macs
:=with individual personalities and network settings identical otherwise.
:=The app would run on a reboot and delete extra files and add missing
:=files and keep the network setup as per the central database. 

There's an app that I'm looking at for some Windows boxes I'm setting up
called Deep Freeze.  It reverts a system to its original configuration on
restart.

:=I have been tinkering (on the backburner) with building a similar system
:=using rsync for Linux/Window$. The goal is/was to use it for a regular
:=backup process for an office full of similarly configured machines. Each
:=machine would have a hardlink to the master copy file unless the local
:=copy had changed. Thus the "image" would be a pile of hardlinks and pile
:=of differences files. This would chop loads off the storage space needed
:=for full backups of each machine. A restore would be a boot floppy that
:=calls a reversed rsync from the main server.

Hardlinks can't cross file systems.  A general way of doing this is using
depot which creates symbolic links on a local file system to another file
system. I've used it in several situations where I'd like to compile and
install applications once but use them on many different servers.

For distribution of files from a central repository there's cfengine. I've
heard good things about it, but haven't used it in production.

Depot is generally used for applications. Cfengine can be used for
applications and system files as well. Neither is completely applicable for
a bare metal system restore (ala Ghost) but they are both useful for their
niche.

:=It is (still) a pipe dream...not even vaporware...more like
:=fantasyware...

If it's a common problem, someone's probably already wrote the softwawre for
ya.  Everyone needs a wheel, no need to invent your own.

-- 
Dylan Northrup - docx at io.com - http://www.io.com/~docx/
"Harder to work, harder to strive, hard to be glad to be alive, but it's 
 really worth it if you give it a try." -- Cowboy Mouth, 'Easy'