Anyone need to clone their Sun machines?

[labrador]

I've worked with udpcast on x86 platform, and it is an amazing piece of
software that is far cheaper than the commercial alternative for cloning
a master system template onto dozens, hundreds or thousands of
x86 systems.

Udpcast can use a network boot on the machine that serves
as the master image or gold template to compress the
disk into an image file stored on another machine.
Later, network boots of any targets/clients can be done
to make clones of the master.

If moving a disk image onto just one machine, perhaps only as
a form of snapshot backup (ala ghost), there are scripts
such as those in the BSD based g4u project that can use
dd, ftp and gzip to clone a disk as well. I've developed
something like it that runs from a KNOPPIX CDROM on x86.

Either of these two system cloning approaches could be a
possibility, starting from net boot, based on the tftpboot
images linked from the sticky thread in this forum.

Currently I don't know of a network bootable system cloner
available on the Sparc platform, but if there is an interest in this,
I can look into possibly developing a solution.
Edit: SEE BELOW - IT HAS BEEN DONE.

Typically, a large disk with significant free space can be
zeroed in the unused parts and then efficiently compressed.
Udpcast can use gzip or lzop, while the dd/ftp method
typically uses gzip. The system serving as the udpcast
server or ftp server can be any platform (any Linux platform
for udpcast server).

Let me know if there is a demand for such a thing on Sparc,
or you have questions on the cloning solution. Maybe it
will be worthwhile doing.

[GenTimJS]

Consider this a statement of interest.

I've been trying to get my company over from x86 to sparc for a while now, and quick, standardised, installations and backups is one of thier big concerns. We use some windoze crapware which does what you described once per week cludgeomatically, and they want simmilar stuff on sparc, but I'm not aware of anything which does so cheaply ...
_________________
-Tim Smith

[labrador]

In case there is anyone out there in need of a solution for
cloning disks on the Sun Sparc, I am making it available now.

Here is a link to a guide on cloning Sun Sparc machines over
a network. It isn't an official Gentoo document, but it
is done in the Gentoo Guide style:

http://www.artistic.ca/dteed/tftpboot-udpcast

It contains instructions, a sample tftpboot image, and a link to
the package builder so you can make your own net bootable image
for disk cloning. I have not really created something from scratch
here - I'm just building udpcast into the tftpboot package made
available by Weeve.

Enjoy...