How to clone a sales demo system
From Gestaltipedia
How To Clone A Sales Demo System
This walk through will show you the steps needed to clone the drive of a sales demo system using G4L (Ghost 4 Linux). The first thing you will want to do is find our handy G4L bootable thumb drive and insert it into the system with the drive that you want to clone. Start and boot the system from USB, and you will see a screen that looks like this,
The default here is exactly what we want, so press the enter key. It will spit out a bunch of text, some startup screens, and then come to several disclaimer screens, just keep pressing enter to get through all this, more loading and countdown screens, and finally we get to the Basic Instruction screen.
All we need to do here is type, ‘g4l’ and press enter. Another disclaimer screen pops up, just press enter. Now we are actually in the G4L program itself, this is where the fun begins.
[[Image:systemghosting03.png|thumb|Even More G4L Options|200px|none| Even More G4L Options
Select RAW Mode (the default) and press enter, and since we are backing up and restoring to a network share, select Network use (the default). This brings us to another screen with a bunch of different options and settings. The only ones you have to worry about are options; D, F, G, H, I, and P.
Since we are only working with a few options to achieve a particular goal I will only cover those specific options. D : Config FTP – This is the IP address of the FTP server that we will be connecting to. F : Config filename – This is the name of the file we will be creating, give it something simple so you know what it is. Make sure to end the file name in .tar.gz. G : Toggle compression – Make sure to select GZip compression on this screen. P : Path to Image Directory – This is the name of the path on the FTP server that we are storing the file to. H : Backup – This tells G4L to start performing the backup operation, make sure to select this only after you have filled in the other options. I : Restore – This tells G4L to start performing the restore operation, make sure to select this only after you have filled in the other options.
Now that we have all our options specified it’s time to start the backup process, it’s as simple as selecting the ‘H’ option and pressing enter. This brings up the drive/partition to backup selection screen. Since we want the whole disk backed up we want to select the first option (sda) and press enter. A confirmation screen comes up asking if we are sure, this also gives us a chance to check if our settings are correct, if everything looks ok select Yes, and press enter.
After starting the backup process you may want to find something else to do for the next 30-40 minutes, if you have nothing else to do watching the process bar slowly fill up is always an option.
That’s all there is to it, we now have an image of the drive sitting on our FTP server, feel free to reward yourself with a round of congratulatory hopscotch.
How To Restore A Cloned Sales Demo System
Okay so now that the backup process is finished and tucked away on our FTP server we can now turn our attention to taking that backup and putting it on other systems. So lets cover that now.
Insert that handy G4L bootable thumb drive into our new Windows infested system and start it up, again make sure to boot from the USB drive. It will bring up the familiar G4L system boot screen. As before the default selection is the one we want.
And again it will spit out a bunch of text, some startup screens, and then come to several disclaimer screens, just keep pressing enter to get through all this, more loading and countdown screens, and finally we get to the Basic Instruction screen. As before all we need to do here is type, ‘g4l’ and press enter. Another disclaimer screen pops up, just press enter. And now we are in the G4L main menu.
Select the RAW Mode option, then Network use. The setup here is identical as our original backup settings, so use the same FTP server IP, filename on FTP, compression type, and Default directory that you used before.
This time around select the Restore option, this is option I. Doing this will bring up the Restore options screen.
In the backup and restore tests that I have done I have found that backing up the whole disk works best, typically this is shown as the first option (sda). After you have selected that lock in your choice by pressing OK, then it will come up to a confirmation screen, asking if you are sure. Tell it yes.
The restore process has begun, typically this will take just as long to complete as the backup process did. After it is done turn off the system, remove the handy G4L bootable thumb drive, and start the system up again. If all worked as planned then you should see a Ubuntu load screen instead of the Windows one, if you do then pat yourself on the back you finished this process on your first try (it took me several to get it to work correctly). But if for some reason the system locks or you receive kernel panics then you have to repeat restore process over again. It sucks I know, but things are not always set it and forget it in the Linux world.
