cloning ubuntu on different hardware systems (x86)

[Michael R. Head]

On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 10:32 +0100, hagen van rissenbeck wrote:
> Hi, list,
> 
> I would like to know, if there's anybody out there with experiences in 
> cloning a pc from a configured ubuntu (with vmplayer, wine, multimedia, 
> java and proprietairy packages-> acroread etc.) to a new target pc station.
> 
> I did until today more than a dozen of installations for friends and 
> family, and that number (not of my family but of the installations ;-)) 
> grows up more and more...
> 
> The post-install configuration "from scratch" is really, really boring.
> 
> That's why I would like to clone from a master pc in the future...
> 
> 
> 
> My problem:
> -----------
> 
> I guess that cloning 1:1 won't work because of different hardware 
> components.

Mostly it should work, though you may have to reconfigure X if they have
a differnt video card and possibly tweak the network settings.

> 
> Will the strategy work, which is described below?
> 
> 1. Setup of a master system with defined numbers, filesystems and sizes 
> of partitions.
> 
> 2. Preparing the target pc (partitioning, formating)
> 
> 3. Cloning the partitions with partimage, g4u or something else (what 
> tool would be your choice?)

dd if=/dev/hda | bzip2 -c > /path/to/image/file

Or, using nbd on the remote machine:
dd if=/dev/nbd of=/dev/hda

I wrote about doing it here:
http://community.livejournal.com/ubuntu_users/22528.html

:-)

> 
> 4. Configuring and installing grub on the target-system.
> 
> 5. Booting the new system
> 
> 6. Configuring the new system's hardware from a terminal using (perhaps? 
> - I don't know, if that will work) a tool like dpkg-reconfigure or 
> debconf or something else???
> 
> 7. Setup of a 2nd, not privileged user. perhaps more...
> 
> Is there a chance for an agreable result?
> 
> 
> Thxs a lot for your help...
> 
> Hagen
> 
> 
-- 
Michael R. Head <burner at suppressingfire.org>
GPG: http://www.suppressingfire.org/~burner/gpg.key.txt [0x4C9DA1D0]
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