Boot menu

This page describes the menu that you get when you boot from udpcast media. You may download the relevant images from here
  1. Insert the CD-Rom, and boot your computer from it.
  2. After the system is booted up (a little more than a minute), you get dropped into the menu system
  3. Choose language (german, french or english), screen color (color or monochrome), your keyboard layout.
  4. Chose network card module and enter its parameters
  5. Chose network configuration. You may either use automatic configuration via bootp (if a DHCP/Bootp server is running on your network), or you may manually enter the IP address and netmask
  6. Choose a Port for the UDP Cast (default is 9000).

  7. Chose the device where the image will be copied to/copied from. Default is the entire disk (/dev/hda). You can obtain a speedier copy by only copying the partition you need (Example: /dev/hda1).

    N.B. Copying just one partition (rather than the whole disk) may not be enough in the following situations:

    • If you installed Lilo in the master boot record (possible inconsistencies between MBR (not copied) and info in the partition (copied))
    • If the target machine has never been installed (empty partition table)

    Caution: Make sure you chose the same device on senders and receivers.

  8. Enter any additional udp-sender or udp-receiver parameters, if needed (such as, for example --broadcast if you have an Ethernet card not supporting multicast). Basic options such as file, pipe, portbase, etc. need not be entered, these have already been covered by the dialogs before. Yes, this means that in the vast majority of cases, you can leave the "additional parameters" box blank.
  9. Chose one of the four modes of operation:
    Receiver
    This machine will act as a receiver (copy) of the data. Data that is received will be considered as uncompressed data.
    Receiver (gzip compressed)
    This machine will act as a receiver (copy) of the data. Data that is received will be considered as gzip compressed data, and the receiver will first uncompress uding gzip it before writing it to disk.
    Receiver (lzop compressed)
    This machine will act as a receiver (copy) of the data. Data that is received will be considered as lzop compressed data, and the receiver will first uncompress uding lzop it before writing it to disk. Lzop is a less CPU-intensive compressor, and is more suitable for udpcast than gzip, especially in fast network/low CPU power situations.
    Sender
    This machine will act as the sender (source, orginal) of the data. Data will be sent uncompressed
    Sender (gzip compressed)
    This machine will act as the sender (source, orginal) of the data. Data will be sent compressed with gzip.
    Sender (lzop compressed)
    This machine will act as the sender (source, orginal) of the data. Data will be sent compressed with lzop.
    N.B. Compressed operation cuts down on the data to be transferred, but is unfortunately rather computation-intensive (especially with gzip):
    • Use compressed operation if you have data that is very compressible (i.e. a hard disk that is mostly empty), fast processors (minimum 200 Mhz Pentium) and a (relatively) slow network (i.e. 10Mbps Ethernet).
    • Use uncompressed operation if you have data that is not very compressible (a hard disk that is almost full and contains mostly executables), slow processors (slower than 166 Mhz Pentium) or a fast network (100 Mbps Ethernet).
  10. If you use the CD edition (or network boot), at this point you're ready for transmitting/receiving. If you use an USB stick, you now get the opportunity to save your choices to the media.
  11. The system asks you whether you want to save the current configuration. If you answer yes here, the answers to all the preceding questions are saved to the USB stick (make sure that it is still in the drive). That way, you don't need to answer those questions again when you use this boot disk again. For more details, see below.
  12. When the system is ready, it displays UDP Receiver at IP Address
  13. When all participating systems (the sender and the receivers) are ready, press Enter on any one of them to start the transfer.

Saving the config to the udpcast USB stick

It is possible to set up the UDPcast boot disk in such a way that it skips all questions, and directly starts the receiver or the sender. In order to do make a customized media, boot the media normally, answer all questions normally, and answer yes to the last question ("Save configuration"). The next time you boot this disk, the system skips all the questions and reuses the answers from this session. This way, you can prepare a USB stick for each type of machines that you need to install.

N.B. As the action (send or receive) is now "hard coded" on the disk (along with the rest of the configuration), you need to make two different kinds of sticks: sender and receivers.

Copying customized udpcast disks

The easy way:

Insert source disk
cat /dev/fd0 >image
Insert target disk
cat image >/dev/fd0

The fast way:

Insert source disk
mcopy a:udpcfg.txt .
Insert an unconfigured udpcast boot disk
mcopy udpcfg.txt info a:

Use the first method if you do not yet have other udpcast boot disk ready. Use the second method if you do already have unconfigured udpcast disks, or differently configured udpcast disks that you wish to update with the new configuration.