A new alpha release of udpcast is ready on http://udpcast.linux.lu/20030524
It fixes a bug with network modules which were not directly in the
drivers/net directory, but rather in one of its
subdirectories. Impacted were e100, e1000, tulip, some pcmcia drivers,
and some wireless drivers.
Moreover, the new version now supports the lzop compressor, which is
faster than gzip.
There is now also support for ipmac files to make it possible to
"automatically" attribute IP addresses to the various receivers even
without a DHCP server.
For this, simply place an ipmac.txt file into the root of the boot
floppy, whith the mac to ip mapping.
Example:
# Udpcast IP/Mac association file
00:5B:56:4b:42:9a 10.0.0.176
00:50:56:40:42:97 10.0.0.177
00:50:56:40:42:98 10.0.0.178
This means that the machine with the MAC address 00:5B:56:4b:42:9a
should get IP 10.0.0.176, etc.
Have fun,
Alain
I am planning on using udpcast to do linux installs on the computer
systems we manufacture. But I have a couple of questions.
We have machines that come with different sizes of hard drives. 20, 40
and 80 gigs. In the past we had a script we would run on a duplicating
machine that would dd a 6 gig installation with a small swap and then
run parted to resize for the appropriate drive. I created a script that
will grep /proc/ide/hdc/geometry and determine what size drive it is so
it could run the correct parted command.
Now we want to be able to do duplication in much bigger numbers and
after lots of research I have decided on udpcast. Here is where my
problem is. We tested a 5 machine duplication on a 10/100 switch
seperated from our network with the 20 gig drives. It took around an
hour. So we figure that that time will only double when we move to 40
gig and the double again for 80 gig.
What I would like to do is just transfer the 6gig install and then run
parted like before to resize the partitions. I would also like it to use
my drive sensing script so that no user intervention is required. I had
made a special knoppix boot disk that would auto boot and run my parted
scripts but that would require us to use more than one cd. My boss wants
it to be really easy, so that the guys who build the system can just pop
the cd in and walk away, come back in 30 minutes and everything is done.
no commands or anything necessary.
I know this should be able to be done but honestly I have no idea how.
What do you guys think?
--
Chris Locke
Stratitec IT
I'm a big fan of the UDPCast application. I used it
on Monday to clone a computer lab on my campus. The
lab has 25 pc's and it only took around 2 hours to
clone the whole lab.
I am having a problem though. We recently purchased
new PC's with Gigabit network cards (Intel E1000). I
can't get UPDCast to work with our new NIC's. I've
tried to build UDPCast with the e1000.o module, but I
wasn't successful. I really don't know enough about
Linux to know where I went wrong, but I think it's
something to do with the driver being written for a
different kernel then the UDPCast kernel.
I just hoping someone else has built a Boot Disk with
the e1000.o module and could send me instructions or
the disk.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Any
help is appericated.
Ian
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Hi Alain,
When I am trying to cmpile the sources
(udpcast-200317.tar.gz) it is complaing about a file
names "libb_udpcast.h". There is no file with this
name in the sources provided. I guess a function names
xmalloc() in the pregram needs this file.
the rpm version and CD version they just seem to be
fine. I just wanted to coney this message to you.
Thanks,
SAI
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The 20030517 release is now ready, and can be found at the following URLs:
http://udpcast.linux.lu/20030517
Here a small summary of the changes of udpcast itself:
- min-clients/min-wait/max-wait/nokbd flags for unattended sender operation
- fix for "press any key" (it's now really any key, not just return)
- keyboard start also works when getting data file from stdin (by
opening /dev/tty) (unless --nokbd is specified, of course...)
- misc bugfixes (robustness against bad packets, ...)
And here are the changes for the boot loader:
- it's no longer based on the SuSE boot disks. This should make it
easyer to compile for those of you who don't have access to a SuSE
system.
- The new system also makes it easyer to upgrade to new kernels.
- There is now a boot image maker, which makes it easyer to build
boot floppies with exactly those network modules that you need
- Single floppy boot for most network cards
- autodetection of PCI network cards
- Support for PXE and Etherboot
After a bit of testing I'll move it to the main page.
Regards,
Alain
Well we have overcome our unknown problem with udp-casting to a file.
Just for a reminder, we were having troubles with Image files getting
bigger than 2 Gig using the '-f' option. The problem was not our file
system, we tried several different, nor did our Kernal not support LFS.
The workaround started with trying to split the file into 2 Gig portions
then 'cat' them back together into one big file, but then we couldn't
send the file, we got an error message saying the file was to big. So
we came up with the following workaround:
To receive to a file from a regular udp-sender piped through lzop or
gzip:
udp-receiver > filename.lz
To send the image file we use:
udp-sender --autostart 1 -p "cat filename.lz"
The autostart option is important because with our system for some
reason we can not start it manually and we cannot pipe it using '<'
because it freezes the program, but by auto starting it gets around that
for us.
We really love udp-cast, we have compared it to several other
programs some under the GPL and some not, and this is the best and
fastest for what we need. My complements to you Alain.
Lance Grover
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Hi.
I'm evaluating the feasibility to use udp-cast as a reliable multicast file
transfert protocol over a satellite link in order to distribute spooled
db's differences.
Do you know any application of udp-cast over satellite links?
Are there any statistic model that better describe the reliability of udp-cast?
What about udp-cast and the emerging pgm protocol (aka Tibco).
Thanks a lot in advance for your interest and answers,
GM
#include <disclaimer.h>
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Just a simple question from a simple user. Lance
Grover was talking about sending a disk to an image
file on a server. Well, I have an external hard drive
and I've been using dd and gzip to make images on the
external drive, but I was hoping somebody out there
could give me a quick tutorial on how to pipe udpcast
to do the same thing because dd is really slow.
Nate Sbar.
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Hi Friends,
I am trying to understand the UDPCast source code.
Can anybody explain me the producer/consumer concept
in the source code both on sender and receiver's side
??
Thanks ,
Sai
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I am really impressed with UDP-cast and I use it quite frequently. I
use it to copy partitions of aproximatly 70 Gig for so far up to 5
computers at a time, in the future that number will increase to about
30, if possible.
My colegues and I have set up a server where we would like to store
older versions of this image that we cast out. I tried first of all
just to send the image strait to a file, and that works if the file
stays below 2Gig but once it reaches that size the operation crashes,
stating the file is too big. I am a bit confused by this since we are
running Red Hat 8 and Large File support comes with it. A partial
workaround is by piping the split command through udp-cast, where I can
limit the splits to 2Gig each, this works good and I can even
concatinate the files into one large image file, but when the file is
already larger than 2Gig then I cannot send it with UDP-cast, I get a
message that the file is too large.
My question to you is: is there something in the code that is causing
the size issue or is it in a library that is used in the code. In other
words is there a good workaround?
Again I want to tell you thanks for the program and thanks for any
help you can give me.
-Lance Grover
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