July 2004 - Udpcast

Buggy tg3 ethernet
by Donald Teed 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

The option of ipappend 1 in the default file and retransmission of HELLOs in udp-sender (--rexmit-hello-interval) has been valuable to getting udpcast working with the Dell notebooks we have with Broadcom 5700 series ethernet. Today, with a slightly newer broadcom chipset appearing in the most recent shipment, we noticed that udp-receiver was intermittantly not showing the "hit any button to start transfer" message. With some trial and error I found that if I watched the tail of /var/log/message on the receiver (server) and waited for the messages on TX and RX flow control to complete before running udp-receiver, it would always initiate a good connection. If I had started the udp-receiver prior to the TX/RX flow control appearing in the message log (in which case there was no "hit any key" message), I could ^C the receiver, run it again and it would signify the ready state with 100% success. In conclusion, we have a workaround of starting udp-receiver after a few seconds past the client PXE machine booting and showing the udp-sender status ready (but not yet "hit any key..."). Another solution would be if udp-receiver also supported --rexmit-hello-interval. It isn't a flaw in the udpcast system but a kludge for a network device that is proving itself to be sluggish in initialization in general. --Donald Teed

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Zero-izing windows drive
by cmonster＠icehouse.net 29 Jul '04

29 Jul '04

Please send the folowup question to the group as well. I don't know how to do it in Windows. Glad to help, Lee -----Original Message----- From: cmonster(a)icehouse.net [mailto:cmonster@icehouse.net] Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 10:47 PM To: Lee Kransen Subject: RE: [Udpcast] Image size bigger that actual space used Thanks for the reply. I kind of thought it might something like that. These are widows systems I am imaging. How would I zero-ize the drive it windows? Quoting Lee Kransen <lee(a)servision.net>: > 1. Although 2.5/20 is currently in use it could be that much of the rest of > the 20GB was once written to and now does not contain strictly 0000000's. In > this case the compression will not be as great as it could be. You may want > to use the suggested procedure for Zero-izing your disk before turning it > into a compressed image. This will have to be done for each partition on the > disk. > > ----------------------------------------------- > On the live system, just create a huge file: > > dd if=/dev/zero of=filler-file > > After a while, the dd will error out with a "disk full" error. > > Then, do a couple of syncs, and remove the file. > > sync > sync > rm filler-file > ----------------------------------------------- > > 2. lzop is designed for speed and not compression. Try setting the > compression level to -7, -8, or -9 for better compression. > > Lee > > > -----Original Message----- > From: udpcast-bounces(a)udpcast.linux.lu > [mailto:udpcast-bounces@udpcast.linux.lu] On Behalf Of cmonster(a)icehouse.net > Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 4:36 PM I am having a problem with the compressed size of the drive being far larger than the size that is really used (I.E. 2.5 gigs used but image size of 9 gigs). I found a program called sdelete and tried using it to cleanise the unused space. But every time I run the udpcast to remake the image after using sdelete it is even bigger than before! Any one have any ideas? > To: udpcast(a)udpcast.linux.lu > Subject: [Udpcast] Image size bigger that actual space used > > > > I have been trying to send an image to my server. The hard drive on the > computer > that I am sending from is 20 gig with 2.5 used. I turn on lzop compession > and > send the image to the server. But the image file endes up being 8.2 gigs. > Any > idea why it would be that big? > > Thanks again for your help > Kevin > _______________________________________________ > Udpcast mailing list > Udpcast(a)udpcast.linux.lu > http://udpcast.linux.lu/mailman/listinfo/udpcast > >

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Cloning Live Machine
by Lee Kransen 29 Jul '04

29 Jul '04

In my scenario I would like to run DHCP and TFTP on one machine and use a second running machine as the sender. Is this possible to do with UDPCast? This would mean copying a live (online) machine, is that a problem? How would I set this up? Thanks

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Image size bigger that actual space used
by cmonster＠icehouse.net 28 Jul '04

28 Jul '04

I have been trying to send an image to my server. The hard drive on the computer that I am sending from is 20 gig with 2.5 used. I turn on lzop compession and send the image to the server. But the image file endes up being 8.2 gigs. Any idea why it would be that big? Thanks again for your help Kevin

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poweroff not doing the job
by Donald Teed 20 Jul '04

20 Jul '04

I've considered adding a feature to power off the client machines after imaging, and I've seen that the busybox halt and poweroff don't actually shut off the power, at least on a Dell D600 notebook with the 2.4.26 kernel. On the busybox mailing list, someone discussed using: echo 5 > /proc/acpi/sleep This seems to work OK in my testing from the busybox shell within udpcast session, without actually running an imaging session. In the case of nothing being mounted, is there any potential for damage to the client system by powering off this way inside udpreceiver.post? I can't think of any problems, but I thought I should check if anyone knows of anything that might not be flushed from memory, etc., immediately after a udp-receiver operation. --Donald Teed

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Udpcast is great..but need some help
by cmonster＠icehouse.net 19 Jul '04

19 Jul '04

This is a great product! I have already used it a bunch, I imaged 59 computers on friday in an an hour an half. But I have some questions. Question 1 Most of my machines have the same hardware, but some have had hard drives replaced. so some are bigger... If I go from a big hard drive to a smaller one I get and error but it seems to work just fine. But if I go from a smaller hard drive to a bigger one it says transfre complete. But when I restart the the computer (windows 98) I get invalid system disk. Is there any way or trick to be able to copy from a smaller drive to a bigger one? Question 2 I have been trying to use the command line tool so I can store images on a server. I have a computer running Fedora core 2 and I can start the recieving process by typing in udp-reciever -f pIII98. It says the following: udp-reciever 2004-05-31 UDP reciever PII98 at 10.4.222.79 on eth0 On the sending machine I boot off the cdrom and start the sender, this is what it says: UDP sender 2004-05-31 using mcast address 234.4.222.2 compressed UDP sender for /dev/hda/ at 10.4.222.2 on eth0 Broadcasting control to 10.255.255.255 Both should be set to use the default port of 9000, but they won't connect. They will both just sit there like this. If I boot them both off the cd they will connect just fine. I am only not able to connect when using the command line tool. If anybody could help me out that would be great. Thanks Kevin Christensen Kuna Joint school district Kuna Idaho

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Making filesystems
by Lee Kransen 08 Jul '04

08 Jul '04

As part of our production procedure we need to create a disk with a large, mostly empty, /home partition (hda6). In addition to this, the size of the disks that we copy to varies. It would be best for us to create the partition and file system using mke2fs and then fsck in an udpreceiver.post file. However BusyBox does not support mke2fs of fsck. Is there another way to do this? Best regards, Lee

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UDPCast with Images
by Lee Kransen 05 Jul '04

05 Jul '04

Hi, I am new to multicasting and to UDPCast. I was wondering if it is possible to save a complete system to an image file, preferable lzoped or gziped, and then multicast the image to a number of computers using UDPCast? Best regards, Lee Kransen

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