Hello all,
I've never used UDPCast but I've been ask to come up with a solution to image 20 computers at once in a training room.
I figured I could have one computer set as a server and all others set to boot off the server, this way they would boot and receive only when the server computer was powered on.
My problem is that each computer will have to have a unique name. If I broadcast the same image over the network how can I change the computer names without sitting at each individual computer, I'm trying to make this completely automated.
Doug Dougherty
This is not difficult. In my lab I do the image, and have a program in the startup that checks the machines MAC address, and looks up a file, and then modifies the registry and reboots the machine. This way the machines then have a uniq name...
Another option is a program called wsname that does something similar, but it uses the ip address.
How do the machines get there IP addresses? What OS are you running?
As a note: I recently had another teachers lab that is getting hit by viruses the get past the norton antivirus from flash drives. I split the drive into a 40GB XP partition, and an linux ext2 30GB partition using gparted. Then I made an image of the XP partition onto the ext2 partition using g4l with ntfsclone option. Makes about a 6GB image file, and then can be restored in about 6 minutes from the ext2 partition. Have setup grub4dos on the XP partition, so the boot gives option to boot windows or use grub.
The grub menu has g4l, udpcast (send), udpcast (receive), and udpcast. The g4l can be used to make new images or restore a single machine. The udpcast options can be used to image the whole disk to all the other machines. Update one system, and make new image, then udpcast send that machine to all the others.
My own lab has machines with 98, XP, and Linux, and I have the same thing, but using the regular grub to give the boot menu.
Don't know what kind of drives and how much space you are using on the disk, but that might be an option.
On 1 Dec 2008 at 16:05, Doug Dougherty wrote:
Hello all, I’ve never used UDPCast but I’ve been ask to come up with a solution to image 20 computers at once in a training room. I figured I could have one computer set as a server and all others set to boot off the server, this way they would boot and receive only when the server computer was powered on. My problem is that each computer will have to have a unique name. If I broadcast the same image over the network how can I change the computer names without sitting at each individual computer, I’m trying to make this completely automated. Doug Dougherty
+----------------------------------------------------------+ Michael D. Setzer II - Computer Science Instructor Guam Community College Computer Center mailto:mikes@kuentos.guam.net mailto:msetzerii@gmail.com http://www.guam.net/home/mikes Guam - Where America's Day Begins +----------------------------------------------------------+
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu (Original) Number of Seti Units Returned: 19,471 Processing time: 32 years, 290 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes (Total Hours: 287,489)
BOINC@HOME CREDITS SETI 6,908,030.0194 | EINSTEIN 2,140,362.2009 | ROSETTA 698,331.9279
-
Doug Dougherty -
Michael D. Setzer II