28 Aug
2004
28 Aug
'04
2:26 a.m.
Hi,
I am interested in finding a solution to multicast a very large 21GB image
onto our new G5 machines. We have got quite a few to do so ASR via
Firewire is no longer an acceptable solution. Has anyone ever done this
before and been successful?
Background
----------
I spoke with an Apple System Engineer in Canada and he has informed me
that Apple doesn't have a multicast solution in place yet. However, the
developers at Apple HQ have heard our cry all the way from here and may be
working on finding a solution possibly in the near future.
Since I found this software last night I haven't had much time to play
with it and workout all the compilation errors (missing and incomplete
libraries for OSX). We have a Gb network for two brand new labs to be
setup and running in a week. So I am really trying to find a more robust
solution as the image may be modified during a term for repairs or a
complete overhaul. For now our plan B is to use Carbon Copy Cloner from
http://www.bombich.com, which is working out to be the only stable
solution. Its a painfully slow process. One machine at a time.
Alternatively, we can NetBoot a few machines at a time and use ASR (Apple
Software Restore) but the disk isn't fast enough on our AFP shared drive
to distribute data to more than 4 clients at a time. This process takes
about 270-300 minutes to dump 21GB image on these clients since each
connection is a unicast.
Any help and comments are appreciated.
--
Rishi R. Arora
LAN Administrator
University of Toronto at Mississauga
28 Aug
28 Aug
4:40 a.m.
I'd like to see a way that udpcast could help
on the Mac. I don't know if it can be
made to work outside of the x86 platform.
Perhaps someone would have insights into how
to make that work, but given the time line
you have, it might be better to
look at all options immediately.
If I were faced with one week in which to make
this work, I'd consider a solution like g4u
("Ghost for Unix"), but running on Linux.
I assume there are bootable CDROMs of Linux
or even Mac OS available that will bring up
a *nix-like environment on the G5. If you add
the scripts from the g4u (uploaddisk
and slurpdisk) to such a bootable CDROM,
it provides for cloning that is similar to
udpcast except that it is operating over standard FTP transfers.
This can probably handle a dozen or more simultaneous
transfers. If you zero the unused portions of the
master disk first, you can get the image down in
size. In my case I have a 40 GB disk with dual
boot of Windows XP and Xandros Linux on the
master, and it gets down to a 3 GB image (same gzip
in g4u style cloning or udpcast). When transferring
something like that over FTP, the bottleneck is the
client hard drive, and so it takes quite a number
of FTP transfers before the network is saturated.
If you have gigabit network and Gb ethernet
devices in those G5s you might be able to clone
a good number of machines simultaneously over
the FTP based method.
I'm a big fan of udpcast, and would highly recommend
it for x86 cloning, but based on the little I know
about the options on the Mac, I'd seek out a bootable
CDROM and try to work with the scripts, which only
require dd, gzip, and ftp.
I'm not sure who makes a good live CD for the Mac - perhaps
Gentoo? If you want to proceed this way, I have
some scripts I've made work from Knoppix Linux
for this purpose - I can email them to you.
--Donald Teed
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Rishi R. Arora wrote:
Hi,
I am interested in finding a solution to multicast a very large 21GB image
onto our new G5 machines. We have got quite a few to do so ASR via
Firewire is no longer an acceptable solution. Has anyone ever done this
before and been successful?
Background
----------
I spoke with an Apple System Engineer in Canada and he has informed me
that Apple doesn't have a multicast solution in place yet. However, the
developers at Apple HQ have heard our cry all the way from here and may be
working on finding a solution possibly in the near future.
Since I found this software last night I haven't had much time to play
with it and workout all the compilation errors (missing and incomplete
libraries for OSX). We have a Gb network for two brand new labs to be
setup and running in a week. So I am really trying to find a more robust
solution as the image may be modified during a term for repairs or a
complete overhaul. For now our plan B is to use Carbon Copy Cloner from
http://www.bombich.com, which is working out to be the only stable
solution. Its a painfully slow process. One machine at a time.
Alternatively, we can NetBoot a few machines at a time and use ASR (Apple
Software Restore) but the disk isn't fast enough on our AFP shared drive
to distribute data to more than 4 clients at a time. This process takes
about 270-300 minutes to dump 21GB image on these clients since each
connection is a unicast.
Any help and comments are appreciated.
--
Rishi R. Arora
LAN Administrator
University of Toronto at Mississauga
_______________________________________________
Udpcast mailing list
Udpcast(a)udpcast.linux.lu
http://udpcast.linux.lu/mailman/listinfo/udpcast
11:53 a.m.
Hi Donald,
I have certainly given up on trying to find a multicast solution for this
week. I am preparing for the changes that will likely come right after
the school term starts in about 10 days. I can manage most of it using ARD
(Apple Remote Desktop) equivalent to NetOP for PCs but still want to be
able to do an image quickly if there was a need for it. For now I have a
student working in the lab switching firewire cables every hour to 8 new
machines so that's moving along slowly but is getting the job done.
I was thinking of doing exactly what you are suggested with a bootdisk but
going the long way around it. Yellow Dong Linux is one of the most
popular distributions for PPC Mac. This is my plan.
1. Install base system of Yellow Dog Linux with compiler tools on G5
2. Compile udpcast on G5 and on an exsiting Redhat Linux machine
3. Test run udpcast with these two machines
4. Make a NetBoot image of G5 machine with udpcast included (if possible)
and utilize Apple's NetBoot server component
5. NetBoot a few machines and start udpcast to receive on G5
This is my theory to put togther a working solution but we'll see how it
goes. One thing I am sure about is that developing a Linux based solution
is likely to be quicker than trying to port it to Apple's Darwin/FreeBSD.
I am going to look at "g4u" as well and may be that's even a faster
efficient solution for my needs. My image is already compressed at 21GB,
which extracts to about 29GB on disk. This image has about 15 pieces of
software including Adobe Premium CS and Final Cut Pro (I think) with all
the media files for editing movies and graphics. Unfortunately, it really
can't get any smaller than this.
I would certainly like to get hold of any scripts or tech notes that will
guide me to accomplish this task.
Sincerely appreciate any help you can provide.
Cheers!
--
Rishi R. Arora
LAN Administrator, Computing Services
University of Toronto at Mississauga
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Donald Teed wrote:
I'd like to see a way that udpcast could help
on the Mac. I don't know if it can be
made to work outside of the x86 platform.
Perhaps someone would have insights into how
to make that work, but given the time line
you have, it might be better to
look at all options immediately.
If I were faced with one week in which to make
this work, I'd consider a solution like g4u
("Ghost for Unix"), but running on Linux.
I assume there are bootable CDROMs of Linux
or even Mac OS available that will bring up
a *nix-like environment on the G5. If you add
the scripts from the g4u (uploaddisk
and slurpdisk) to such a bootable CDROM,
it provides for cloning that is similar to
udpcast except that it is operating over standard FTP transfers.
This can probably handle a dozen or more simultaneous
transfers. If you zero the unused portions of the
master disk first, you can get the image down in
size. In my case I have a 40 GB disk with dual
boot of Windows XP and Xandros Linux on the
master, and it gets down to a 3 GB image (same gzip
in g4u style cloning or udpcast). When transferring
something like that over FTP, the bottleneck is the
client hard drive, and so it takes quite a number
of FTP transfers before the network is saturated.
If you have gigabit network and Gb ethernet
devices in those G5s you might be able to clone
a good number of machines simultaneously over
the FTP based method.
I'm a big fan of udpcast, and would highly recommend
it for x86 cloning, but based on the little I know
about the options on the Mac, I'd seek out a bootable
CDROM and try to work with the scripts, which only
require dd, gzip, and ftp.
I'm not sure who makes a good live CD for the Mac - perhaps
Gentoo? If you want to proceed this way, I have
some scripts I've made work from Knoppix Linux
for this purpose - I can email them to you.
--Donald Teed
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Rishi R. Arora wrote:
Hi,
I am interested in finding a solution to multicast a very large 21GB image
onto our new G5 machines. We have got quite a few to do so ASR via
Firewire is no longer an acceptable solution. Has anyone ever done this
before and been successful?
Background
----------
I spoke with an Apple System Engineer in Canada and he has informed me
that Apple doesn't have a multicast solution in place yet. However, the
developers at Apple HQ have heard our cry all the way from here and may be
working on finding a solution possibly in the near future.
Since I found this software last night I haven't had much time to play
with it and workout all the compilation errors (missing and incomplete
libraries for OSX). We have a Gb network for two brand new labs to be
setup and running in a week. So I am really trying to find a more robust
solution as the image may be modified during a term for repairs or a
complete overhaul. For now our plan B is to use Carbon Copy Cloner from
http://www.bombich.com, which is working out to be the only stable
solution. Its a painfully slow process. One machine at a time.
Alternatively, we can NetBoot a few machines at a time and use ASR (Apple
Software Restore) but the disk isn't fast enough on our AFP shared drive
to distribute data to more than 4 clients at a time. This process takes
about 270-300 minutes to dump 21GB image on these clients since each
connection is a unicast.
Any help and comments are appreciated.
--
Rishi R. Arora
LAN Administrator
University of Toronto at Mississauga
_______________________________________________
Udpcast mailing list
Udpcast(a)udpcast.linux.lu
http://udpcast.linux.lu/mailman/listinfo/udpcast
2:01 p.m.
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Rishi R. Arora wrote:
I am going to look at "g4u" as well and may
be that's even a faster
efficient solution for my needs. My image is already compressed at 21GB,
which extracts to about 29GB on disk. This image has about 15 pieces of
software including Adobe Premium CS and Final Cut Pro (I think) with all
the media files for editing movies and graphics. Unfortunately, it really
can't get any smaller than this.
Just to be sure we have not misunderstood or we are missing details...
The disk on the master will not compress very well unless the unused
parts of the drive have been written with zeros. You can do this
from OS X as root user. For each partition containing your OS file system
(not for swap) you should fill it up with a bogus file containing zeros.
Zeroed raw data on the drive will compress very well.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/zero.bits
You don't need a bs or count value. Just let it run until it
hits the wall and fills the disk partition. Repeat for any
additional partitions. Then rm the file /zero.bits file.
You might already be doing this but I thought it was worth repeating
because many people reporting large image sizes have not done
this step. But in your case perhaps you really do have 20+ GB
of actual data on the drive due to the media editing suites or
related sample files. Sorry if I'm repeating the known info,
but I didn't want you to miss this.
--Donald Teed
5:18 a.m.
Rishi R. Arora wrote:
I am interested in finding a solution to multicast a
very large 21GB image
onto our new G5 machines. We have got quite a few to do so ASR via
Firewire is no longer an acceptable solution. Has anyone ever done this
before and been successful?
Well, no. However, I suspect you can get a Linux machine running on
your network with the image you want to udpcast. Gentoo seems to have
live CDs available here:
http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc/livecd/g5/
You may have to compile the udpcast client for PPC and put it in the
image (or copy it onto each machine after booting -- yeech). Then it
should be a straightforward 'dd' to /dev/sda (or whatever).
I don't think Linux can mkhfs+ so you're probably stuck with dd(/gzip).
Otherwise, you could create the filesystem, install the bootloader,
and then udpcast and unpack a tarfile.
rgds,
Chris
noon
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for the tip on Live CD for G5. It will surely save me some time
preparing the custom boot disk I was going to make for the G5 machines.
Since I can have a headstart with this CD, I can work on compiling udpcast
on a G5 machine.
Cheers!
--
Rishi R. Arora
LAN Administrator, Computing Services
University of Toronto at Mississauga
Well, no. However, I suspect you can get a Linux
machine running on
your network with the image you want to udpcast. Gentoo seems to have
live CDs available here:
http://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/ppc/livecd/g5/
You may have to compile the udpcast client for PPC and put it in the
image (or copy it onto each machine after booting -- yeech). Then it
should be a straightforward 'dd' to /dev/sda (or whatever).
I don't think Linux can mkhfs+ so you're probably stuck with dd(/gzip).
Otherwise, you could create the filesystem, install the bootloader,
and then udpcast and unpack a tarfile.
rgds,
Chris
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5 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Christopher Curtis -
Donald Teed -
Rishi R. Arora