Anyone use PING for imaging?

[Fivetwelve]

Well I'm sure some people do, but having looked through a couple of pages of this deployment forum and seeing how many people are having Ghost/WDS/RIS related woes, I couldn't help but think - have you tried PING? I had a quick look but couldn't see any stickies related to it.

 

In a nutshell it stands for "Partimage Is Not Ghost" (PING), and is the GNU/Linux answer to Ghost, except its free and I find it much more reliable and effective. Just to give a quick overview of how it works, naturally you'd sysprep your image template, and then you can either boot from a PING cd (only a 30MB ISO), or setup a USB boot pen (simple to do and I even made a script that will do it for you - contact me for details), or a TFTPD32 PXE server (dead simple to set up). Then you can image from a partition to file, partition to an ordinary network share if you have an image server etc. In my environment, images are around 3-5GB in size, and all in all it takes about 15 minutes to make an image and about 10 or less to restore one.

 

Feel free to post any comments you have here, or if you would like to know more, I can provide information about it. I know I may have jumped the gun here as some people already use it but...oh well

[ssx4life]

FOG does so much more than PING or any GPL based imaging program. Clonezilla is a close second for standalone 1:1 imaging.

 

FOG :: A Computer Cloning Solution - Home

[mac_shinobi]

FOG does so much more than PING or any GPL based imaging program. Clonezilla is a close second for standalone 1:1 imaging.

 

FOG :: A Computer Cloning Solution - Home

 

Ive come across ping but FOG seems to be a lot better and same again close second for clone zilla

[soveryapt]

Another vote for FOG .. and here's a link to a helpful install guide I found on the SpiceWorks site ..

 

FOG Server Install (Free Opensource Ghost) - Spiceworks Community

 

[Fivetwelve]

HAHA cheers for these links guys!

 

Thats what I love about forums. You mention what you think then someone else comes along and says "ah no here's what you want to do, its much better!"

 

I will look into these links - but for now I will continue using PING as we have a lot of images in PING format... unless they are universally compatible between the two?

[ssx4life]

Doubtful, but I'm sure it would be easy to move them to fog.

 

I've dealt with FOG for the last oh.... 4 months or so and we came from Altiris / Norton Ghost / Acronis (yes all 3 and a mish mash )

 

First step is to go into your system's bios and enable PXE boot as the first option

Also enable Wake on Lan

Don't forget to set your computer to use legacy or SATA mode via the bios (ACHI doesn't play nice with fog or linux imaging)

 

Second step is to take the sysprep'ed images in PING or any other format you can image the pc with your software and then TURN the unit off.

 

PXE boot the computer to FOG and do a quick registration.

 

Turn the pc off again (don't let it boot into windows)

 

Go into the FOG console and create a new image and link it to your new pc. Even make a new group if you want to get specific and save time going forward.

 

From the web console you then want to UPLOAD an image to the server on that pc, which will wake on lan the computer, pxe boot linux, and start uploading the image.

 

Vollia! You now have an image that is in FOG.

 

I'm trying to write documentation on FOG and also work on video's for all the cool things that FOG supports. So if you need any help hit me up @ any time via IM / PM / etc.

 

--ssx--

[ssx4life]

I forgot to mention you can also do all sorts of other cool things with FOG, and even incorperate it into your existing setup and deployment methods.

 

For example....

 

FOG uses a TFTP server which will allow you to boot up and access any 3rd party software over the network if used and set up properly.

 

I've used the fog PXE server to image computers with the following software.

 

Norton Ghost

BartPE / WinPE /etc. (cd .iso boot)

Acronis True Image (cd .iso boot)

Altiris RapiDeploy

Clonezilla (cd .iso boot)

 

etc.

 

This is mainly achieved by using netbootdisk and then having that load free-dos which then enables networking capabilities, and launches what ever program I want.

 

I even have my current FOG server set up to launch / execute applications such as DBAN / hardware diagonstics / etc.

 

It's pretty amazing stuff, and if I get any free time I plan on fully documenting this for everyone.

 

If you want to see an example of my fog server in action check out the .zip file attached in this other thread - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/42667-usb-ghost-boot-common-nic-drivers.html

 

TFTP will allow you to boot almost anything (possibly even ping? never ever used it so it's up in the air on that one)

 

Again if you need help hit me up on google chat - [email protected]