Announcing PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

[natan770]

I've been using Symantec Ghost a few times, with bootable DVDs and in a PXE environment as well. But I was upset as it's working in DOS mode (thus, I had to build bootable 3'5 disks with the right NIC DOS driver, burn them as DVD with disk emulation, etc.) And it required a Ghostcast server... And it's not free.

So, I've built a Linux ISO image (based on RIP), and added tools and scripts.

This is now a full-working project, completely free.

I've called it PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost). Features include:

# Backup and Restore partitions or files to a MS Network Shared directory;

# Backup and Restore the BIOS data as well;

# Either burn a bootable CD / DVD, either integrate within a PXE / RIS environment;

# Possibility to Blank local admin's password;

# Create your own restoration bootable DVD

=> See all features / download here: http://ping.windowsdream.com.

Hope it'll help some folks out there...

Please, if you give it a try, tell me how it's working for you.

Natan

http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

[The Black Cloud]

very nice project

thanks

[keytotime]

Very Impressive

[Shark007]

It would be nice if the PING documentation was downloadable

instead of requiring the user to read several online pages.

shark

[natan770]

It would be nice if the PING documentation was downloadable

instead of requiring the user to read several online pages.

shark

Yes. I'll put it all in a Word doc that will be available on the download page.

Thanks you all for your feedback !

[dtmunir]

wow! its amazing to see what kind of amazing projects keeping coming up on MSFN. keep it up guys!

Natan, best of luck with your efforts man. Hope your project receives the support it deserves. I for one, am going to try it out as soon as im done with my exams.

danish

[Bilou_Gateux]

I would like to try your utility. I have already a M$ server (with DHCP/TFTPD) with PXELinux installed.

Just give us some infos about the version of PXELinux / ISOLinux used by your project.

don't want to replace files of a working PXE Server allowing me to boot DOS bootdisk images and WinPE SDI image by downgrading some binaries. If you are using the latest binaries, it would be better to add a link on your web page to H Peter Anvin SYSLINUX - The Easy-to-use Linux Bootloader software. and give users instructions of required binaries in the downloaded archive.

Merci pour ce projet prometteur.

[hj_fr]

Good project

I will test it

[natan770]

I would like to try your utility. I have already a M$ server (with DHCP/TFTPD) with PXELinux installed.

Just give us some infos about the version of PXELinux / ISOLinux used by your project.

don't want to replace files of a working PXE Server allowing me to boot DOS bootdisk images and WinPE SDI image by downgrading some binaries. If you are using the latest binaries, it would be better to add a link on your web page to H Peter Anvin SYSLINUX - The Easy-to-use Linux Bootloader software. and give users instructions of required binaries in the downloaded archive.

Merci pour ce projet prometteur.

Hi everyone ! Thank you a lot for encouraging me, and for giving me your feedback.

Bilou, you don't need to replace your own pxelinux. In fact, you just have to create a directory like

D:\RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\PING\i386\templates\ and put inside :

- kernel

- initrd.gz

- pxelnux.0 (yours is certainly ok; just need to be recent)

- ping.sif

In ping.sif, you might write:

[OSChooser]
Description = "PING"
Help = "Partimage Is Not Ghost (RIP-based)"
LaunchFile = "Setup\English\Images\PING\i386\templates\pxelinux.0"
ImageType = Flat
Version="1.01"

and create a subdirectory, ...\templates\pxelinux.cfg (/!\ pxelinux.cfg is a directory) so to put inside :

- default (it's the name of the file)

In default, you might write :

DEFAULT rescue
PROMPT 0
LABEL rescue
KERNEL kernel
APPEND vga=normal devfs=nomount pxe ramdisk_size=40000 load_ramdisk=1 init=/linuxrc prompt_ramdisk=0 initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw noapic lba acpi=off

Cela devrait fonctionner...

Natan

http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

Edited November 28, 2005 by natan770

[natan770]

Any feedback out there ?

[Bilou_Gateux]

All done and i can load the image from my Windows 2003 Server with PXELinux to my PXEClient.

Although i have a working DHCP Server (i can get the image sent by TFTPD after PXE booting)

the wizard then try to connect to the LAN. but it doesn't succeed in getting an IP from DHCP server and ask me for an IP, a netmask, and a gateway IP.

Edited December 2, 2005 by Bilou_Gateux

[rikgale]

Hey Natan

I've a few (possibly noobie) type questions, and I hope that you can answer them.

1) Do I need a server version of Windows 2000 or can I just use Windows 2000 Pro for my RIS Server? I'll be going down the TFTPD32 from Ph. Jumin's web site route.

2) When installing TFTPD32, have I got to set it to be the DHCP Server? My router already does the DHCP funtion on my network and I dont wish to leave a computer on all the time to do DHCP, I'd prefer the router to do it.

Looks like a great little setup, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Regards

Rik

[natan770]

1) Do I need a server version of Windows 2000 or can I just use Windows 2000 Pro for my RIS Server? I'll be going down the TFTPD32 from Ph. Jumin's web site route.

If you're going to use TFTPD32, then any Windows version will do the trick (95/98/ME/2000/XP, in fact).

2) When installing TFTPD32, have I got to set it to be the DHCP Server? My router already does the DHCP funtion on my network and I dont wish to leave a computer on all the time to do DHCP, I'd prefer the router to do it.

There are two service components: DHCPD on one side, and TFTPD (trivial ftp) on another side. The problem is, they are linked in the boot sequence of your client. I mean, the DHCP server has the ability to tell the name of the boot file (in our case, pxelinux.0).

So, if you make use of another DHCPD, the clients will not know about your TFTP server.

Depending the OS running on your router, you might be able to setup a TFTPD on it. Can you tell me more about your router ?

Another way could be to burn a bootable CD with PING on it. It's quite easy and the procedure tells about it.

Looks like a great little setup, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Thanks. Hope we'll be able to start a good FAQ section with your router experience

Natan

http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

All done and i can load the image from my Windows 2003 Server with PXELinux to my PXEClient.

Although i have a working DHCP Server (i can get the image sent by TFTPD after PXE booting)

the wizard then try to connect to the LAN. but it doesn't succeed in getting an IP from DHCP server and ask me for an IP, a netmask, and a gateway IP.

Hi there; let's try to debug it.

Could you boot the PING, then type 'x' to get a shell, login as root, and type 'dhcpcd' ? this is supposed to get an IP. The success of the operation can be seen though the 'ifconfig' command. Can you tell me about the output ?

It could also be interesting to make sure the kernel has detected your network card. You can type the 'dmesg|more' command to get some information about it.

Natan

http://www.windowsdream.com -- Auto-update your PC with freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost

[Tomcat76]

Hey... You're advertising this as a Ghost replacement but I was a bit surprised when I read the features (and the additional features mentioned on your site), so I have a few questions....

1) Does it support local HDD to local HDD cloning (what I'm using Ghost for 99.99% of the time) and local partition to local partition?

2) "Partition and Format a disk before installing Windows"... Can it partition and format both NTFS 5.0 and NTFS 5.1? The formatting is necessary to have correct drive letters from the start, otherwise I need to pre-format in FAT32 LBA and reformat during Windows installation (as I'm doing now).

[natan770]

Hey... You're advertising this as a Ghost replacement but I was a bit surprised when I read the features (and the additional features mentioned on your site), so I have a few questions....

Wait... Partimage Is Not Ghost... Many people use the Windows GUI of Ghost, have a backup done out of a few clicks, and PING is probably not for them.

1) Does it support local HDD to local HDD cloning (what I'm using Ghost for 99.99% of the time) and local partition to local partition?

I did not code the GUI to propose it yet, but yes, you can do it (both things), from the Bash shell. You need to know about linux, in this case. There will be a PING GUI for this in the near future.

2) "Partition and Format a disk before installing Windows"... Can it partition and format both NTFS 5.0 and NTFS 5.1? The formatting is necessary to have correct drive letters from the start, otherwise I need to pre-format in FAT32 LBA and reformat during Windows installation (as I'm doing now).

I've coded this option because there is really something wrong with Microsoft's Windows setup concerning the choice of the Windows partition. To format with NTFS, I've used new unix utilities. They make no difference between NTFS 5.0 and 5.1, as NTFS 5.1 can be read on NT4. The differences only concern the way the OS makes use of the possibilities of NTFS. This means you can format with NT4 and use with Vista, format with Vista and use with NT4. But the latest Windows version you use, the more you get from NTFS.

Regards,

Natan

http://fr.windowsdream.com -- Mise à jour automatique de Windows avec des logiciels freeware/opensource

http://ping.windowsdream.com -- Partimage Is Not Ghost"