[vox-tech] How to make an OEM style "system recovery disk"

[Samuel Merritt]

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On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 09:26:57PM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> begin Ryan Castellucci <ryan+lugod@cal.net>=20
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >=20
> > I'm looking to build a bootable CD to give to a friend along with a com=
puter=20
> > that when booted will offer to overwrite the hard drive from a compress=
ed=20
> > disk image. I looked on freshmeat, but didn't see anything well suited =
to=20
> > this. The box in question will have windows on it (They want windows, I=
 don't=20
> > feel like arguing). Anyone know of a project that can do this?
> =20
> i'm not sure i understand.  are you giving your friend a "nag-ware"
> computer that nags him to install linux?  :)
>=20
> > What about linux boot CDs that can easily be customized to run a shell =
script=20
> > at boot time?
>=20
> not sure i understand this either.   the whole runlevel initialization=20
> mechanism is a method of executing shell scripts at boot.   boot CD's
> should have this too.
>=20
> when you say "easy", do you mean not having to conform to the standard
> initialization script format?  you can use rc.boot for that.
>=20
> if you want to make an OEM style recovery disk, i imagine you can
> install linux and then dd/bzip2 up the entire hard drive.  i'm guessing
> that even if windows gets installed on top of linux, dd will restore
> partition info.   the backup image shouldn't be too big for a fresh
> install.  but your friend would lose all his data.

One would need to zero out the hard drive first, otherwise one will be
trying to compress a whole hard drive's worth of random bits and fit it
onto a single CD.=20

dd if=3D/dev/zero of=3D/dev/sda (or /dev/hda or whatever) should do nicely.=
=20

dd will restore partition info, by the way. I've used it for backing up
and restoring a partition table before. Just make sure to grab from
/dev/sda, not /dev/sda1. (or hda, hda1, etc.)
=20
> pete
> =20
> --=20
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--=20
Samuel Merritt
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