[Udpcast] How to udpcast on G5 Mac?

[Donald Teed]

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
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