help

g4l - Gh*st for Linux, Frank Stephen 2004
Version 0.14

- CHANGES SINCE LAST VERSION -

added new menu:
      - select between RAW mode and file mode !

        RAW Node: common g4l mode, copies every single bit of the
        drive, including empty sectors, deleted files...everything!

        File Mode: for those people who do not have the time
        (or space!) to execute RAW mode. This mode accesses the
        filesystem of the drive and writes only the sectors,
        which are occupied by files. This is what the commercial
        products do. As it is senseless to invent the wheel twice,
        g4l launches the very cool 'partimage' to do this.
        Be careful: If you need also deleted files and hidden
        stuff for data recovery or sth like that, use RAW mode !

        Check www.partimage.org for info on how to use partimage
        in detail or from the command line.

        g4l offers to launch the partimage server through the
        'Launch server' option from where you can configure your
        network card, mount the destination drive and launch
        the partimage server.
        Then remove the CD and boot your client. Away you go !

added new utilities:
      - added access to the very good dd_rescue and dd_rhelp tool !
        If you have a drive with I/O errors (hardware failure,...)
        this tool gets almost everything of it. Combined with
        dd_rhelp it surrounds the defective sectors automatically.
        A MUST have ! Thanks to the developers!

      - added possibility to set I/O controller to 32bit and
        UDMA66 transfer mode using 'hdparm' utility. Be careful:
        This might hang your system if it does not support these
        modes. If so, give it a reboot and do not this option
        again!

added progress bars:
      - every backup/restore option plus the zero-tool now features
        a full progress bar. no more guesses how long backup/restore
        will take. Be aware, that if restoring small images to large
        drives, the progress bar will be inaccurate ! It might
        happen that you restore, progress shows 30% and suddenly
        you are finished :) This cannot be corrected, since g4l
        cannot know the uncompressed filesize of the image at the
        begining of the restore.
        Progress will also fail for disks over 9.9 TeraByte :)

- INTRODUCTION -

First of all I want to say "Thank you" to 'nme' who allowed me to
use some lines of his code and supported me in taking control of
the project.


- LICENSE (if any) -

This Script is freeware. Get it, spread it, use it, modify it !
If you want to modify this script and put it on a website,
please drop me a mail so I know how to find it.
Also, only delete this helpfile if you have something better
on hand :)

As this script is based on the common Linux utils

BusyBox (www.busybox.net)
GNU coreutils (like 'dd') (www.gnu.org)
Linux Kernel 2.6.3 (www.kernel.org)
Dialog, based on Debian cdialog (dickey.his.com/dialog)
jetcat-mod, based on jetcat by Oskar Schirmer
  (www.scara.com/~schirmer/o/jetcat/)
dd_rescue (www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrrescue/)
dd_rhelp (www.kalysto.org/utilities/dd_rhelp/)
partimage (www.partimage.org)
and others

be sure to respect their licenses.


- REQUIREMENTS -

If you downloaded the ISO file and just want to use this script,
you need the following:

For network use:    
    -ethernet card (common PCI and onboard cards are supported)
    -FTP server: -in the same subnet
                 -must support filesize bigger than 2 GB
                 -must allow anonymous write access
                 -MUST HAVE DIRECTORY 'img' writeable, or
                  change variable $ftppath in ./g4l
		
                 Take a look at vsFTPd ! A very good one.
		
    -a hard drive: IDE, SCSI or SATA types are supported

For local use:
    -two hard drives of the types above

For Click'n'Clone:
    -two hard drives of the types above
    
    
If you downloaded the development kit with all the sources and
want to modify the script and then burn your own ISO, you will
need the following to successfully compile and burn the CD:

-a running Linux box
-kernel >=2.6.3 sources (if you want to change kernel)
-LOOP device support
-mkisofs tools
-cdrecord

I hope i did not forget anything :)    


- WARNINGS -

You should know what you do if you want to use this script:

First:  THINK.
Second: THINK again.
Third:  If you think you have thought enough, THINK again !
        It is very easy to mess up your hard drive.

As usual, this script comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. Do not blame me
if you ruined your partitions or data. I have tested this script
on several computers, including an old AMD K6, INTEL Celeron4,
AMD Athlon XP with nForce2 Chipset and onboard LAN. It worked fine
for me. But I cannot test it under every environment. If it causes
trouble on your box, do NOT blame me. You have been warned :)

Don't forget, you can only:

-clone drives of the same size
-clone from smaller drive to bigger drive, leaves some space
 unallocated/unpartitioned
-restore drives of the same size
-restore smaller to bigger drives (same as above)

If you are NOT using g4l in local mode, filesystems do NOT matter.
You can clone whatever you want, XFS, hpfs, you name it!
If you want to use local mode, the harddrive has of course to
be mounted to write the images to the root directory. Therefore
only the most common FS are supported (shown in g4l).

If you modified some drives partition table in any way, be sure
to reboot if you want to do something with this new partition.
Kernel has to re-read the partition table, if you do not reboot,
the kernel will work with the 'old' partition information instead!

- BUGS -

On some very old machines you might encounter an error message
telling something about "SPURIOUS INTERRUPT detected" or something
like that. This might be caused by old APIC modes. Try to disable
this setting in your BIOS.
I had this error sometimes on my old K6 machine, but everything
seemed to work anyway.

Report other bugs and/or problems to:

fra_step@yahoo.com

But please keep in mind: This is no commercial project, so if
I think your question is stupid or has already been answered here,
do not be angry if I won't answer your mail :)

Be patient.

Thanks and good luck, 

Frank