cobbler-bounces(a)lists.fedorahosted.org wrote on 08/01/2008 11:45:36 AM:
"Hristov, Georgi" <Georgi.Hristov(a)fnis.com>
Sent by: cobbler-bounces(a)lists.fedorahosted.org
08/01/2008 11:45 AM
Subject
RE: More details on system imaging -- livecd based proposal
The problem with doing a clone on the file-system level is that it takes
way too much space. You might have a system that has 300G file system
and has only 5G of useful data. Even compressing the file system image
will not save you that much space (unless you write zeros to the unused
space on the file system before you archive and compress it).
-snip
Perhaps you need to read about partimage, which is the proposed tool do the
the cloning. From
partimage.org:
"Partimage will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. For
speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file. This
is unlike the 'dd' command, which also copies empty blocks. Partimage also
works for large, very full partitions. For example, a full 1 GB partition
can be compressed with gzip down to 400MB. "
James S. Martin, RHCE
Contractor
Administrative Office of the United States Courts
Washington, DC
(202) 502-2394