Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. What is it?
2. Why not one of the alternatives?
3. Requirements & Download
4. Using it
4.1 Preparations
4.2 Image creation
4.3 Image deployment
4.4 Copying a disk locally
4.5 Copying a partition locally
6. Support
6.1 Support
6.2 Reporting problems
6.3 Blog
1. What is it?
g4u ("ghost for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to
deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to
upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP,
uncompress it and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is
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processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local
disks as well as partitions is also supported.
The g4u 2.3 floppy images (zipped/ uncompressed floppy one and floppy two)
The g4u 2.3 ISO CD image (zipped/uncompressed)
The g4u 2.3 source
Some md5 checksums:
4. Using it
4.1 Preparations
NetBSD: /dev/fd0a
Solaris: /dev/diskette
Linux: /dev/fd0
There are also similar devices for USB sticks, but you need to grab the g4u.fs from the ISO to put
there:
NetBSD: /dev/sd0d
Linux: /dev/sd0
If you're using Microsoft Windows or DOS, use rawrite.exe. There's also a Windows-based program
available called rawr32.zip.
On a FTP server of your choice, create an user-account called "install", and protect it with some password.
Make sure the 'install' user can login via ftp (/etc/shells...)
If you want to use a different account, you can specify "login@server" for slurpdisk, uploaddisk etc..
Make sure you have a working DHCP server that hands out IP addresses and other data needed to access
the FTP server from your workstation (name server, netmask, default gateway). Else you will have to set
the IP-number manually..
Boot the CD or floppy on the machine you want to clone. See it read the kernel from disk, then print out all
the devices found in the machine. It will do DHCP next, asking for an IP number - be sure you have DHCP
configured properly! At the end you'll get a text description of possible commands, and a shell prompt.
Whole harddisk:
Type "uploaddisk your.ftp.server.com filename.gz" to read out the machine's harddisk (rwd0d),
and put it into the "install" account of your FTP server under the given filename. The disk image is
compressed (with gzip -9), so maybe use a ".gz" file suffix. You don't have to, though. Before putting the
file on the FTP server, the "install" account's password is requested.
If you want to clone your second IDE disk, add it's name on the uploaddisk command line: "uploaddisk
your.ftp.server.com filename.gz wd1". Similarly, if you use SCSI instead of IDE disks, use
"uploaddisk your.ftp.server.com filename.gz sd0".
If you want to use a different account name than "install", use "account@your.ftp.server.com" for both
uploaddisk and slurpdisk.
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available via "parts disk", where disk is one of the disks printed by "parts", e.g. wd0, wd1, sd0, etc.
Partitions are numbered with letters starting from 'a', where partitions a-d are usually predefined, with your
partitions starting at 'e'. Partitions here are BSD-partitions, which have little in common with DOS MBR
partitions. To specify a partition, use something like "wd0e" or "sd0f": "uploadpart
your.ftp.server.com filename.gz wd0e". Run "uploadpart" without arguments for more examples.
Wait until you're back at the shell prompt (ignore the errors :-). Depending on your network, CPU,
harddisk hardware and contents, image creation can take several hours!
You can switch off the machine now. Type "halt" or simply press reset/power button - there are no
filesystems mounted so no harm will result.
Check that your FTP server's "install" account now has the image file.
Whole harddisk:
Type "slurpdisk your.ftp.server.com filename.gz". This will log into the FTP server's "install"
account, verify the password, then retrieve the image, uncompress it and write it back to /dev/rwd0d.
If you want to restore to a SCSI disk, add the disk's name to the slurpdisk command line, e.g. "slurpdisk
your.ftp.server.com filename.gz sd0".
See above if you want to use an account name other than "install".
One partition:
Use "slurppart your.ftp.server.com filename.gz wd0e" or whatever values you passed to
uploadpart. Please note that the partition information is taken from your MBR, which is expected to be the
same as before image creation - expect surprises if you change something between image creation and
deployment. In case of inevitable changes, check the start sector and size values given by "parts". For an
image that includes the MBR, do a full backup with "uploaddisk".
Reboot the machine (type "reboot" or press reset button), and see if your machine comes up as expected -
it should!
If you just want to copy one local disk to another one with no network & server involved, the "copydisk"
command is what you want. E.g. to copy the first IDE disk to the second IDE disk, use "copydisk wd0
wd1", to do the same for SCSI disks run "copydisk sd0 sd1".
A list of disks as found during system startup can be found using the "disks" command.
If you want to only copy one local partition to another local partition (similar to what 'uploadpart' and
'slurppart' do, just without the network and FTP in between), this can be done with the 'copypart'
command. It takes two partition names as arguments, and copies the contents of one partition to the other.
As an example if you found you want to copy your first local partition 'wd0e' to the second one 'wd0f', run:
A list of disks can be found using the 'disk' command, to list all the partitions on a disk use the 'parts'
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command. Partitions have the form of "wd0d", "w1e", "sd1f".
Be aware that the partitions to copy should have identical size (down to the sector), else funny things will
happen. When copying a 'big' partition into a 'small' one, g4u won't thrash the data behind the 'small'
partition, but of course the copy is not complete either. Take special note that that case could happen when
you restore a copy made that way, and which went fine when you first copied your small working partition
to your big backup partition!
One of the questions arising a lot is "what filesystems does g4u support". The answer is: "all of them". g4u
reads the disk bit by bit, starting from byte #0 to the end. It includes any MBR, boot record, partition table
and the partitions themselves without further investigating the structure of the data stored in these
partitions.
The question on operating systems that can be deployed with g4u is the same as for the filesystems: any.
Given the image-approach again, g4u is able to handle any operating system. Systems that were cloned
successfully include NetBSD, Linux, Novell Netware 4.11 and 5.1, Solaris/x86, Windows NT, 2000 and
XP.
By moving the harddisks to a PC, g4u can even be used to deploy operating systems for non-PC based
SCSI machines running HP-UX, Irix, Solaris, AIX etc.
The system running g4u itself can have IDE, SATA, SCSI or RAID disks with various controllers
(Adaptec, ...) as well as wide range of PCMCIA, Cardbus, ISA and PCI network cards. Please see the g4u
kernel config for the full list of supported hardware.
If you're unsure if your hardware is supported, simply boot g4u and see if your network card gets listed by
"ifconfig -a" and if your disks get listed by the "disks" command. If not, adding relevant parts of "dmesg"
output (from g4u; press space bar to scroll down) is required for analysis if you ask for help. See
"Reporting problems" for more information.
The question how g4u deals with different disk sizes arises a lot too. The general answer is, g4u works best
with identical disk sizes & geometry. Putting an image from a small disk on a big disk works, putting an
image from a big disk to a small disk is likely to cause problems.
If you cannot avoid preparing an image on a big disk that'll get deployed to a small disk later, make sure
the "extra" space is not occupied by a active partition or filesystem, else data loss is very likely to occur!
If you intend to deploy a "small" image to a "big" disk, the extra space that's not covered by g4u can be
used for creating a partition and a filesystem. You will have to do that on your own, e.g. using your
operating systems' post installation steps.
Per default, images uploaded to the FTP server are compressed with "gzip -9". This saves as much disk
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space as possible, but also takes a long time - several hours are not uncommon. You can reduce the gzip
level for "uploaddisk" by setting the GZIP environment variable:
You can change compression levels between 1 (fast, little compression) and 9 (slow, maximum
compression). Of course you can specify all the usual options to uploaddisk.
During startup of g4u, all devices recognized are listed, but very fast. To get a list of recognized disks, use
the 'disks' command:
# disks
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0:
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 6149 MB, 13328 cyl, 15 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 12594960 sectors
wd0: 32-bit data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (using DMA data transfers)
Do you experience g4u aborting file transfers after the image has grown to 2 GB on the FTP server? The
problem here is not g4u, but most likely your FTP server. Some older Linux distributions are known to
only allow files of up to 2GB filesize, and even if there is a Linux 2.4 kernel running, that's no guarantee
for a properly working server. Make sure that your ftp daemon is upto date, or install a decent operating
system.
So far, whatever FTP server comes with NetBSD, Solaris and Windows 2000 has been used without
problems.
using TFTP
using SSH/scp
using NFS
adding a X or curses based GUI
writing images to CDROM / deployment from CDROM
bzip2 compression
After moving to a two-floppy set for g4u, some of these features may be added in the future, while others
(X...) are not likely. Stay tuned!
If upload performance is weak (less than 5MBytes/sec on a 100BaseT Ethernet switch) even with a small
compression level or a fast CPU and the harddisk is idle this means the network sucks. A common problem
in switched Ethernet is a duplex mismatch between the NIC and the switch. In NetBSD, the default is to
negotiate speed and duplex automatically. Other settings can be set manually.
Enforcing 100BaseTX/Full-duplex:
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# ifconfig fxp0 media 100BaseTX mediaopt Full-duplex
# ifconfig -a
fxp0: flags=[...]
media: Ethernet 100baseTX full-duplex
For more information, please see the ifconfig(8) manpage as well as the Auto-Negotiation Valid
Configuration Table featuring "Why Can't the Speed and Duplex Be Hardcoded On Only One Link
Partner?".
People complain that the image resulting from g4u is very big. This is normal as g4u clones the whole
disks with all blocks, not attributing if they contain any valid data or if they are empty/unused. To find
empty/unused blocks (and not clone them), g4u would need intimate understanding of the contained
filesystem, which is different again for each filesystem - Windows FAT, Linux Ext2/3/ReiserFS/..., BSD
FFS, Solaris UFS, etc. Given both tight space limitations on the floppy as well as shortage on filesystem
documentation and implementations available, teaching g4u to ignore empty blocks is not likely to happen.
But there is an easy way to circumvent the problem: use the native operating system's understanding (and
implementation) of the filesystem, and make sure it prepares empty/unused blocks in a way so they don't
contain random garbage data but values which can be compressed easily by g4u, thus resulting in small
image sizes.
Effectively, you just fill up the disk's unused blocks with zero-bytes. Open file for writing, stuff in 0-bytes
until the disk is full, then close the file and remove it. The result is that all unused blocks were used by the
file, and filled with data that g4u can then compress easily. Usually the operating system will just mark the
blocks as unused, without changing the actual data content.
Using this technique on a 20GB disk that had 6GB Solaris 8/x86 and the rest Windows 2000 Workstation
shrunk the image from ~6GB compressed to ~2GB compressed. You can probably imagine the effect of
this on deployment time too. :)
To perform the filling of unused data blocks with zero-bytes, there are several ways, depending on what
operating system you use on your computer, and what software you have available:
Standard Unix:
This works on any Unix variant - Linux, NetBSD, Solaris, etc.:
cd /d c:\
c:\win-preclone.pl c:
Windows "Erasor":
This freeware program can erase your disk in a safe way, but it can also be told to just write a pattern
of all-0-bits to the disk. Grab it at www.heidi.ie/eraser. Thanks to Stephen Krans [s040 at krans dot
org] for the hint!
Sometimes you may not want or be able to use DHCP. In that case doing the network configuration
manually is possible with g4u, too:
1. Find out if your network device is recognized, and by what name, using the command
ifconfig -a
Your network device is something like "ex0", "tlp0", etc. (Note that unlike in Linux, NetBSD doesn't
call all ethernet cards "eth0"!)
2. Next configure the network device's IP number and netmask. It is assumed that your network device
is xx0 here, and that the machine should run with IP number 1.2.3.4 and netmask 255.255.255.0:
3. Last, you may want to make the default router known unless your FTP server is in the same IP
subnet as the machine you want to use g4u on. Let's say the default router's IP address is 2.3.4.5,
then the command to enter is:
That's all - simple, huh? Just remember that g4u is still Unix! After these steps, you should be able to use
g4u just as if it used DHCP.
I've been asked how to boot g4u from harddisk (using e.g. grub). The idea is to extract the kernel from the
boot floppy, and hand that to grub (or whatever bootloader you want - maybe use PXE to netboot g4u).
Here's how to extract the kernel, named "netbsd":
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? cat g4u-2.3-2.fs | dd bs=512 skip=16 ; \
? cat g4u-2.3-3.fs | dd bs=512 skip=16 \
? ) | tar vxf -
-r--r--r-- 1 feyrer netbsd 53948 Nov 3 23:08 boot
-rw-rw-r-- 1 feyrer netbsd 1479905 Nov 3 23:08 netbsd
Note that the kernel ("netbsd") is actually still compressed, which is fine for the NetBSD bootloader and
probably GRUB, but just in case, you may want to uncompress it:
% file netbsd
netbsd: gzip compressed data, was "netbsd-INSTALL_G4U", from Unix
% mv netbsd netbsd.gz
% gunzip netbsd.gz
% ls -la netbsd
-rw-rw-r-- 1 feyrer wheel 5523084 Dec 7 18:08 netbsd
% file netbsd
netbsd: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stri
In order to netboot g4u via PXE, you first need to extract the kernel from the g4u floppies, and then follow the
steps that describe a netboot (diskless boot) of NetBSD/i386, see the NetBSD documentation for various ways to
do this.
A writeup of the necessary steps for g4u is available in the list archives, either in french language by Jean-
Christophe Guis or in an english language translation by Steve Clement.
Another writeup that documents how to configure Fedora Core 5 to act as PXE server is available from Aaron
Axelsen.
When you're uploading or downloading images to or from your FTP server, and you see a line like
scroll by, you can assume that that line (and any others with a number at the start) originates from your FTP
server, and it is thus not g4u that's buggy but your FTP server software that has a problem.
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g4u was originally made to setup a cluster of PCs. Since then, it has been used for several other types of
hardware and application areas. I'd like to collect some of them here:
Copied a dual drive Tivo
Saved Novell NetWare server disks
Copied a Nokia IP330 Checkpoint Firewall 1 boxes
Install several clusters of firewalls, compute machines, school workstations, etc.
...
Please send me mail if you've used g4u to clone something funny, cool, unusal, geeky, etc.!
There's a "g4u" community at Orkut which I've created as a forum for g4u. As Orkut is too slow
these days (Dec 2004), I won't follow discussion on Orkut a lot, and recommend using the above-
mentioned mailing lists for getting timely response.
Optional(!) commercial license are available, see the "Commercial license" page for more
information.
If you have trouble with g4u and want to report a problem, PLEASE add the following information. It's
impossible to help you without knowing details on your systems & setup:
Following the latest hype, there's a g4u blog that people interested in some insights on occasional
developments and internals about g4u that can be followed. It's actually part of my NetBSD blog.
For those interested, there's also a RSS feed for the g4u part available (in addition to the full RSS feed of
my NetBSD blog).
Get a i386/PC machine running NetBSD 3.1. Cross-building from other Unix-like operating systems may
work too, but is untested as far as g4u is concerned.
% su
# mkdir /usr/cvs
# chown $USER /usr/cvs
# ln -s cvs/src /usr/src
# exit
% cd /usr/cvs
% env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot co -D 20061223 src
% cd /usr/src
% tar plzvxf .../g4u-2.3.tgz
Apply patches:
% cd /usr/src/sys/dev/ata
% patch <wd.c.patch-g4u
% cd /usr/src/sys/dev/scsipi
% patch <sd.c.patch-g4u
% cd /usr/src/sys/kern
% patch <subr_prf.c.patch-g4u
% su -
# touch /etc/mk.conf
# chown $USER /etc/mk.conf
# exit
% echo OBJMACHINE=1 >>/etc/mk.conf
%
Build g4u, which requires a full build of NetBSD userland and a kernel:
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% cd /usr/src
% sh g4u-build
% ls -l /usr/cvs/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u.*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 feyrer netbsd 3309568 Nov 3 23:09 g4u.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 feyrer netbsd 1474560 Nov 3 23:08 g4u1.fs
-rw-rw-r-- 1 feyrer netbsd 1474560 Nov 3 23:08 g4u2.fs
Symantec Ghost
Commercial product that didn't do what I needed and which led me to create g4u. Still, check it our if you
want non-image based cloning. If you think they're too expensive, remember that I don't want to starve too.
:)
9. History
2.3 Final release, no substantial changes from the latest beta. Changes over 2.2 include updated drivers
based on the latest development version of NetBSD, a complete overhaul of the build system to
remove the 2.88MB size limit, and availability of contracts for technical support. Some links for
downloading: Floppies (uncompressed one, two; all floppies ZIP compressed), ISOs (uncompressed,
ZIP compressed), source. [20070125]
2.3beta3 Move towards pushing out a release to have the build infrastructure updates available. The kernel got
audio and other irrelevant drivers shaved off. Include floppies this time. Some links for downloading:
Floppies (uncompressed one, two; all floppies ZIP compressed), ISOs (uncompressed, ZIP
compressed), source. [20061228]
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2.3alpha6 I've released 2.3alpha6 which mainly contains updated drivers, as reaction to all those new Dell
machines etc. people mention on the g4u-help list. If you send bug reports, please DO INCLUDE
DMESG OUTPUT, see bugreporting! [20061102]
still 2.2 As proposed in my blog, I have enabled Google ads on the front page, to keep you informed. If you
come across anything interesting, feel free to inform yourself! :-) For those that don't follow the
mailing lists, a bunch of 2.3alpha versions have been put out, it's currently at 2.3alpha5. [20060919]
2.2 Final release, no functional changes over 2.2beta2 (see below), some documentation updates.
[20060531]
2.2beta2 Preparing a new major release, I'm releasing this beta version for some public testing plus to have the
full load of updated drivers available rather sooner than later, as more and more people keep asking.
Changes to look forward in g4u 2.2:
The build infrastructure was changed: The kernel used is now based on a GENERIC kernel
with ramdisk hooks, instead of a customized INSTALL kernel. There's still a ramdisk
embedded in the kernel, and that kernel+ramdisk are used to build the ISO and floppy-set. My
main motivation for this release is to utilize NetBSD's 'makefs -t cd9660' and bootxx_cd9660
for creating the ISO version, the floppy splits the kernel+ramdisk over (now) three floppies
using NetBSD's ustarfs. This approach allows growing the ramdisk with more programs
without the 2.88MB limit imposed by harddisk-emulation-booting and mkisofs before, to an
(sort of) arbitrary size. Size restrictions right now are the size of the CD and (more likely) the
size of the ramdisk that can fit into RAM, see below.
Password entry in all scripts is now without echo (added stty(1) to run 'stty -noecho')
The G4U kernel is now a real NetBSD "GENERIC" kernel with an embedded ramdisk, with all
the devices supported there. The trade-in for the reduced maintenance costs are a minimum of
16MB RAM needed now. Please let me know if this is an issue!
Updated hardware support to match NetBSD-current's GENERIC as of 20060406, adding
support for Workbit NinjaSCSI-32 (pci); Symbios 53c875 SCSI and newer (pci); Qlogic
ESP406/FAS408 SCSI (pcmcia); Cardbus SCSI including AdvanSys 1200[A,B], 9xx[U,UA]
SCSI, Adaptec ADP-1480, Workbit NinjaSCSI-32; Intel 82597 10GbE LR NIC (pci); Sun
Microelectronics STP2002-STQ (pci); Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 and 2200BG (pci; may not
work due to missing firmware); PCnet-PCI Ethernet (pci); ralink wifi (pci); 3com 3cr990 (pci);
VIATech VT612X Gigabit Ethernet (pci); Neterion (S2io) Xframe-I 10GbE (pci); BayStack
660 (802.11FH/DS, pcmcia); Cardbus NICs including Atheros 5210/5211/5212 802.11,
ADMtek ADM8211 (802.11), 3Com 3C575TX, Intel i8255x, Realtek 8129/8139/8180L
(802.11) and DECchip 21143; CDC, Ethernet Networking Control Model and Davicom
DM9601 based USB-ethernet adapters; Atmel AT76C50XX based adapters and Ralink
Technology RT25x0 802.11a/b/g USB WLAN adapters
TODO for 2.2: disable non-working progress bar that appears in copydisk & uploadpart that
shouldn't appear (and doesn't in all the other commands).
I've added an item "What FTP server software to use?" to the FAQ list.
I've added a reference to the g4u blog (or rather, the g4u part of my NetBSD blog :).
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tar-archive).
The floppy and CDROM version still share the same codebase - there's still a limit of 2.88MB now,
but this allows me adding back all the drivers I had to remove in the past:
Besides all these drivers which were previously removed from g4u and now added back, be sure to
check out the full list of supported hardware, including more wavelan cards, gigabit ethernet and
SATA drives!
Another minor addition made in this release is the 'copypart' program, which can be used to, well,
copy single partitions locally. See Copying a partition locally for more information.
So, this all sounds like christmas? That's a bit away, but maybe you want to donate a bit so I can buy
myself and my beloved some nice present (and maybe even one that allows me to do a port of g4u to
an Apple PowerBook G4? *hint, hint*)? ;)
Those that want to do some good not only to me but to themselves and their beloved too can now
aquire an optional commercial license for g4u. g4u will remain free to use for both private and
commercial users, but I've received many requests for commercial licenses, and here they are!
Last but not least, I'm fed up with the slowness of Orkut, and using the infrastructure from Source
Forge, I've created two mailing lists, one for g4u related announces, and one for general questions on
g4u. See the support section for more information.
[20041207]
Still 1.17 Today I had to discover that someone used g4u as a source for g4l, but instead of giving proper credit
and respecting the licensing and copyright on g4u, all traces were removed that the core work was
done by me. Instead, the author put his name in and his work under a different license. I'm not happy
about this, and ask people to discourage such actions as well as to despise the the author of g4l
(cowardly calling himself only "nme"). Read more about this in my blog.
1.17 Major bugfix release which intends to address all the flaws in previous releases (see release notes for
1.15 and 1.16)! Besides the Freshmeat g4u page, interested parties can now find a g4u community
with forum etc. on Orkut - drop me a mail if you want/need an invitation or have any questions (just
as before :)! [20040718]
Back to There's a critical flaw in slurpdisk and other restore facilities in 1.16, which render g4u 1.16 unusable.
1.15! The QA team has been fired, and we're back to 1.15. Sorry! :( [20040702]
1.16 OK, let's see if I got things right this time: Fixed copydisk, which I broke while adding the progress
bar code. Document default GZIP level when calling uploaddisk and uploadpart with no argument.
Shaved more space from the config by going for the generic PCIIDE driver (only; please let me know
if this made things a lot slower and if it killed SATA-support esp. if enabling IDE in your BIOS won't
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help - and send me a SATA-equipped machine to test this in the future! :-), removed 'rnd', gave the
kernel a fixed device to start from (the ramdisk), removed COMPAT_*. Replaced console driver -
you may need to turn on support for USB keyboards in your BIOS! [20040630]
still 1.15 There's a bug in the "copydisk" command of g4u 1.15, please use g4u 1.14 if you need the copydisk
command.
still 1.15 I have a donations page now!
1.15 Finally: Improved progress report! No more dots, volume transferred and current throughput is
printed instead. Other changes: 'help' command to re-print help screen; update help screen a bit and
made the prompt look a bit friendlier. Consistent GZIP handling. Building as non-root is now fully
working (Thanks NetBSD!). No more Token Ring drivers, sorry, ran into space issues again. Thank
for everyone who has donated so far, I'm working on a donations page. FWIW, donations of books
Griping aside, V1.13 is a wrapup based on NetBSD-current as of Jan 14th 2004, esp. made after
many people hat troubles booting 1.12. New drivers are for Adaptec 29320, 39320 (aic790x) SCSI
(ahd), Broadcom 4401 10/100 Ethernet (bge), DECchip 21x4x and clones Ethernet (tlp), Intel 8254x
gigabit (wm), Intel IGP01E1000 MII driver (igphy), Intel i31244 and SiI SATALink SATA
controllers. See the g4u kernel config file for all the details. Matthias Jordan has also sent me an
update of his "nullfile" to v1.02 which I've added to the g4u webpage.
Due to some things growing again, I had to remove all Wireless LAN and most PCI RAID controller
drivers. Maybe it's time to start special g4u versions for laptops (with pcmcia, cardbus, usb, wavelan),
servers (with raid, ...) in addition to the current version of g4u. Let me know if you're interested!
[20040111]
1.13pre2 Prerelease of 1.13 ISO after many people had problems booting the 1.12 ISO. No new features, but
two administrative things to note: First, I've lost my job on Jan 1st 2004 due to the Bavarian
government killing jobs in academics. That job was the main motivation behind creating g4u, and
development of g4u beyond that date is uncertain. I plan to do at least one more release to wrap up
things, but that'll need some more time to decide what drivers to include (not). Second, I have created
a paypal account paypal@feyrer.de, if you want to donate money, buy me a pizza or coke or just
SUPPORT FREE SOFTWARE, do so! (Judging by the feedback I got both in personal mail and in
public forums, g4u seems to be a major alternative to some commercial products these days. I'd be
happy if the people using it could give some money back to make it possible to continue working on
the project! Yes, this is a plea for help!)
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g4u - Harddisk Image Cloning for PCs Page 16 of 17
1.12 Fix broken dd commmand ("out of memory!"). [20030820]
1.11 New commands "uploadpart" and "slurppart" to save and restore partitions. Partition information is
not changed and taken from MBR. Command 'disks' to list disks found, command 'parts' to list
(BSD!) partitions on a given disk (wd0, ...). "uploaddisk" now has a default of rwd0d.gz for the
imagename, so just "uploaddisk server" should work (just as "slurpdisk server" does already).
[20030819]
1.10 Bugfix release: make "GZIP=1 uploaddisk ..." work properly; document how to use a different
account than 'install'. Document how to get the image size down by filling unused disk blocks with
zero-bytes. [20030603]
1.9 Maintenance update for NetBSD-current as of today; "dmesg" is now page-wise (|more); "disks" lists
disks recognized on boot; allow setting GZIP=-1 to get lower compression; increased
NMBCLUSTERS for usb2ethernet; Cloning from local disk to local disk with "clonedisk"; Lots of
doc updates. [20030522]
1.8 The Pumpkin Release! Sync with NetBSD 1.6. Now includes drivers for USB, RAID cards, Gigabit
Ethernet and Token Ring. As a Halloween special, g4u now also comes as ISO image file in addition
to a floppy image, so it can be booted from a CD instead of a floppy. Happy Halloween! :)
[20021031]
1.7 Update to accomodate latest drivers and kernel features from NetBSD 1.5.2. Fixed download of
the .fs files from the web server. Added documentation about disk sizes. [20010919]
1.6 Maintenance release to use latest drivers from NetBSD 1.5.1. Due to increased size, the Token Ring
driver was removed, sorry. Greeting message of g4u with instructions was improved a bit. Web site
now has a copy of the kernel config, for documentation of supported device drivers. [20010516]
1.5 This release adds support for easy cloning of SCSI disks by giving "sd0" as the third argument to
slurpdisk and uploaddisk. Also, support for i386 and i486 CPUs was added. [20010515]
1.4 Maintenance release. [20010306]
Played with GIMP to create the Animation next to the TOC. Thanks to the XBill artists for the OS
images! Various doc updates. [20010306]
Updated the web page a bit to answer various questions on supported filesystems and operating
systems I got. Also add TOC. [20010305]
1.3 Another bugfix release. This should get to a working state soon (i.e. now) [20010302]
1.2 Bugfix release, the ramdisk was busted so that many commands just didn't work (ftp, ...) [20010301]
1.1 First public release, updated to NetBSD 1.5 [20010228]
1.0 Internal version based on NetBSD 1.4 that's been in use for two years in internal operation.
No license fees are requested except for military and related uses, commercial (re)sale,
optional commercial licenses are available, and donations are always welcome! You
can send money via paypal or buy me a book from my Amazon wishlist, as many of the
people who have donated so far did - Thank you very much!
/*
* Copyright (c) 1999-2007
* Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>. All rights reserved.
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ 21/05/2007
g4u - Harddisk Image Cloning for PCs Page 17 of 17
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed for g4u by
* Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>.
* 4. Neither the name of the author nor the names of its contributors
* may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
* without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
* ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
* IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
* ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
* FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
* DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
* OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
* HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
* LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
* OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
* SUCH DAMAGE.
*/
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