HOWTO Clone Disk Images on Linux Booted from a Network

Guilherme Tupynambá

gtupy (at) uol.com.br

2002-09-09

Revision History
Revision 0.32002-09-24Revised by: gct
Review suggestions incorporated
Revision 0.22002-09-23Revised by: jyg
Minor revisions
Revision 0.12002-09-09Revised by: gct
First draft.

Table of Contents
1. Legal Notices
1.1. Disclaimer
1.2. Copyright
1.3. Feedback
2. Introduction
2.1. Why clone disk images
2.2. Why boot from a network
2.3. Network boot process overview
3. Setting up DHCP and TFTP servers
3.1. Setting up DHCP
3.2. Setting up TFTP
3.3. Using different servers
4. Preparing boot files
4.1. Kernel
4.2. Files on initrd
4.3. Packing initrd
5. Booting from Grub floppy disk
5.1. Grub menu file
5.2. Compiling Grub with network support
5.3. Making the boot floppy disk
6. Running the clone script
6.1. Saving and restoring disk images
6.2. Using fdisk
7. Extending the solution
7.1. Saving and restoring files instead of file systems
7.2. Setting up the master boot record
7.3. Loading necessary modules
7.4. Predefined operations on grub.conf
A. List of files on initrd
B. Clone script
References

1. Legal Notices


1.2. Copyright

Copyright (c) 2002 Guilherme Tupynambá

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. The clone script is licensed in the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).


2. Introduction


3. Setting up DHCP and TFTP servers

A DHCP server is required to provide IP addresses for the clients when booting Grub (BOOTP) and later when booting Linux. A TFTP server is required to make the boot images available on the network for Linux to boot. The TFTP server is also necessary to make it possible to save and restore the disk images.


4. Preparing boot files

Now that the server is set up, you need to prepare the files to make the client boot. Two files are necessary: the kernel and the init ramdisk (initrd) which will be mounted by the kernel as the root file system. This document assumes that the procedures outlined in this section and the next are made in the client machine. Normally, when saving and restoring disk images, there is no need to have Linux installed on a local hard disk. To deploy disk images to a number of machines, start by installing a Linux distribution on one machine for each model. Use DHCP and have TFTP client to test the setup made in the previous section. Unless otherwise noted, commands are issued in the bash shell by the user root in a working directory.


4.2. Files on initrd

Next, make the root file system image for the client. The full listing of the files is in Appendix A.

These files have been taken from a working system as a minimum configuration for having powerful shell (bash), client network utilities (dhcpcd and tftp), and copying and compressing utilities (dd, gzip). Administrative commands (mknod, mount, fdisk and insmod) are also present.

In the working directory create a file named initrd.lst and put these file names on it. To check the existence of these files in your system, run the following command:

# ls -d $(<initrd.lst) > /dev/null
			

You should get an error output like this:

ls: /bin/clone: No such file or directory
ls: /bin/tftp: No such file or directory
ls: /lib/3c59x.o: No such file or directory
			

The first error is a script to be created in the working directory. The second error is the program tftp found in the directory /usr/bin instead of /bin. The third is the network interface card module (probably not yours) found in the directory /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/net.

These three files will be discussed in upcoming sections separately soon. If there are other missing files, check for lack of installation or differences in version, distribution or hardware. Adjust the list to match your system.


4.3. Packing initrd

The next step is to make the image. A size of 4 Mbytes was enough to hold the files in our setup. You may increase this size if necessary.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=initrd bs=1024 count=4096
4096+0 records in
4096+0 records out
# yes | mkfs initrd
mke2fs 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
initrd is not a block special device.
Proceed anyway? (y,n) Filesystem label=
blah blah blah...
# mkdir mnt
# mount -o loop initrd mnt/
# egrep -v "clone|3c59x|tftp" initrd.lst | cpio -pdm mnt
4876 blocks
			

Now the three files excluded by the egrep command. Copy the tftp program from /usr/bin to the image directory:

# cp -p /usr/bin/tftp mnt/bin/
			

Identify the proper module for your network interface card. Use the output of the commands lspci and lsmod to identify the file, which resides in the directory /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/net.

Note

Whenever you see a reference to 3c59x, use the name of the module suited for your case.

# cp -p /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/net/3c59x.o mnt/lib/
			

Edit the clone script found in Appendix B, changing the variables as explained in Section 6. Make it executable and copy it to the image directory:

# chmod +x clone
# cp -p clone mnt/bin/
			

Unmount, compress, and send the initrd image.

# umount mnt/
# gzip initrd
# tftp 10.0.0.1
tftp> binary
tftp> put initrd.gz
Sent 1155530 bytes in 2.8 seconds
tftp> quit
			

5. Booting from Grub floppy disk

The next step is to make a boot floppy disk using Grub. GNU Grub is the GRand Unified Bootloader. It can handle BOOTP and TFTP, so it can boot from network.


5.2. Compiling Grub with network support

To compile Grub, first download the source tarball from the Grub web site and unpack it. Run configure specifying the menu file you just created and the network interface card model. Run make as usual.

# tar xzf grub-0.92.tar.gz
# cd grub-0.92
# ./configure --enable-preset-menu=../grub.conf --enable-3c90x
# make
			

Again, where you see 3c90x put the model of your network interface card. First check if it is supported by Grub.


6. Running the clone script

The clone script, shown in Appendix B, is not essential. You can make init=/bin/bash as a kernel parameter and end up with a shell from where you can run the available commands and programs.

The script is presented here to show the commands in a formal way and to propose a way to reduce the possibility of damages resulting from mistyping. You have to change the variables tftp_server, nic_module, major_a, family_a and image_a according to your environment and application.

Please note that the arrays major_a and family_a are corresponding. Wrong major number for a given family name will mislead the user. You can locate the major and minor numbers of the devices of interest (whole disks and partitions) by listing the /dev directory. The major and minor number are where the size of a regular file is, in the output of the command ls -l, separated by a comma.

# ls -l /dev/fd0 /dev/hda /dev/hda1 /dev/hdc
brw-rw----    1 root     disk       2,   0 Apr 11 11:25 /dev/fd0
brw-rw----    1 root     disk       3,   0 Apr 11 11:25 /dev/hda
brw-rw----    1 root     disk       3,   1 Apr 11 11:25 /dev/hda1
brw-rw----    1 root     disk      22,   0 Apr 11 11:25 /dev/hdc
			

The command set -e instructs the shell to abort the script should any command return non-zero code. The message"Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!" will follow, as in case of normal end. Don't panic! This is normal, given the circumstances. Just turn off the computer. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to have a smooth reboot before exiting the script to avoid this ugly message.

The command insmod will load the network interface module and the command dhcpcd will start DHCP client. Note that the fact that Grub used DHCP during its boot has nothing to do with Linux doing the same.

The script makes a big loop and, for each iteration, it asks for one of three operations: Copy from network to device, Copy from device to network or Run fdisk. Then the script asks which block device to use. The array major_a holds the major number for the block devices allowed to be used and the array family_a the respective names for the device families. Next, the script asks the minor number of the block device to be used.


7. Extending the solution


A. List of files on initrd

/bin/
/bin/bash
/bin/clone
/bin/dd
/bin/gzip
/bin/mknod
/bin/mount
/bin/tftp
/dev/
/dev/console
/dev/null
/etc/
/etc/dhcpc/
/etc/hosts
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/etc/protocols
/etc/services
/lib/
/lib/3c59x.o
/lib/i686/
/lib/i686/libc-2.2.5.so
/lib/i686/libc.so.6
/lib/ld-2.2.5.so
/lib/ld-linux.so.2
/lib/libdl-2.2.5.so
/lib/libdl.so.2
/lib/libnss_files-2.2.5.so
/lib/libnss_files.so.2
/lib/libtermcap.so.2
/lib/libtermcap.so.2.0.8
/proc/
/sbin/
/sbin/dhcpcd
/sbin/fdisk
/sbin/insmod
/tmp/
/var/
/var/run/
		

B. Clone script

#!/bin/bash

set -e

export PATH=/sbin:/bin

tftp_server=10.0.0.1
nic_module=3c59x.o
major_a=(2 3 22)
family_a=(fd hda hdc)
image_a=(img0001 img0002 img0003 img0004)

operation_a=(	"Copy from network to device" \
		"Copy from device to network" \
		"Run fdisk")

mount -t proc proc /proc
insmod /lib/${nic_module}
/sbin/dhcpcd

while true; do \
	[ ! -z "${image}" ] && unset image
	echo
	echo "Clone Menu"
	echo
	echo "Operation"
	echo
	PS3="Choose operation (1-${#operation_a[*]}): "
	select operation in "${operation_a[@]}"; do \
		[ -z "${operation}" ] && continue
		echo
		echo $REPLY - $operation
		echo
		break
	done

	echo "Device Family"
	echo
	PS3="Choose device family (1-${#family_a[*]}): "
	select family in "${family_a[@]}"; do \
		[ -z "${family}" ] && continue
		echo
		echo $REPLY - $family
		echo
		break
	done

	major_i=$[REPLY-1]
	major=${major_a[$major_i]}

	echo "Minor Number"
	echo
	PS3="Choose minor number (0-255): "
	echo -n "$PS3" >&2
	read minor
	minor=$[minor%256]
	echo
	echo $minor
	echo

	if [ "${operation}" != "${operation_a[2]}" ]; then \
		echo "Image"
		echo
		PS3="Choose image (1-${#image_a[*]}): "
		select image in "${image_a[@]}"; do \
			[ -z "${image}" ] && continue
			echo
			echo $REPLY - $image
			echo
			break
		done
		image_i=$[REPLY-1]
		image=${image_a[${image_i}]}
	fi

	echo
	echo -e "Operation:\t$operation"
	device_name=/dev/${family_a[${major_i}]}${minor}
	echo -e "Device:\t\t${device_name} ($major, $minor)"
	[ ! -z "${image}" ] && echo -e "Image:\t\t${image}"
	echo

	echo "Confirmation"
	echo
	PS3="Ok/Cancel (1-2): "
	select ok in Ok Cancel; do \
		[ -z "${ok}" ] && continue
		echo
		echo $REPLY - $ok
		echo
		break
	done
	if [ "${ok}" = "Ok" ]; then \
		if [ ! -b ${device_name} ]; then \
			echo "Creating ${device_name}"
			mknod ${device_name} b ${major} ${minor}
		fi
		if [ ! -z "${image}" ]; then \
			if [ ! -p ${image} ]; then \
				echo "Creating pipe"
				mknod ${image} p
			fi
		fi
		if [ "${operation}" = "${operation_a[0]}" ]; then \
			tftp ${tftp_server} <<-EOT &
			binary
			get ${image}
			EOT
			gzip -c -d < ${image} | dd of=${device_name}
		elif [ "${operation}" = "${operation_a[1]}" ]; then \
			tftp ${tftp_server} <<-EOT &
			binary
			put ${image}
			EOT
			dd if=${device_name} | gzip -c > ${image}
		elif [ "${operation}" = "${operation_a[2]}" ]; then \
			fdisk ${device_name}
		fi
		echo
	fi

	echo "Continuation"
	echo
	PS3="Continue/Exit (1-2): "
	select new in Continue Exit; do \
		[ -z "${new}" ] && continue
		echo
		echo $REPLY - $new
		echo
		break
	done
	[ "${new}" = "Exit" ] && break
done
exit 0
		

References

[grub] GRUB.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/