G4L - Ghost for Linux

G4L is a hard disk and partition imaging and cloning tool. The created images are optionally compressed, and they can be stored on a local hard drive or transferred to an anonymous FTP server. A drive can be cloned using the "Click'n'Clone" function. G4L supports file splitting if the local filesystem does not support writing files larger than 2GB. The included kernel supports ATA, serial-ATA, and SCSI drives. Common network cards are supported. It is packaged as a bootable CD image with an ncurses GUI for easy use.

You must have heard about Norton Ghost, which makes a snapshot of a hard disk allowing you to restore your system in case of a crash. However, Norton Ghost is a commercial tool that costs a lot of money. 'Ghost for Linux' is a free and open source equivalent of this tool. It allows you to create your disk image either on a different hard disk or via FTP on another machine.

This is a mini-distro of Linux and its kernel includes support for Parallel ATA and Serial ATA IDE drives. In our environment, we were not able to use it with SCSI drives. It comes with support for most common network cards.

Usage
It runs from a bootable CD and gives you a simple menu-based interface to navigate. We have given an ISO image of this distro on this month's PCQEssential CD. You may use Nero or other CD burning software to transfer this to a CD.

Before booting with it, make sure you have a secondary hard disk installed on the machine you want to ghost, with either Windows or Linux partitions. The tool creates an image of the active Linux partitions on the second hard disk. Now to use this tool, just boot your PC or server with the CD you created. At the login prompt, give the username as 'g4l' and execute the following command.

full details at

http://pcquest.ciol.com/content/linux/2005/105041202.asp