[ale] Two Questions

[Christopher Fowler]

On Wed, 2008-03-05 at 15:40 -0500, ale-request at ale.org wrote:
> dd if="$DEVICE" | gzip -c > "$IMAGE"
> 
> and restore with
> 
> gzip -dc "$IMAGE" | dd of="$DEVICE"
> 

This will work too but in my case we started with CD and I need
to be sure the system would fit on on CD.  Even with 200GB drives.

If the drive is fresh and has no data then this may work.  If you are
unsure I would first "blank" the hard drive before installing the sample
system

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

After that is done install Linux and associated software.

If the system has been up for a while and you want to use the least
amount of space as possible then do this

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/file ; rm /tmp/file

Then you can image the device.  I recommend that imaging be done on 
a RO partition. 

Here is one simple way:

1.  At the boot prompt add init=/bin/sh to the kernel
    arguments

2.  When you are at a shell do the dd commands to image the
    drive

For those that are curious you can execute
mount -o rw,remount / 
to get the root fs into RW mode.
You can then execute passwd root to change the
root's password.