Imaging Guide

Decprecated incarnations of tablet imaging walkthroughs are located at the Deprecated Imaging Guides.

CloneZilla Implementation

There is some patchy original documentation at the Clonezilla Guide and DRBL homepage.

Import the repo key to your keyring

wget http://drbl.sourceforge.net/GPG-KEY-DRBL -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Edit sources.list

Create a new file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/clonezilla.list and add the following entry:

• deb http://drbl.sourceforge.net/drbl-core drbl stable

(This also works if you add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list)

If you are using Karmic, use the unstable repository instead; *if you do not use this, then you WILL run into partclone errors later on!!!*

• deb http://drbl.sourceforge.net/drbl-core drbl unstable

Now you can install clonezilla and drbl:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install clonezilla drbl

Install DRBL, step 1

There are two commands you use to install and activate CloneZilla. The first is

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/drblsrv -i

Note: There is a space before the "-i". The first time you run it, this will also connect to the Internet and download a bunch of packages. Decline installing packages for “Diskless Linux”, as we don't run any thin clients. Other than that, the questions are pretty straightforward. Make sure you have two network interfaces up when you run this command – it will detect one as “Internet” and one as “private”. If it doesn't detect two interfaces, the clients won't get a DHCP lease (for a centralized system like the new TICC server setup this is fine). Don't bother to configure your clients – letting the range in dhcp.conf control leases is fine. It warns you about this, but we don't care.

Install DRBL, step 2

The second step creates the configuration for all the clients:

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/drblpush -i

The default options are again mostly acceptable. We want “no diskless Linux” and “Clonezilla box mode”. Some options give information about “increased requirements on server for more clients”. These options are never what we want – we don't care about persistent client configuration.

Setup NFS for All Clients

DRBL will configure NFS "incorrectly" for booting from USB clients controlled by a different DHCP server. Provided that your NFS server doesn't do anything but serve CloneZilla, you simply replace your /etc/exports with the following:

/tftpboot/node_root *(ro,sync,async,no_root_squash,subtree_check)
/usr *(ro,sync,async,no_root_squash,subtree_check)
/opt *(ro,sync,async,no_root_squash,subtree_check)
/home *(rw,sync,async,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)
/var/spool/mail *(rw,sync,async,root_squash,no_subtree_check)
/images *(rw,sync,async,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)

NFS Configuration Fix

CloneZilla will run into extreme difficulty if you boot too many systems at once unless you change the configuration settings for NFS. These settings are stored in the file /etc/default/nfs-kernel-server, the important ones to change are the number of simultaneous NFS servers:

# Number of servers to start up
RPCNFSDCOUNT=1000

and the number of simultaneous RPC mounts:

RPCMOUNTDOPTS="--num-threads=50"

Get image from source tablet

All the imaging parameters are accessed by running the command:

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/dcs

First you need to set the mode, the ones we are about are “clonezilla-start” and “clonezilla-stop”. The Clonezilla mode we want to use is “clonezilla-save-disk” so that we can back up the image from our source tablet. Note that the defaults include no graphical boot screen – this is nice to have, so change this option. Also, choose whether you want to set the image name now or later. “Now” is fine, though it's easier to set the image later when you get to the tablet computer. Boot your master computer either using a PXE boot procedure or use a pre-loaded USB disk, then follow the upload instructions.

Broadcast image

After you receive the image, you have to put it back out to the others. Rerun the imaging mode selection program:

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/dcs

Now select the option “clonezilla-start” then “clonezilla-restore-disk”. When you are broadcasting an image, you have two options. You can wait for a certain amount of time or a certain number of clients. I suggest the “number of clients” option, as it should prevent the problem we've experienced with our dd/udpcast script of missing one client and having to reboot all the clients.

Da-da!

That's it! Our test run showed a sustained transfer speed of about 1GB of data/minute, which may or may not happen on a regular basis.

Misc. Comments

Each interactive command ends with a statement like “Next time you want to do this, run the following command”, giving you a method to bypass the interactive part by using a huge command line instead. I was never paying enough attention to capture these, but we should get them and put them up on the wiki to save some time.

Good luck!

CloneZilla Netboot without DHCP

In the past TICC used CloneZilla from a local computer, requiring us to setup some computer to run CloneZilla (above process) every time we imaged. The reason we had to do this is that we do not have control over the DHCP server on the network, so we cannot use PXE to boot our clients if we connect them to the network. To work around this we have been developing a DHCP-server-less configuration of CloneZilla that allows us to perform our imaging. This build has 2 components: a special netbooting USB flash disk and modifications to our CloneZilla installation.

Netboot USB Flash Disk

• started with hardy live cd
• modified cd image for usb (find link)
• added netboot to usb (find link)
• tweaked the syslinux menu to have special clonezilla options
• added "ifconfig lo up" so DRBL doesn't puke

CloneZilla Modifications

changes to /tftpboot/node_root/sbin/init:

• changed "nfsserver" to not "ip match"
• added early mount for /opt
• added ssh routine to copy the template for our IP

changes to /tftpboot/node_root/:

• placed ssh in /usr/bin
• placed a bunch of libraries need by ssh in /lib (find list)

added a user and group "clonezilla"

changes to /tftpboot/nodes/:

• copied the original IP to "template"
• applied "chmod -R g+rw template"
• applied g+x to all directories (find command)
• applied "chown -R "root:clonezilla template"

The Grand Unified Tablet Build

TICC is now using a single build to image all of our tablets. This build requires a script to handle the differences between the tablets, as of Intrepid Ibex we only require separate Xorg.conf files and a separate "pen button" configuration for each of the supported models. The script currently supports the tc1100, the tc4200, the tc4400, and the 2710p tablets. The GUTB scripts are now available in the TICC Personal Package Archive on Launchpad. You can install this PPA by going to the System -> Administration -> Software Sources menu and adding the source "ppa:csm-ticc/csm-ticc-ppa". After installing the PPA you can install the GUTB using the command:

sudo apt-get install gutb

Once installed, the script will ensure on boot that the appropriate settings are applied (allowing the script to be installed once and imaged to all the other tablets).

Detection of Tablet Model

A simple hash of the CPU information is used to create a unique identifier for each tablet. The script '/scripts/cpuhash.sh' can be used to generate this id, this script just runs the command:

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -v bogomips | grep -v "cpu MHz" | md5sum | awk '{ print $1 }'

This command takes the CPU identification and strips out the part that varies from time to time (bogomips and "cpu MHz") and creates an md5sum of the remaining data. It is important to note that because of the technique used to detect the model, more than one CPU can correspond to a particular tablet model. To add a hash to the list so that it correspond to a particular model you must tack on the result of '/scripts/cpuhash.sh' to the file '/scripts/hashes.sh'. This file is formatted 'addHash <hash> <name>'; for example, the tc1100 entry appears as:

        # CPU Hash                       # Tablet Name
addHash d4c66c8352264f0fd3a70935ad43dacc tc1100

Differences in the Wacom Driver

The tc1100 and tc4200 have two major differences in how they utilize the Wacom pen: the tc1100 has no eraser and the side-buttons have different IDs on the two tablets. To resolve the eraser issue, there is a separate xorg.conf for each tablet. To handle the button codes being different there is a separate folder of scripts for each pen button for the two tablets, when the tablet starts up a symbolic link is made to the appropriate script folder. It used to be necessary to patch the wacom driver, however, on the new Ubuntu 9.10 these changes are included so it is only necessary to setup the scripts with a small profile file configuring the buttons. A ".profile" is simply added to the user's home folder containing the instructions to convert the button clicks into key presses:

xsetwacom set stylus Button30 "CORE KEY SHIFT F1"
xsetwacom set stylus Button31 "CORE KEY SHIFT F2"
xsetwacom set stylus Button32 "CORE KEY SHIFT F3"

Differences in the Video Driver

The tc1100 uses nVidia's proprietary video card driver while the tc4200 uses the open-source Intel i810 driver. Due to this issue there is a separate xorg.conf for each tablet. While the tablets will work without these changes, without xorg.conf you will need to reconfigure the graphics driver at every boot.

Important things to remember in future builds

Don't forget to install:

• vpnc
• kile
• Mathematica
• LabVIEW

Make a set of key-bindings for the "fn" keys.