Instead of using Ghost, you could use a FOSS alternative such as Clonezilla, g4l, a freeware backup application like the free version of Macrium Reflect, or something like Acronis - which while payware, is really easy, and comes with a bootable backup/restore disk. There's a huge load of applications that'll do what you want, if you're willing to look.
The quickest and easiest way would be to download an ISO image from the Internet and burn it to a CD. There are many good ISO images to choose from that have Ghost. There are tools collections such as BartPE (mentioned in another answer).
Bootable Ghost Iso Image
First of all, if you want to create an image from your current system you will need to boot your machine from another partition that isn't the one that you want to save. So, I would reccomend you to create a bootable CD or pendrive with linux, Clonezilla or even WinPE. So, after you have booted from one of these options you can save your partition image. I think the best program to do that is Clonezilla.
If you choose StandAlone there will be no network available to the client in automation, you will not be able to use GhostCast. This is suitable for imaging where a USB device is the source of, or destination for the image.
15. If you wrote directly to a flash drive, you are now finished. If you created an ISO file, it will need to be burned to a CD, DVD or USB flash drive. On a machine with a CD/DVD burner, you should be able to right-click the ISO file and choose "Burn disc image".
So, what I did was to take a ghost image of the whole linux host disk drive. Afterward I upload the .gho image to the ESXi host via the VI Client. The problem I'm having now is how to make the VM to see the .gho that is inside the ESXi datastore, because I can create a new VM with a new virtual hard disk and I can boot it using a ghost loader. But inside the VM the ESXi datastore is not seen.
The only way I thought is to install the VM Client inside one of VM that are running. Download the .gho file to one of the VM's virtual hard disk. Create a new virtual hard disk for that VM and boot the VM using the ghost CD. Restore the .gho file and paste it into the new hard disk I had created. Afterward copy the vmdk file of that disk and use it in the new VM I had created for the Linux VM. I think this is not a clever process. I think it is going to work (I haven't done it yet), but it is not straightforward. So, the big question is: is there a better process to create a VM inside a free ESXi host using a ghost image?
If the .gho file is not bigger than 4GB, you can create an iso image containing the file and then boot an VM with some OS cd containing the ghost executable and then plug the iso you generated (and copied before to the VMFS volume).
Sorry, I didn't understand what you mean. Do you say I boot the VM with the Ghost CD and from inside the ghost application I upload the .gho image from a network share? If so, how I'm going to see the network share from Ghost if the VM still doesn't have any operating system to see network share?
Coming from Windows, I expect that there is some "disk image" utility that I can run to make a snapshot of my Linux install (and of the boot partition!!) before I meddle with stuff. Then, after I've foobar'ed my machine, I would somehow restore my machine back to that working snapshot.
The most straight forward way to make a raw image of your partitions is to use dd to dump the entire partition to a single file (remember the OS access the partitions /dev/sda1 through a file interface). Make sure you are on a larger partition or on a secondary drive and perform the following command:
There is one limitation though, when restoring the backup: The partition needs to be the same size (or bigger) as the partition you took the image from, so this limits your options in case of a restore. However, you can always expand the partition after you've restored the backup using gparted or parted. The picture gets even muddier when you are trying to restore entire disk copies. However, if you are restoring the backup to the same exact hard drive, you don't need to worry about this at all.
Obviously, a partition cannot be copied while in use: it needs to be unmounted so it doesn't suffer changes during copying (that is self-evident). Therefore, in order to back up your system partition you have to boot in a usb live system - or, as seen in the above image, in a separate (multi-boot) system. The system partition is the one marked with a star. If you try to copy the system partition you get an error soon enough:
Also, one has to take notice that the back-up and the restoration of bootable partitions are both risky procedures and that a back-up of valuable/sensitive data should be first done in a different way (by copying the data instead of the entire partition, etc). - From my experience, this works with Ubuntu system partitions but not with Windows ones.
Optionally, in order to minimize the space taken by the saved image, a partition can be first shrunk (from end, that is from right) so that it would not include the empty space. Here is a post on that: create partition backup image no larger than its files.
Following this answer: How to correctly restore system partition (iso image) with 'Disks'. See the question there. The main idea is that the image (iso) has to be restored onto an existing empty partition that is:
Backup with ddThe following example will create a drive image of /dev/sda, the image will be backed up to an external drive, and compressed. For example, one may use bzip2 for maximum compression:
Restoring a drive imageTo restore a drive image, one will want to boot into a live environment. Restoration is quite simple, and really just involves reversing the if and of values. This will tell dd to overwrite the drive with the data that is stored in the file. Ensure the image file isn't stored on the drive you're restoring to. If you do this, eventually during the operation dd will overwrite the image file, corrupting it and your drive.
However you might be interested in using Clonezilla if you have an external USB hard disk drive or a NAS. You just have to download an ISO image by clicking here (you can access the global download page here), burn it with "Brasero". Boot from Clonezilla Live CD and perform a backup (disk or partition to image) of your main hard disk drive (with your healthy Ubuntu). Please note that you can't backup the partition you have mounted as backup destination (quite logical). If your system is broken, you just have to boot again with Clonezilla Live CD and perform a restore of your system. Don't forget that Clonezilla makes snapshots, so if you have your data ("/home", "/etc", ...) on the same disk/partition as Ubuntu system, you'll get back the one from the backup and loose what has been done since that backup was performed...
I had a running red hat system and I want to create an iso image of this system so when I boot it in a new hardware it install a OS just like the one I have.some unix distribution had this technique and it is called archive image like in below link _01/html/E38524/index.html
Not an iso image ... but you can create a system (disk) image with Clonezilla and restore this image back to another disk.This would be the safest and most professional way to achieve what you want, because it's done from an offline system. :)
Yes, that is right. Even I'd prefer ReaR (Relax And Recover) for bare metal recovery, and other open source tools such as Clonezilla, Mondoresuce, bacula, zmanda etc., do provide same options of creating disaster recovery image which would facilitate easy recovery.
Thank you very much for your clarifications, the idea of the system is to be used as an appliance.I have a VMWare template of it, but some of the networks I work with will not have VMWare as hypervisor so by using ReaR I was able to create the iso image the I can use to install the same system on bare metal , any hyperviosr.thank you for the notes, but I am sure that even those duplicated keys will not be on the same network and thus it will be a duplication of the system
How to create a ghost image of Windows? Take it easy - it is a simple process as long as you use a piece of free and reliable ghost image software. Here in this post, we will introduce MiniTool ShadowMaker (offered by MiniTool) and how to use it to ghost Windows 10/8/7 in order to keep your PC safe.
Ghost imaging (namely backup) refers to a software-driven data backup process that copies the data of a computer hard drive to an individual compressed file, which is called an image. The ghost image copies all the contents - including configuration, applications, settings, etc - to another hard disk drive or server for storage.
As you know, system breakdown occurs due to disasters such as computer virus, manual errors, Windows updates, etc. Thus, it is really a good idea to come up with a good method to ghost Windows 10/8/7 operating system.
Being powerful and flexible, MiniTool ShadowMaker is your best choice for Windows backup & restore. Furthermore, this ghost image software can even allow you to restore the system image to a different computer with different hardware by fixing the compatibility issue with Universal Restore.
2. Where do you want to save the ghost image? An external hard disk, USB flash drive, Pen drive, SSD, HDD, and NAS (Network Attached Storage) are all available. Here, we show you how to ghost Windows 10/8/7 to an external hard drive.
In addition to using the professional and free ghost program, some of you may use Windows built-in tool, Backup and Restore, to ghost your operating system to an image. Of course, it can help you to create a system image when Norton Ghost 15 cannot activate on Windows 10.
Of course, you can. You need to use another option - Set up backup which is located on the right side. This function enables you to create a system image and back up files automatically. Just make Windows 10 ghost image file according to your needs. 2ff7e9595c
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