WIM , ImageX and alternatives

Hi,

I've been working with a corporation that is naturally only 'able' to consider MS products. As a new techy I'm being educated in 'WIM' based deployments. While they do use Ghost and other imaging software, most of the time they are taking wims and I was wondering if anyone had heard of alternatives?

From Wikipedia:

Quote:

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WIM is file-based, which means that the smallest unit of information is a file. The primary advantages of it being file-based include hardware independence and unique storage of a file referenced multiple times in the filesystem tree (single instance storage).

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Imaging_Format

Is it possible for a tar.gz to emulate this? I'd be much happier about using it if it wasn't dependent on only MS continuing the 'technology'.

I've been wondering if dd and gzip would be able to produce most of the functionality of ImageX and WIMs?

I was thinking if we saved the mbr:**

Code:

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dd if=/dev/hda of=backup-hda.mbr count=1 bs=512

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and the various partitions:

Code:

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sfdisk -d /dev/hda > backup-hda.sf

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,

then all that would be required is a gzip of required system files and directories... ?

The only thing I am completely blown away by is the single copy of files within the wims (Singe Instance Storage). I've seen a 630mb disk be reduced 475mb; as the disk was an install disk, I'm guessing that the files were already compressed. That makes it respectable.

P.S I've recently been begged to *ahem! sulked/cried into* return MS Windows by my wife. Not because it wasn't working, but because she didn't understand how to save to a ufd which was labeled in Dolphin... Gah.

Long and short is that I currently don't have linux on my singular machine and can't personally try this.

Seems no-one else even has a reason to comment...

I've found out the Single Instance Storage seems to be Copy-On-Write (COW) that is in ZFS and BTRFS.

Does anyone know a yea or nay here?

Well, seems no one is curious about this. I'm going to have to try it.

Just wanted to say I couldn't quite get this to work over the past 2(!) years.

If someone has some knowledge on this it would be nice to share ... please?.

Hi,

I think you might want to have a look at http://www.partimage.org it provides the same kind of features as Ghost.

But I would probably go about it in a different way and use tools like kickstart with answer files to deploy linux servers.

If you want more high-end functionalities you might want to try OpenQRM or SpaceWalk.

Hi fmo,

Yeah I know about them but there is a difference between partimage (ghost etc) and wim. Cloning software is block based and wim is file based. In most cases, block based cloning is superior, but occasionally file-based may have a reason to exist.

Hence, I'm trying to solve how to make this work.

Hi,

It's still under developement, but FSArchiver sounds closer to what you're looking for. It's file-based rather than block/sector-based, and supports more filesystems than ImageX. I haven't used it, but it sounds promising. It has been included in some bootable CDs such as the SystemRescueCD.

http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page
http://www.fsarchiver.org/Fsarchiver_vs_partimage
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
http://www.mguhlin.org/2009/10/fsarc...just-data.html

I figured I should chime in here, as WIM is kind of my... particular area, in my small corner of generally Windows-based systems. Maybe to help bridge the gap here for Linux users...

What WIM does that's unique is that it's entirely file-based, but captures a partition in roughly the same way Ghost or other partition-cloning software would do it. I use GImageX - which is an amazing UI for ImageX. It can't clone one partition/volume to another (which is a huge shame, actually - considering how it operates), but it creates "images" of file systems. That WIM contains all the information needed to not "restore" the file system - but to "apply" it to a new or existing filesystem. You basically "extract" a WIM onto a new partition. You can also browse a WIM in 7-zip since it's file-based. The key is that it restores *all* parts of NTFS as objects - like a directory with links to file IDs and the attributes of the files, the files' data itself, etc. So it can save/restore links (symbolic, hardlinks, etc), ownership, permissions, attributes, etc.. And when you restore it, it rebuilds all these links into the new file system - usually making a much cleaner system with improved performance - often "like new".

I'd be curious about a Linux alternative as well. I thought it would be tar, being "Tape ARchive", it would be for file system archiving - including links, ownership, attributes, etc. That would be a Linux equivalent to WIM, I believe...