cloudxtreme / ltsp-osdeploy

Mix from various open source projects to have auto installation of oses via pxe

ltsp-osdeploy

Mix from various open source projects to have auto installation of oses via PXE. This is first development release with minimal features.

###Main features :

• Mysql database for central management
• Web interface compatible with https://sourcesup.renater.fr/projects/jeddlaj/ (in french)
• Full disk backup and clone of Windows XP and above hosts

###OS Backup features

• full Disk image backup of host
• Small interactive text interface for first image creation task of host
• NTFS support
• Fast Compression. With 2 cores CPU and gigabit network card, disk partitions dumping rate is over 2GB/minute.
• Central storage on NFS server

###OS Clone features

• Full disk clone on same disk size or greater
• Totally unattended cloning process from Network Boot. No menu client client size.
• Fast image deploy with multicast. Tested 81Mbs on 12 100mbs network PC.
• Auto rename of computer and windows domain joining

###Technical features

• Client uses PXE PC's Network boot feature to the work (PXE)
• Boot image is a Linux 32 bits dedicated Debian 7 distribution, based on excellent LTSP project. http://www.ltsp.org
• All work is done with python scripts connected to central database
• Local boot on hard drive or LTSP boot is dynamically managed with web GUI and scripts
• Main difference with others cloning projects is that Windows Host customization is done with a registry edition tool from chntpasswd http://http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/. It offers offline Registry modifications with .Reg files import/export. Windows batch scripts are dynamically generated after clone and before reboot. No need to install complex scripts or agents on windows hosts before generating base image.
• Dump of partitions is done with partclone http://partclone.org
• fast compression is done with pigz. Which is a multithread version of gzip (Now, most of PC's CPUs have multithread, multicore support)
• Multicast transfert uses powerfull udpcast project http://www.udpcast.linux.lu/
• A small python daemon is used to synchronize multicast image transfert. Only one multicast transfert at a time is implemented for now.
• The MySQL database and Web inerface intend to be compatible with the base project from Jeddlaj https://sourcesup.renater.fr/projects/jeddlaj/

Python scripts have international support with traditional gettext library Web interface and database are still in french.