Custom Disk Images

yeah its pretty simple to do actually and you dont need to waste the space.

Setup a finnix profile.. Put your hdd as /dev/ubdb..

and then ssh/dd your image over..

i can never remeber the command though.. something like ssh user@host -c 'dd -if=/dev/imageonremote' | dd of = /dev/ubdb should do the trick.. although im probably slightly off

Sweet thanks that should get me on the right track :)

I've done it with CentOS, and I built a custom Gentoo on the Linode itself. Check out mikegrb's howto for details on how to 'Linode-ify' your distro.

It's not really clear on what's going on. Where is his custom system coming from? Finnix? Am I sshing it onto the finnix system?

is it dd if=/dev/imageonmymachine of=/dev/partitionon_linode?

@cherring:

is it dd if=/dev/imageonmymachine of=/dev/partitionon_linode?

More like dd if=/dev/partitiononmymachine of=/dev/partitionon_linode

I did it using LVM snapshots - then you can use a live machine as the source.

Cheers. People are doing it, I feel quite reassured that I can too then :D.

I guess my last question is do I run the command from my computer(source) or my destination (linode).

Thanks guys.

@pclissold:

Check out mikegrb's howto for details on how to 'Linode-ify' your distro.

@mwalling:

@pclissold:

Check out mikegrb's howto for details on how to 'Linode-ify' your distro.

I did, I already mentioned how I didn't find it that clear, but thanks for your very helpful input.

> Boot Finnix on source system, and dd to Finnix on your Linode via SSH. Destination is /dev/xvdb for Xen or /dev/ubdb for UML Linodes.

Thanks, I guess I'm just a little bit lost since I can't just go and do it right now, and without being able to just jump in and get my hands dirty like I normally would I'm a little bit muddled, it'll be sweet when I can do it though.

I just booted to FINNIX, Boot Strapped Gentoo and saved a tarball of the basic install for future needs. Works great and has been running like a champ. ;)

Actually I just picked up another Linode, booted to FINNIX, extracted my saved tarball. Had my new Linode up and going in a few min's 8)