Announcing PING BETA Releases

[Natan]

Hi Nirvdrum,

Looks like I can restore now, which is awesome.

Good news! we're definitely improving towards stability.

I still don't like the new UI. The old one seemed much friendlier. The page where I have to type "YES" is a bit confusing and the subsequent screens are just downright scary.

The UI is not perfect, truly enough... we'll see what can be done. Let's enjoy stability for a while
Concerning the scary screens, I must say the debate is still open. On one hand, the creen s..ks. On another hand, a few users (well, not many) have not understood what would happen to their target partitions (I know...), and felt sorry afterwards. I prefer them to get such a screen, so at least they won't be able to complain afterwards ! Most users will add a Dont_Warn_Me=Y parameter to the APPEND line of their isolinux.cfg/pxelinux file and forget the screen forever.

If I have two devices, hda and sda, with the image on sda, I can see PING try to fdisk sda and fail. It fails because sda contains the image to restore from, but I freaked out before I saw the failure message . . . I certainly didn't want to lose that partition. Anyway, something to consider.

Normally, this point should have been addressed properly, so to avoid trying to extend partitions on the source partition. I'll give it a check.

Thanks for the feedback
Natan

[phpbb1]

When decompressing the beta zip (Ping 3.0 Nov-2008 file) file, I received a CRC corrupted file error (iso image and the "how to"). I was using this version of the beta as the previous stable release of PING did not recognize my external USB backup hard drive (WinXP SP3 using SEAGATE 400GB). I also noticed that there are a number of files external to the ISO image, are these relevant to running PING? Can you post another edition of the latest beta. Thx.

[Natan]

Hi,
just checked the .zip ; it really seems ok (same checksums, unzip OK on my PC). Maybe you should download it again; the MD5 checksum should be 78391e82c8d4da2e6738552b379f1428 .

You shouldn't need more than the ISO, but I've added other files that are generally used by some people in some situations (ex.: the .config to recompile the kernel, etc.)

Regards
Natan

[Curtis8]

Was wondering Natan if instead of Addons-***.tar.gz it could be Addons-***.zip It would seem to me that it is easier to make a zip file in Windows than it is to make a tar.gz file.

[Natan]

Was wondering Natan if instead of Addons-***.tar.gz it could be Addons-***.zip It would seem to me that it is easier to make a zip file in Windows than it is to make a tar.gz file.

Hi Curtis,
Currently no, but I see no reason not to add the .zip format.
Natan

[Natan]

Still a few bug fixes...
PING 3.00 20081114.

Natan

[Natan]

Only one (small) bug fix... we're getting closer to the stable release. There's now a splash screen...
PING 3.00 20081120.

Natan

[Michael]

Hi Natan,

I´m now working some month with this nice tool.
The purpose is to setup existing and new pc´s from different vendors with a sysprepped image. The image has to be recreated each time for new HW. If supported by mainboard the pc´s booting Ping from usb-stick. But the handling with sda/hda is not easy. (need 2 images on fileserver, naming for HDD is hda/sda by old HW and usb-stick, sda/sdb by new HW and ub-stick). If someone select the wrong image Ping complains or the usb-stick is killed. My job is to create a working procedure and documentation for other people (which may have less experience). So I try to use Ping in the simples possible way and have 2 suggestions:

1. Your idea with renaming the image files to askme… is a nice solution. It´s possible to add a parameter like Ask_Always_for_Target to show up the correspondending screen in every case? This can avoid the renaming of the image files. And I need only one screenshot in my doc .

2. In my company all pc has only one HDD and only one partition over the whole size (will be done by sysprep). I know that’s a common configuration also for other companys. My suggestion is to add a parameter (like Restore_to_first_disk) which restore the image independent of sda/hda naming to the first disk in the system (we don´t use dell right now; no problems with utility partitions). This will make a restore for this case more easier and avoid renaming the image files which has to created for every new HW.

Regards
Michael

[Natan]

Hi Michael,
Concerning point 2, you might use the new parameter "Its_HDA_Stupid" and set it to Y (PING 3.00).
Concerning point 1, the idea is interesting ; I'd say, why not, provided we default the param to N.

In your case, you should probably rename sda*/hda* files to askme_a*, and set Its_HDA_Stupid to Y.

Regards
Natan

[Natan]

Hi there,
I'm pleased to announce one of the last betas of PING 3.00 (20081127). Some little bugs have been fixed, regarding the handling of RAID/LVM volumes. BTW, the kernel has been upgraded to 2.6.27.7, and compiled with a couple of new more drivers (SATA).

Please get it here.

Regards
Natan

[Michael]

Hi Natan,

I´m a lazy man, I trying to configure Ping works automatically .

In your case, you should probably rename sda*/hda* files to askme_a*, and set Its_HDA_Stupid to Y.

I´ve tested Its_HDA_Stupid some days ago; its works if the image files named hda (according to your documentation). But my "master image pc" create sda files (I think, all newer pc with SATA do that); I must rename it to hda manually. So in fact I need the other direction for automatic processing.
And I got every time the screen to select the target device. Maybe this occurs only in case of booting from usb-stick (which gives me a sdb). Will test it the next days with a cdrom and a ping.conf file in image directory.

Renaming to askme_a* is again a manually step and for restoring I have select the target device too.

[Natan]

Hi Michael,
renaming to askme_a is not really a manual step, because it has to be done at image creation, and not at image restoration...

Natan

[penguinboy]

I've been trying to use the incremental backup option. I made a backup of a partition using Partimage and had it do the necessary indexing, but the next time I went through the process of making an image, there were just the same two options, Create_New_Image and whatever the other one is. I also tried the process and made a tarball instead, in case the incremental backup option required that, but I still can't find a way to update the image. The Howto hasn't been updated and the changelog just says that it's possible to perform incremental backups. So, what do I need to do?

[Natan]

Probably badly explained. It's only after choosing Create an Image again, and writing the same name for that image, that PING will propose to update it, provided file details have been recorded before.

Regards
Natan

[sharg]

Folks

I am a newbie to this group, and this is more feedback than anything else. My computing background on PCs includes windows, scripting, a smattering of linux, programming in fortran (then and now), visual basic and dotnet. I have been looking for a reliable boot disk (intel boxes) to replace ghost.

Firstly, before I start with the feedback, congratulations on what you have achieved so far, for your generosity, and for being part of a great tradition of 'community' in programming. My experience with GUIs unfortunately is limited to those associated with (MS) vba, vb native and dotnet.

I just tried PING version 3.0, as version 2.0 said it could not mount (at least one) of my drives. This might have been due to my misunderstanding of the GUI keyboard protocols in the PING program - which do not appear to be similar to those in ghost (or similar to software for hard drives eg. by ONTRACK). Also exit from the program was not elegant - I had to 'crash' the computer by holding down the power button as 'cancel' did not give me a prompt (as set).

I imaged the drive on this (laptop) machine with charger on using PING 3.0, no compression. The disk contains 14.2 Gig - not all crap, but Windows bloatware. This translated into 27 odd Gig of image, and took 2 hours and 25 minutes to copy - with the indicated transfer speed slowly decreasing from 800+ Mb/minute to 190 Mb/minute during proceedings. Yes the laptop is 2 years old but is uses USB 2.0 for the external hard drive (brand new).

Is this the performance expected? I will check this soon against an image using DIXML on Bartpe, and report back the difference (if any). Unfortunately, this performance is not inspiring and suggests that somethlng more than the GUI may currently be amiss. Other reports on this group suggest better performance from the core engine of your application in earlier versions.

May I suggest that KISS (simplicity) and robustness be the key note for the GUI for your application. In that regard the requirements for some to be able to roll out across networks might be dealt with by scripting that addresses the main application as add-ons. Otherwise, additional features of this type (in my experience) become the worst kind of features. After all, an administrator using this program should be able to 'roll their own'.

Kind regards

Gaz