G4L

I use Ghost for Linux (G4L) at work all the time. It works great for copying entire hard drives to an FTP system and back. This allows the setup of multiple identical machines in much less time than installing and configuring all of them one after the other.

For some reason, we use a windows system for our FTP server at work. Not sure why, because it costs us to keep a MS server up and running when a linux box would be basically free for an internal system. FTP works just fine in Linux.

Up to recently, I've been chugging away using G4L on the internal FTP site with the greatest of ease. Then, the ax fell. I don't know if some setting changed on the FTP site or if there is some kind of date related BS going on in G4L, but the file name list mechanism in G4L refuses to list the file names from the FTP site. The older version of G4L I was using would simply blink when you asked to pick a file and then dump you right back in the main menu. Useless. The new version of G4L 0.35 at least prompts you for a name and lets you type it in.

This is the sort of thing that makes you think. G4L is running off a CD so there have been no changes to the software I'm using on the client side. The FTP server does not appear to have changed at all. What caused the problem? I really wonder if it is a file name. Some special character has turned up in the file list that is throwing G4L off. When I use other software to view the FTP site, the file lists all come up just fine.

This got me twice today because not only did I need to install an image, but I had to then update the image though windows update. Then recreate the image after. The old image was created in the spring (2010) some time. The number of windows updates has grown by ridiculous proportions.