07-10-2005
Jumpstart and Flash Archives
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am short on time and need to get up to speed fast on the use of flash archives. I am very familiar with Jumpstart and have used it successfully for the past 5 years. The current project I am working on requires optimization of time and speed when deploying systems which is why I am considering trying to implement a Jumpstart/Flash archive solution. As usual, the customer is strapped for time and funding and thus cannot afford me the luxury of experimental testing on my own to determine if a Jumpstart/Flash archive is a viable solution. So I am turning to all of you to help me determine if I should push this approach any further with the customer or should I just drop it. I need fairly technical answers to the following questions:
1. From what I have read, you can create a flash archive of a "master" system. Can this archive image be an image of the entire disk? If the answer is yes, then when you go to restore it using Jumpstart, does the disk you are restoring to have to be of the same disk geometry and size? I believe the answer is probably yes, however, the logic behind the question is: Say I am using a system with a 36GB disk as my "master" system image. After building it, the total disk space "used" by all partitions is only 15GB. Can I use Jumpstart and the 36GB Flash archive image to restore it to a 20GB disk? If the answer is 'NO", I need to restore it to a disk with the same geomentry and size, then is the real solution to this scenario to use flar create to create separate archives of all the master disk partitons?
2. When using Jumpstart to restore this "master" image (whether it be the entire disk archive image or each separate archive images of the master disk partitions), how does Jumpstart account for changing of the hostname, netmask, default route, IP addresses, domainname, etc.? (In other words, the unique system information that varies from system to system.)
3. Assuming that jumpstart can somehow reconfigure the system-unique parameters after installing the master system disk image/partitions and everything else remains equal, will using Jumpstart in conjunction with Flash archives be any faster than just using Jumpstart with finish scripts?
Thank You for your wisdom and help!
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
faketime
FAKETIME(1) W.Hommel FAKETIME(1)
NAME
faketime - manipulate the system time for a given command
SYNOPSIS
faketime [options] timestamp program [arguments...]
DESCRIPTION
The given command will be tricked into believing that the current system time is the one specified in the timestamp. The wall clock will
continue to run from this date and time unless specified otherwise (see advanced options). Actually, faketime is a simple wrapper for lib-
faketime, which uses the LD_PRELOAD mechanism to load a small library which intercepts system calls to functions such as time(2) and
fstat(2). This wrapper exposes only a subset of libfaketime's functionality; please refer to the README file that came with faketime for
more details and advanced options.
OPTIONS
--help show usage information and quit.
--version
show version information and quit.
-m use the multi-threading variant of libfaketime.
-f use the advanced timestamp specification format.
EXAMPLES
faketime 'last Friday 5 pm' /bin/date
faketime '2008-12-24 08:15:42' /bin/date
faketime -f '+2,5y x10,0' /bin/bash -c 'date; while true; do echo $SECONDS ; sleep 1 ; done'
faketime -f '+2,5y x0,50' /bin/bash -c 'date; while true; do echo $SECONDS ; sleep 1 ; done'
(Please note that it depends on your locale settings whether . or , has to be used for fractional offsets)
ADVANCED TIMESTAMP FORMAT
The simple timestamp format used by default applies the /bin/date -d command to parse user-friendly specifications such as 'last friday'.
When using the faketime option -f, the timestamp specified on the command line is directly passed to libfaketime, which enables a couple of
additional features such as speeding the clock up or slowing it down for the target program. It is strongly recommended that you have a
look at the README file that came with faketime for the details. Summary:
Freeze clock at absolute timestamp: "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"
If you want to specify an absolute point in time, exactly this format must be used. Please note that freezing the clock is usually
not what you want and may break the application. Only use if you know what you're doing!
Relative time offset: "[+/-]123[m/h/d/y], e.g. "+60m", "+2y"
This is the most often used format and specifies the faked time relatively to the current real time. The first character of the for-
mat string must be a + or a -. The numeric value by default represents seconds, but the modifiers m, h, d, and y can be used to
specify minutes, hours, days, or years, respectively. For example, "-2y" means "two years ago". Fractional time offsets can be used,
e.g. "+2,5y", which means "two and a half years in the future". Please note that the fraction delimiter depends on your locale set-
tings, so if "+2,5y" does not work, you might want to try "+2.5y".
Start-at timestamps: "@YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"
The wall clock will start counting at the given timestamp for the program. This can be used for specifying absolute timestamps with-
out freezing the clock.
ADVANCED USAGE
When using relative time offsets or start-at timestamps (see ADVANCED TIMESTAMP FORMAT above and option -f), the clock speed can be
adjusted, i.e. time may run faster or slower for the executed program. For example, "+5y x10" will set the faked time 5 years into the
future and make the time pass 10 times as fast (one real second equals 10 seconds measured by the program). Similarly, the flow of time can
be slowed, e.g. using "-7d x0,2", which will set the faked time 7 days in the past and set the clock speed to 20 percent, i.e. it takes
five real world seconds for one second measured by the program. Again, depending on your locale, either "x2.0" or "x2,0" may be required
regarding the delimiter.
Faking times for multiple programs or even system-wide can be simplified by using ~/.faketimerc files and /etc/faketimerc. Please refer to
the README that came with faketime for warnings and details.
AUTHOR
Maintained by Wolfgang Hommel <wolf@code-wizards.com>. Please see the README and Changelog files for contributers.
BUGS
Due to limitations of the LD_PRELOAD mechanism, faketime will not work with suidroot and statically linked programs. While timestamps and
time offsets will work for child processes, speeding the clock up or slowing it down might not work for child processes spawned by the exe-
cuted program as expected; a new instance of libfaketime is used for each child process, which means that the libfaketime start time, which
is used in speed adjustments, will also be re-initialized.
REPORTING BUGS
Please send an e-mail to Wolfgang Hommel <wolf@code-wizards.com>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2003-2008 by Wolfgang Hommel.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You may redistribute copies of faketime under the
terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.
SEE ALSO
ld.so(1), time(2), fstat(2)
faketime 0.8 August 2008 FAKETIME(1)