DRBL

DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) is an open source, totally free and multiplatform command-line software implemented in C, Perl and UNIX Shell, and designed to provide an environment for effortlessly managing GNU/Linux and BSD operating system deployment.

With DRBL, users will be able to install just one server machine and quickly configure as many client computers as they want in no time, with minimum effort and using the latest PXE/Etherboot, NIS and NFS technologies.

It presents users with a DOS-like menu, from where they can boot a remote Linux system, run the FreeDOS operating system, perform a memory diagnostic test using the Memtest86+ utility, clone disks, or boot via PXE (Preboot Execution Environment).

Includes Clonezilla

The powerful and popular Clonezilla disk cloning/imaging software is also included in the DRBL project, allowing the user to clone disk partitions or entire drives without too much hassle. More details about Clonezilla and the Clonezilla Live CD can be found on the Linux section of Softoware.

Available as a Live CD

Being also available as a Live CD Linux operating system, using the powerful and popular Clonezilla software, DRBL provides the ability to access local hardware by using distributed hardware resources.

Under the hood, supported OSes and availability

As mentioned at the beginning of the description, the C, Perl and UNIX Shell programming/scripting languages were used to write the source code for DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux), which is supported on all GNU/Linux distributions, as well as on the FreeBSD operating system.

For your convenience, the program is distributed as native installers for Debian/Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora based distributions of Linux in the RPM and DEB file formats, supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit computer architectures. The source code is available for download as a compressed archive (tarball) or a SRPM package.

What is new in this release:

• Mandriva 2009.1, Ubuntu 5.0.1 and Ubuntu 9.04 are supported in this release.
• Language files were upudated. Thanks to Alex Ibanez Lopez ,Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Gianfranco Gentili, Annie Wei, Akira YOSHIYAMA, and Zhiqiang Zhang.
• New upstream syslinux 3.80.
• New program isohybrid was included.
• Option "-q2" (partclone > partimage > dd) is the default option.
• Package lzma was listed in the list in drbl.conf, and option -z4 can be selected in dcs now.
• Bug fixed: For Debian lenny, Ubuntu 8.10 or later, we should not allow network to be down when halting. Otherwise wake-on-LAN won't work.
• Some improvements about Clonezilla were added.

What is new in version 1.9.3-43:

• Language files were updated. Thanks to Gianfranco Gentili, Juan Ramon Martinez, Alex Ibanez Lopez, Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Zhiqiang Zhang, Gianfranco Gentili, and Annie Wei.
• Another warning about -z3 (lzop) was added in dcs/ocs-sr menu.
• Merged the revised language file en_US. Thanks to Dylan Pack .
• Debian 5.0 is supported. firstboot.DBN5.0.drbl was added.
• drbl-aoe-serv was improved to give error message if no NIC was found.
• Patched rc-default for Ubuntu 9.04 was added.
• New upstream syslinux 3.73.
• Bug fixed: "get-all-nic-ip -c" failed to identify if NICs are "eth0 eth0:1", e.g.
• Bug fixed: "edd=on" parsing failed when running "drblsrv -i" first time.
• Bug fixed: ntfsclone was not able to run on amd64 Debian Lenny due to /emul was not copied to /tftpboot/node_root. Thanks to Olivier Korn (https://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?func=detail&atid=671650&aid=2693933&group_id=115473) and Jose Luis (https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=6873691).

What is new in version 1.9.3-23:

• Fedora 10 and OpenSuSE 11.1 are supported in this release.
• Language files fr_FR was updated. Thanks to Jean-Francois Nifenecker.
• Language files zh_CN.UTF-8 was updated. Thanks to Zhiqiang Zhang.
• Language files it_IT was updated. Thanks to Gianfranco Gentili.
• Language files ja_JP.UTF-8 was updated. Thanks to Annie Wei.
• Spanish language files were added. Thanks to Juan Ramon Martinez.
• A small script check-lang.sh was added in language files to check if the UTF-8 language files work.
• Boot parameter "edd=on" will be added by generate-pxe-menu if EDD is builtin in kernel and default to be off.
• Option -j2 and -j3 for saving or restoring hidden data were added in dcs.
• mkswapfile service is improved with some prompts.
• Typos in language file en_US were fixed. Thanks to Juan Ramon Martinez Castillo.
• Programs drblsrv-offline and install-kernel-for-client were improved to find kernel version number for package rpm.
• Minor updated for drblsrv-offline.
• Default to use opensuse 11.1 netinstall in drbl.conf.
• Language files it_IT were updated. Thanks to Gianfranco Gentili.
• An option -z2p for parallel bzip2 was added.
• Package pbzip2 is in the lists for drbl and clonezilla live.
• New upstream memtest86+ 2.11.
• An option "-e1 auto" was added to dcs.
• gdm of DRBL client should be started later so that keyboard and mouse will work (Was S13, now S30).
• Default to use language en_US in drbl-nfs-exports.
• Language files updated. Some typos in en_US were fixed. Thanks to Jason and John Clegg.
• Bug fixed: Language file es_ES for bash script was broken.
• Bug fixed: Package "binutils" is required in Clonezilla live since we need strings from it to parse syslinux.
• Bug fixed: drbl*.repo in rpm-md-repos should not be copied again. It's already there.
• Bug fixed: rpm-md-repos was not installed in the Makefile.
• Bug fixed: drbl*.repo in rpm-md-repos should be copied to system when running drblsrv -i.
• Bug fixed: mac-grp-* should not be case sensitive. Thanks to Steven K. for this bug report.
• Bug fixed: duplicated fixing waitnfs.sh in drblpush.sh. Thanks to Enix

What is new in version 1.9.2-19:

• Support for Ubuntu 8.10 and Mandriva 2009.0.
• New upstream memtest86+ 2.10.
• Some bugs were fixed.

What is new in version 1.9.1-26:

• One NIC server is supported now.
• Public IP address clients are supported.
• Upstream syslinux 3.71 is used.
• A testing function, SAN (AoE) booting, was added.
• For more information, check http://drbl.sourceforge.net/one4all/drbl-sanboot.php.
• A new program, drbl-syslinux-netinstall, was added to create a netinstall zip for USB flash drives.
• The volume size of a Clonezilla image can be assigned.
• Broadcast mode for Clonezilla was added in dcs.
• The "-r" option of Clonezilla was turned off by default.