The PartImage Handbook

François Dupoux fdupoux@partimage.org

1. Introduction

• 1.1 What is new in documentation?
• 1.2 What is it?
• 1.3 Changes

2. Installation

• 2.1 How to obtain PartImage
• 2.2 Requirements
• 2.3 Compilation and installation

3. Usage

• 3.1 How to save a partition into an image file
• 3.2 How to restore a partition from an image file
• 3.3 What compression level to use ?
• 3.4 The splitting option
• 3.5 The network support
• 3.6 Using PartitionImage with Apple iMac
• 3.7 Making a backup of the partition table

4. The BOOT/ROOT disks and Eltorito bootable CD-Rom

• 4.1 Why these disks ?
• 4.2 How to create these disks ?
• 4.3 How to use these disks ?
• 4.4 How to create an eltorito bootable CD-Rom ?

5. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

• 5.1 Any hope of a browser like utility to allow restoring individual files from the archives? Like Ghost Explorer?
• 5.2 If I make an image file of a partition, can I restore it to an unpartitioned hard disk ?
• 5.3 Can I restore it to a smaller or bigger partition ?
• 5.4 I need a write support for ntfs. It exists in kernel-2.4,
• 5.5 A driver is missing in the partimage-bootdisk/bootcd. How can I solve the problem ?
• 5.6 When I use the bootdisk, I see an error with 09000900090009000900090009000 on the screen
• 5.7 How do I generate certificate/key file for SSL support
• 5.8 How to run partimaged in chroot environnement
• 5.9 I use XFS. Does partimage also take things like ACLs and other Extended Attributes into account ?
• 5.10 What does partimage give you over the following: clear the free blocks with DD, and copy with DD (dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/filetmp ; rm /mnt/filetmp ; dd if=/dev/xxx | gzip > image_file.gz) ?

6. Partition Image Internals

• 6.1 Note about the NTFS support
• 6.2 The 2 GB file limitation
• 6.3 How are the partitions read/written
• 6.4 Developers information

7. Developers informations

• 7.1 Creating images of BOOT/ROOT/Eltorito
• 7.2 Testing the file system support of partimage

8. Contributing to the project

• 8.1 Writing the documentation
• 8.2 Translators (from English)
• 8.3 Beta-testers
• 8.4 Writing C++ code

9. Copyright