[Nbd] SelfImage version 1.1 released - NBD support

[Kurt Fitzner <kfitzner@...75...>]

Hi all,

I mentioned a couple days ago that I was making a version of a disk
imaging program that supports NBD.  It has now been released and is
available from:  http://selfimage.excelcia.org

While NBD in the past has generally been used as a way to provide disk
space by sharing a file as a block device, nbd-server is quite capable
of sharing an actual block device.  If you've ever wanted to make a disk
image of a system, but have run into problems on getting the image off
the system, then this might be for you.  Boot the system in single-user
or remount the root partition read-only, and run:
  $ nbd-server <port> /dev/hda -r
and SelfImage can connect and image the drive.

SelfImage supports parallel compression to take advantage of
hyperthreading, SMP, and dual-core systems.

I could also use some input.  The online help for SelfImage with respect
to NBD is a little sparse.  I want to give instructions for the easiest
way to get a safe nbd server running on all the major distributions.
This means getting it into read-only (preferred) or single-user (if
there's no easy way to get it read-only).  I use both Slackware and
Debian and know how to with those.  I've never used Suse or Red
Hat/Fedora.  Also, if anyone knows of any live CD's that are shipped
with nbd-server, that would be helpful to document too.

Thanks.

	Kurt.