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Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:10:35 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Aryeh Friedman <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com>
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	(wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:10:36 -0600 (MDT)
Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: best way to replicate system
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On Thu, 21 Jul 2011, Aryeh Friedman wrote:

> I have set up a machine that is 100% configred and now needs to be
> duplicated to an arbitrary number of other machines (23 currently)...
> none of the machines have optical drives (or floppies) so it has to be
> a USB install... what is the best way to do this all I can think of is
> "make release" or make a diskimage and dd it

dd works but is not optimal, copying a lot of empty disk space. [1]

dump(8) to create filesystem images [1], boot target with mfsBSD [2], 
set up target disk [3], restore(8) over ssh [1].

1. http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/backup.html
2. http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/
3. http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html