I am attempting to create my own one-off imaging utility based on fedora and I have one main question. The utility (well, in theory) will save a raw image of the machine to a network storage location. For me the best target is a samba share.
The question is: what type of image container would be easiest to use? Could it be as simple as DDing the drive contents into a file on the samba location? And if so, would writing from that file be as simple as DDing the file on the samba target to the new machine's hard drive?
This is my first attempt at a project like this and I don't want to get snagged by something simple going wrong.
Just for now, all I want the live disk to do is load, mount the share, and give two options... copy a raw image from the local disk to a image on the share or load an image from the share to the local disk.
If there's already a tool to do this basic task, keeping it simple, please let me know. I've looked at all the big name cloaning utilities and I need this for one-off imaging (i'm currently using FOG which is great for an entire lab, but not as nice for one-time images).