In the past I've used DriveImage and later Symantec Ghost to image
disks on machines used for debugging particularly invasive, or
particularly unstable driver projects.
Setting up a new Dell PowerEdge 1800 dual Xeon box, I installed XP SP2
and connected it via a serial cable to another box running Windows
Server 2003 (which I don't think is relevant but I've been wrong
before). The basic setup worked as expected. However, attempting to use
the latest Ghost 10.0 from Symantec was no picnic and I'm wondering if
anyone here can explain the problems that I'm seeing.
Install attempt #1: As a matter of course, I typically always boot the
target box with all debugging options enabled in the boot.ini file and
connect to it with WinDbg regardless of if I'm debugging a driver
project or not. So I thought nothing of running the Ghost 10.0
installer on this setup. However, this generated first-chance
exceptions that halted execution landing me at the WinDbg command
prompt. Although somewhat atypical for production code, I thought
nothing of it and figured that the exception would be handled. Possibly
it was. But the Ghost installer reported "setup was interrupted - no
files or settings have been modified". Well that's not true at all but
it's off topic.
Install attempt #2: Rebooted without the debugger, installed Ghost w/o
obvious error and performed an initial backup of the test target's
single SATA drive.
Maybe this was just some installation problem? I tried rebooting back
into the debugger with Ghost installed only to be hammered with
exceptions in WinDbg.
According to the Symantec support pages Symantec products aren't
compatible with kernel-mode debuggers. The following two articles on
the Symantec website provide an insufficient amount of detail to be of
any use whatsoever.
Kernel debuggers and debug output viewers are incompatible with
Symantec programs
http://tinyurl.com/ddoor
Compatibility with kernel debugger programs
http://tinyurl.com/dlyfj
What's the conventional wisdom these days for imaging disks on hosts
that (a) must be run routinely under WinDbg (b) are likely to suffer
such abuse that they become unbootable and require restore from backup
image in order to efficiently re-esablish the controls required for
valid testing of kernel drivers? sysresccd.org sure looks nice but it
doesn't seem to support SATA drives yet. Anyone have a suggestion for
getting Ghost working, a way to use sysresccd on a SATA drive, or
suggestion for another utility?
- Thanks in advance and regards
Chris