I've done cloning for many years with tar:

On the source machine, boot from an SL live CD and mount the source's root 
file system.  Make a tar file of this system with a command like:

cd /mnt/wherever
tar -cSf - . | ssh someuser@somewhere 'cat >mysystem.tar'

Then, on the target, boot the live CD, partition the disk, create the 
root filesystem and mount it.  THen untar the contents with something 
like:

cd /mnt/wherever
ssh someuser@somewhere cat mysystem.tar | tar -xpSf -

You may need to change /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf, if the 
partition layout is different or the files use UUIDs.  In the latter case, 
I just change to partition names (e.g./dev/sda1).

Then run grub to install the boot loader:

grub
root (hd0,X)
setup (hd0)

This works great as long as the hardware is similar enough that the 
initrd/initramfs still works.  Otherwise, there's an extra step to 
regenerate it, which I can explain if people want.

Steve Gaarder
System Administrator, Dept of Mathematics
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
[log in to unmask]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Yasha Karant wrote:

> We have a limited, small, number of IEEE 802.3 connected hardware platform 
> identical workstations to clone -- no 802.11 nor any shared (remote, 
> distributed) disk storage (at this time).  My plan was to get one fully 
> operational and configured, and then clone the hard drive image onto the 
> remaining machines one hard drive at a time.
>
> Let A represent the operational (clone source) machine, and Bhd a target hard 
> drive.  The hard drive on A is /dev/sda, call it Ahd.  A is shut down power 
> off.  Bhd is installed into an available bay on A, A is booted, and Bhd 
> appears as /dev/sdb in A.  Using dd on A, clone /dev/sda to /dev/sdb .  Mount 
> on A the partition of /dev/sdb that contains /etc (there are no end user home 
> directories -- only home directories are those of the system administration 
> users).  Using a text editor (e.g., vi), modify the /etc/sysconfig/net* 
> scripts/directories, as well as /etc/hosts. for the name and IP address of 
> machine B that will contain Bhd (resolv.conf will be the same -- all of these 
> machines are in the same DNS subzone, same TCP/IP subnet).  Iterate through 
> all of the target workstation hard drives.  As there are no other distributed 
> services running, this should suffice.
>
> Shutdown A, remove Bhd, install Bhd into B, boot B upon which Bhd should 
> appear as /dev/sda .  Done.
>
> Is there a better method in terms of software?  At this time, I do not want 
> to setup a remote image server that effectively will download the full image 
> of Ahd onto Bhd over a network, nor do I want to make a custom install DVD as 
> we only have a small number of workstations to clone, not, say, one hundred.
>
> I do understand that if Ahd and Bhd present different bad blocks to the OS, 
> and these are not "hidden" by the intelligence on each individual hard drive, 
> then dd may not work.  However, the drives already have been surveyed and the 
> bad block situation should not be an issue.
>
> A related question (that was partially addressed in a different thread):  is 
> there a way to remove/disable Network Manager and use a traditional static 
> configuration?  On a laptop that needs to move within the field from one 
> 802.11 network to another, with a different DNS zone and TCP/IP 
> configuration, Network Manager provides similar ease and functionality to the 
> end user autoconfiguration applications that are used under Mac OS X or 
> modern MS Win.  This is unnecessary and in some sense dangerous for static 
> workstations that need no such dynamic configuration.
>
> My thought was to find the RPM that installs Network Manager and simply 
> uninstall it, either via yum or a simple rpm -e command.  Is Network Manager 
> too deeply ingrained in current EL6 (using TUV compliant model) to make this 
> feasible?
>
> Yasha Karant
>