g4u ("ghosting for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.

For more information, see http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/.

Changes in 2.6beta2 include:

• Make this build with NetBSD-current sources as of 2017-04-17, binaries were cross-compiled from Mac OS X 10.10
• Go back to keeping the disk image inside the kernel as ramdisk, do not load it as separate module. Less error prone, and allows to boot the g4u (NetBSD) kernel from a single file e.g. via PXE (Testing and documentation updates welcome!)
• Actually DO provide the g4u (NetBSD) kernel with the embedded g4u disk image from now on, as separate file, g4u-kernel.gz
• Put all object files into one object directory. This may need more cleanup in the future. Feedback from people building g4u welcome!
• Disable verbose device messages on Microchannel (MCA) machines
• New drivers:
  • Toshiba Dynabook hotkeys
  • Intel S1200,C2000 (non-pch) SMBus storage controller
  • Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage controllers and devices
  • Intel Wireless WiFi Link 7xxx PCI network
  • Intel 8259x 10 gigabit PCI network
  • Realtek 8188CE/8192CE 802.11b/g/n PCI network
  • VMware VMXNET3
  • Marvell Libertas PCMCIA network
  • ASIX AX88178a/AX88179 based USB network adapters
  • Realtek RTS5209/RTS5229 Card Reader
• Happy 18th Birthday, g4u!

• The g4u 2.6beta2 floppy images (zipped/ uncompressed floppy one, floppy two, floppy three, and floppy four)
• The g4u 2.6beta2 ISO CD image (zipped/uncompressed)
• The g4u/NetBSD kernel for PXE boot (gzipped)
• The g4u 2.6beta2 source code
• Some md5 checksums:

  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2-1.fs) = 8214c1ded55e78aed2f34d3e318dc75d
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2-2.fs) = 8b55f3fe6a4806c9a65a3d176463e1bc
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2-3.fs) = 0f9629353ddd470d17c5b4fd4ec7fd8e
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2-4.fs) = c25a955e5d876d64943fd03f957ed4c9
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2.iso) = acabb0fb73d4a2f9062fb070b4ddd825
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2.tgz) = f8387d5bf146f98dda040dfcc1c53e44
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2.fs.zip) = 8ef324c71ae7b000708e69019e55ef4e
  MD5 (g4u-2.6beta2.iso.zip) = 1f4bd37784405350ee3e8e6c75a6b6b6