Questions[clone](ubuntu)

I am running Ubuntu 18.04, as a Subsystem for Windows. I have done this in mutliple PCs and never had this problem. I try to to git clone <repo>, and I get this:

Cloning into '<repo>'...
error: chmod on /mnt/c/Users/Efsta/Code/<repo>/.git/config.lock failed: Operation not permitted
fatal: could not set 'core.filemode' to 'false'

I tried the following:

1. ❯ git config core.fileMode false, with this result fatal: not in a git directory

2. ❯ git config --global core.filemode false

3. ❯ git config --add --global core.filemode false

Nothing seems to work. I already tried a couple of answers here, but WSL seems a little bit more tricky. Anyone have any idea about how to solve this?

I have also tried everything in this question : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1580596/how-do-i-make-git-ignore-file-mode-chmod-changes, nothing seems to work.

Ubuntu 18.04 came out April 26, 2018 and I want to try it to upgrade my programs and convert my data but don't want to commit if there are bugs.

I've shrunk Windows from 410 GB to 385 GB, rebooted Ubuntu 16.04 and ran gparted to create a new 25 GB partition labeled "Ubuntu18.04". I ran rm-kernels and removed about 20 kernels to eliminate about 10 GB on Ubuntu 16.04.

Now I want a script that will populate the new partition with 16.04 LTS and create a new Grub menu option to it. Only relevant directories should be copied. For example /sys, /run, /proc and /dev are virtual directories created during boot and shouldn't be copied.

I also want /etc/fstab patched with the correct UUID and cron reboot jobs disabled such that daily backups on cloned data isn't run after booting the clone.

I anticipate running the script many times over the next few weeks/months. As such the cloning process should effortlessly repeatable.

The same script could be used for testing security updates and new Ubuntu Kernel Team updates without effecting production systems.

I have to dd a couple of 1TB hard drives. They are taking several hours to clone and I was wondering if there was any way possible of knowing how fast they are going, how much they have done and how long will they take to copy the rest.

All I can see is the terminal with the command running. When I run ps -e at least I know that dd is working from the CPU usage shown, but I have no way of knowing how much it has done or how long it will take to finish.

Kind of makes me crazy.

I need to make a (preferably) mountable image of an 80GB Hdd, and store it on another hard drive. Is there some way that I can do this without losing data?

Thanks for the answers I've received so far. The system in question cannot be used right now due to a problem with the power button :( [ugh!], but the information will really be useful =)! Thanks to all who answered so far, if anyone else wants to give me some tips I'll leave this open for a bit, as I still have not yet been able to clone the drive.

Kind-of like this question but slightly different (I think), in that I have 6 identical Acer Aspire Revo R3610 machines. One is (almost) configured to my requirements - when I'm done preparing it I'd like to make the other 5 machines absolutely the same. I'm very new to Ubuntu, what's the most straightforward (easiest) way of doing this?

The machines are going to live on different networks if that might otherwise be a problem (eg with Windows you can clone disks but you then have to make registry changes afterwards if they're going to run on the same network etc). The hardware in all 6 machines is, I stress, the same!

How can I efficiently clone one source image on to these identical machines?

Please restrict one software/solution per answer