David and Katherine Goodwin

I just had some questions about this procedure as I am new to "cloning boxes". First, I am working with RHEL 5 and need to be able to create an image of a box in order to rebuild it to the same state at a later time. So let's assume I have created the image above and all is well. In order to "apply" the image to the box can I do it at runlevel 5 or a multiuser mode? Obviously this would be the most convenient. If not, you wrote to do it when I have read only media mounted. Can you explain this further? Would I just have to insert disk 1 of the RHEL 5 o/s and then run the "dd of=/dev/hda" command ?? If so, what do I type when I insert CD 1 in order to get to a prompt to perform this? Do you need to be in any particular directory when you run the command? Also, my drive is not called /dev/hda it is called /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 so I think my command should read "dd of=/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00" to unpack the file correct?
That's all I have for now. I hope by chance this thread is still being monitored. I would appreciate any help. Thx.