[SOLVED] Clonezilla again

[kle]

The problem described below was solved by using the most recent update of the most appropriate iso-file of Clonezilla. Choosing the most "appropriate" version is not straightforward. The download page is confusing. What worked for me was "stable Debian-based" rather than Ubuntu, (Ubuntu was for Maveric). There were two alternative isos for "stable Debian-based". I needed the amd64 because I am using a 64-bit system. And it worked like a charm. See my last post below.
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Clonezilla is really most fantastically useful, to the extent it works, that is.

I find I can clone a whole harddisk with only Lucid installed on a single partition, GRUB2 and all, which is really a relief, as the person I am trying to train to use Kubuntu makes quite a few mistakes, being 60 years old and not used to non-windows. (And I am not geek enough to be able to retrace his moves and undo damage.)

However, my own laptop is more complicated, and Clonezilla gives me «buffer i/o on device» and subsequently hangs, though a ctrl+alt+del awakens it so that it goes through the motions of closing down properly.

On my laptop, I have a windows 7 OEM on the first two partitions, Lucid on SDA3, and stored stuff on SDA5.

The first two windows partitions go smoothly, but the whole process stops somewhere on SDA3.
I suspect that is because I have virtualBox there hosting windows XP.

I have tried cloning the entire disk and cloning just the partition SDA3.
No go either way! I do not understand sufficiently well the "advanced" options given by Clonezilla. Maybe one of them would have solved the problem for me.

I realise now, that advice from Dibl in another post, to clone the OEM partitions is a very good idea! I shall do that. But I would also like to have a clone of my Lucid partition, which is where most of my work goes.

Does anybody know how to do that without dismantling the virtual XP?
I have googled the matter, and searched in the Clonezilla forums, and I see there is a question there that would seem to be similar to mine, but can find no reply.

BTW: I went through the same process on a 32 bit installation, and there it seemed to work (though I never tried the «restore»). Now I am on a 64 bit laptop.

NB: fsck returned no bad blocks, and there is plenty of space on the recipient drive.

[dibl]

Re: Clonezilla again

However, my own laptop is more complicated, and Clonezilla gives me «buffer i/o on device» and subsequently hangs

I wonder ... is it possible that this laptop has advanced powersaving software in the hard drive controller, such that when Windows is not running, it "falls asleep"? I have that situation on my Toshiba netbook. You have to "tickle" the mousepad, or tap the spacebar, so it gets an I/O poke and keeps on running.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again

Hmmmm. Yes, now that you mention it, the other laptop screen went black and had to be "tickled". But in this case, I think I just sat and stared sadly at the slow progress, at least the last time I ran it, reading the return messages. On the other hand, maybe I didn't "tickle" it.

Right, tomorrow, I will try again!

[verndog]

Re: Clonezilla again

...

On my laptop, I have a windows 7 OEM on the first two partitions, Lucid on SDA3, and stored stuff on SDA5.

The first two windows partitions go smoothly, but the whole process stops somewhere on SDA3.
I suspect that is because I have virtualBox there hosting windows XP.

I have tried cloning the entire disk and cloning just the partition SDA3.
No go either way! I do not understand sufficiently well the "advanced" options given by Clonezilla. Maybe one of them would have solved the problem for me.


Does anybody know how to do that without dismantling the virtual XP?
I have googled the matter, and searched in the Clonezilla forums, and I see there is a question there that would seem to be similar to mine, but can find no reply.

...

Actually Clonezilla is very intuitive. How are you using it? A Livecd or did you install it some other way. Clonezilla has a LiveCD also so does Part Magic distro.
Part Magic has CZ and partclone, which makes backing cloning easy.

I did just what you wanted to do- backing up my Windows recovery and OS partitions. There's another tool that Clonezilla uses called partclone. you can use it as a stand alone or install it from repositories.

Just remember that the partition you clone has to be cloned to another partition . The first question CZ asks is what do you want mounted, the last question is what to be cloned - partition(s), disk.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again

I used Clonzilla liveCD, and I did try partclone. But I have not heard about CZ or Part Magic. I shall check that. Partimage was what I used to use but it does not handle ext4.

Verndog: Do you have a virtually hosted OS on your system? You see, that is what I fear is causing my troubles. What do you think?

[verndog]

Re: Clonezilla again

Do you have a virtually hosted OS on your system? You see, that is what I fear is causing my troubles. What do you think?

No, I don't. Also CZ=CloneZilla.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again

GOSH! Really, Verndog, excuse me for shouting, but that really was a glorious piece of equipment! Parted Magic. A new world for me. Thanks!

However: no go. This time, with that fantastic toolset, I was at least able to take a screenshot. it got as far as 85% percent of the SDA3 (the partition with the virtual XP on it). Then the CPU dropped to 0 or 1% - no activity at all. I waited for a couple of minutes. The computer was not hung, but Clonezilla in its terminal was.

As for the mounting: Clonezilla starts by asking what partition to mount and I mount my external harddisk where I now have a backup containing 18 GB time stamped a few minutes ago - There are over 400 GB left.

Really very disappointing - but Parted magic is a real treat.

[verndog]

Re: Clonezilla again

There is some "quirks" about using CloneZilla through partedmagic, versus using CloneZilla LiveCD. The mounted partition seems to get messed up or not unmounted when you think it should be.

I have my CloneZilla on a usb stick and have no problems cloning and/or restoring.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again

Ah, pity about PartedMagic. Anyway, traditional Clonezilla breaks on me too. tomorrow, when I have access to a windows OS, I shall see if defrag and/or scandisk will help.

[verndog]

Re: Clonezilla again

Ah, pity about PartedMagic. Anyway, traditional Clonezilla breaks on me too. tomorrow, when I have access to a windows OS, I shall see if defrag and/or scandisk will help.

Clonezilla has some log files. It usually reports where to look for them in case of errors. If you could output them here, then maybe we could resolve it for you.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again

Where would the logs be, I wonder?

I am attaching the directory contents of what was cloned today. As far as I can see most of the files are image files, and there is certainly nothing there that looks like a txt-file, readme, log, or the like. Where else could it be? There was only that one external disk that was mounted, so it can't be in root, can it? (The png file also shows there is plenty of "free space".)

As it happened, my attempt got almost exactly to the same point as yesterday (approx 85% of SDA3, where the virtual machine resides). Although I had started by running check disk and defrag on the external harddisk, the cloning stopped at almost the exact same spot today as ye sterday. (By stopped, I mean clonzilla halted, the CPU usage dropped from 80% to 1% and after a few minutes I could not think of anything else to do but quit "CZ" :-)

I am also attaching the screen capture from yesterday' attempt and the equivalent file for today's attempt.

I see there is supposed to be a way of copying the virtual machine (vdi-file). It is apparently not at all as straightforward as simply copying the file - which in my case is 10 Gig - the space I allotted to it when I set it up. I have to read up on that a bit. I know of no other way of proceeding unless a log can be found somehow.

[verndog]

Re: Clonezilla again

I don't use a VM, but maybe just ran out of ram. Try Ctrl+Alt+F1, or F2 and output "df -h" to see usage.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again

Sorry, I didn't get the file list in (of the cloned stuff)

I can't seem to shrink it to 128Kb without it's becoming unreadable, so I am attaching it as a simple text file instead.

I don't think I ran out of ram. The PartedMagic kept me at all times informed of the amount of Ram used, and it was not very much.

[verndog]

Re: Clonezilla again

It appears that your NTFS partition completed. So the problem is SDA3 is not completing?

Also the log files will be found on clonezilla mount partition, and not the saved partition.

Another thing I do is give the file size a huge number like 1000000 or so. That way the gzipped file is one large file. By the way, you can use partclone to re-image those *img.ga.aa files. If its one large file is makes it that much easier.
another quark of clonezilla is that the cloned partition has to be restored to the exact same partition number. With partclone it doesn't. I commended about that at there sourceforge forum. Steven Shiau, the developer said they may change that in a future release.

Here's the problem with that. Lets say your hard drive dies, and you want to restore one of your images. Using clonezilla, it needs to be in the exact same partition number. It can be another hard drive, but the same partition number.

[kle]

Re: Clonezilla again - SOLVED

Last night I downloaded the last update of Clonezilla amd64 from 2010-10-20.

It cloned the recalcitrant partition without hesitation!
In other words it managed ext4, 64 bit and the installed virtualbox guest (Win XP).

And then it cloned my entire hard disk - grub, Win 7, swap and all.

Before I tested the latest Clonezilla update, my machine was exactly the way I wanted it - even sound is perfect at last. I have installed about 25 applications in here, in addition to the default - and I use them all! In addition I have the virtualbox with 5 proprietary dictionaries. And finally I have the Win 7 that came with my computer, stripped down to a partition that is just a fraction of the one I got to begin with. Many many hours - in reality days - of work have gone into turning my computer into my perfect tool.

And now there is a copy of it all sitting on my external hard disk. If my computer goes down, for some reason, I can recreate it with only a few key strokes - ASSUMING the HD to which I restore the clone is AT LEAST AS LARGE AS THE ONE I COPIED. That is the only weakness of Clonezilla: though my clone is 30.3 GIB, the computer I restore to must be at least 500 GIB. On the other hand, I think there little point in copying to computers others than identical computers, as drivers differ.

No tricks are needed. Just follow the road straight ahead ("beginner mode")
Yippy!