Clonezilla-SysRescCD
Restoring to a different location
08/02/2009 - v 3.1.0

Copyright: © 2007-2009, Spiros Georgaras <sng@hellug.gr>	Single page
Last update: 23/12/2009	Printable version

Contents

Intro [^]

In the past restoring to a different location was not supported by Clonezilla Live at all. Because of that, a script called reloc-img was added to Clonezilla-SysRescCD, which would help the user perform this task.

Recent versions of Clonezilla Live partly support restoring to a different location, so the reloc-img script is obsolete. Clonezilla Live now supports:

Relocation of a disk image (restoring a whole disk)
Relocation of a partition image (restoring a partition)

Clonezilla Live does not support:

Relocation of a single partition contained into a disk image.

Imagine you have a disk backup image named hda-2009-02-02. The image contains three partitions, hda1 (operating system), hda2 (user data) and hda3 (other data).

You want to restore your other data partition (hda3), to a different system (partition sdb2) but there is no way to restore (extract) a single partition from a disk image - you can only restore the whole disk.

In order to address this situation, two new scripts have been written for Clonezilla-SysRescCD: imginfo and imgconvert

Script imginfo [^]

The script will be used to print info about existing image files.

Its help screen is:

# imginfo -h
Clonezilla Live Image Information
imginfo v. 0.1 - (C) 2009 S. Georgaras <sng@hellug.gr>

Usage: imginfo <options> <directory>

Available options:
  s         Search in sub-directories too
  i [name]  Pring info for image [name]
  v         Print version info and exit
  h         Print this screen and exit

Script imgconvert [^]

The script will be used to convert an existing disk image file to a new partition image file.

imgconvert can create two type of images:

Temporary image
This type of image is created by linking the data files of the existing disk image to the new partition image. This means that the original image must be present for the new image to be used. This is the default image type created by imgconvert.
Permanent image
This type of image is created by copying the data files from the existing disk image to the new partition image. This means that the original image is not needed in order to use the new one. Permenant image files are created using the command line parameter -p.

Its help screen is:

# imgconvert -h
Clonezilla Live Image Conversion
imgconvert v. 0.1 - (C) 2009 S. Georgaras <sng@hellug.gr>

Usage: imgconvert <options> [image] [partition] <new partition>

Parameters are:
  [image]     Disk image to be converted to partition image
  [partition] Partition name to convert. It must be a valid device name

Available options:
  o [image]  Save new imag as [image]
  p          Save new partition instead of making a link to the old one
  v          Print version info and exit
  h          Print this screen and exit

Using the scripts [^]

Restoring to a partition [^]

After booting into Clonezilla Live, I select

Enter_shell Enter command line prompt

when the menu is displayed and then I press 2 to exit to the shell.

At this point I will mount my images partition (in this example /dev/sdc4), and use script imginfo to get info about my image files.

$ sudo su -
# mount /dev/sdc4 /home/partimag
# cd /home/partimag
# imginfo
Image files found in: /home/partimag
  Image: usb250-img, disk: sda, size: 259MB, parts: 1
    part: sda4, size: 247.00MB, type: FAT16
  Image: sys-bck, disk: hda, size: 320.0GB, parts: 3
    part: hda1, size: 22.36GB, type: Linux
    part: hda2, size: 39.06GB, type: Linux
    part: hda3, size: 233.87GB, type: Linux

As you can see there are two disk images under /home/partimag: usb250-img and sys-bck.

sys-bck is a backup of my old system, which had three partitions. What I need to do now is "copy" the hda3 partition to my current system, by transfering its data to partition sdb2.

The way to proceed is:

Create a new partition image (containing hda3's data) based on the existing disk image file, by executing the command:
# imgconvert sys-bck hda3 sdb2
Clonezilla Live Image Conversion
imgconvert v. 0.1 - (C) 2009 S. Georgaras

Determining input image
  Input image: "/home/partimag/sys-bck"
  Validating image...   ok
Determining input partition
  Input partition: "hda3"
  Validating input partition...   ok
Determining output image
  Output image: "/home/partimag/sys-bck-cnv"
  Validating output image...   ok
  Checking permissions...   ok
Determining output partition
  Output partition: "sda2"
  Validating output partition...   ok
Creating output image: /home/partimag/sys-bck-cnv
  Linking files...   done
  Fixing info files...   done
This command will create a temporary partition image file (automatically named sys-bck-cnv), which contains sdb2 only, as you can see by executing:
# imginfo -i sys-bck-cnv
    Image: sys-bck-cnv, part: sdb2, size: 233.87GB, type: Linux
Restart Clonezilla Live by pressing Control-D twice.
Restore the new image file into sdb2, by selecting

        Screen 1:         Start_Clonezilla        Start Clonezilla

        Screen 2:         device-image        disk/partition to/from image

        Screen 3:         skip        use existing /home/partimag

        Screen 4:         Beginer / Expert

        Screen 5:         restoreparts        Restore_an_image_to_local_partition

and continue as usual to restore the partition.

Converting image files [^]

# imgconvert -p -o other_data sys-bck hda3 sdb2
Clonezilla Live Image Conversion
imgconvert v. 0.1 - (C) 2009 S. Georgaras

Determining input image
  Input image: "/home/partimag/sys-bck"
  Validating image...   ok
Determining input partition
  Input partition: "hda3"
  Validating input partition...   ok
Determining output image
  Output image: "/home/partimag/other_data"
  Validating output image...   ok
  Checking permissions...   ok
Determining output partition
  Output partition: "sda2"
  Validating output partition...   ok
Creating output image: /home/partimag/other_data
  Copying files...   done
  Fixing info files...   done

# imginfo -i other_data
Image: other_data, part: sdb2, size: 233.87GB, type: Linux

# ls -la sys-bck
total 1111972
drwxr-xr-x   2 root   root       4096 2007-11-22 03:21 .
drwxr-xr-x. 34 root   root       4096 2009-04-06 21:28 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root          4 2007-11-20 20:33 disk
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root 1081716736 2007-11-20 20:32 hda1.aa
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root   45453312 2007-11-20 20:33 hda2.aa
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root   10317824 2007-11-20 20:33 hda3.aa
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root         37 2007-11-21 18:56 hda-chs.sf
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root         37 2007-11-21 18:50 hda-chs.sf.orig
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root        512 2007-11-20 20:31 hda-mbr
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root        259 2007-11-21 18:59 hda-pt.sf
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root        259 2007-11-21 18:50 hda-pt.sf.orig
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root         15 2007-11-20 20:33 parts
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root         17 2007-11-20 20:33 swappt-hda4.info
#
#
# ls -la other_data
total 24
drwxr-xr-x   2 root   root     4096 2009-04-06 21:27 .
drwxr-xr-x. 35 root   root     4096 2009-04-06 21:27 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root        5 2009-04-06 21:27 parts
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root 10317824 2009-04-06 21:27 sdb2.aa
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root       37 2009-04-06 21:27 sdb-chs.sf
-rw-r--r--   1 root   root      106 2009-04-06 21:27 sdb-pt.sf

Booting a restored Linux system [^]

A Linux system that has been restored to a new disk/partition, using reloc-img is usually not ready to be booted right after the restoration procedure is finished.

There are two more steps that you may have to take:

Fix /etc/fstab
Reinstall GRUB.
I will assume GRUB is your boot manager, as it is the usual case nowadays.

For this example I will assume that you have restored a Linux system (that used to be in sdb), to a new disk (hda), and that it contains three partitions, / (the root partition), /home (user's partition) and a swap partition. You must be really careful here, as the name of the new disk depends on the system to be booted. If it uses one of the newest Linux kernels (using the libata disk driver), ALL your disks will be recognised as SCSI. More info: "Identifying devices in Linux" section "SCSI disks when there are none!!!".

This is what we have:

                root partition      home partition      swap partition
Old system      /dev/sdb1           /dev/sdb2           /dev/sdb3
New system      /dev/hda1           /dev/hda2           /dev/hda3

Fixing /etc/fstab [^]

Since we are still in Clonezilla Live, right after reloc-img has finished, we will use it to mount our restored root partition, and edit its /etc/fstab. We issue the commands:

mkdir /new-root
mount /dev/hda1 /new-root
vi /new-root/etc/fstab

The contents of /etc/fstab could be something like

/dev/sdb1            /                   reiserfs   acl,user_xattr      1 1
/dev/sdb2            /home               reiserfs   defaults            1 2
/dev/sdb3            swap                swap       defaults            0 0

and we have to change ti to

/dev/hda1            /                   reiserfs   acl,user_xattr      1 1
/dev/hda2            /home               reiserfs   defaults            1 2
/dev/hda3            swap                swap       defaults            0 0

Finally, we unmount the partition, and we are ready to reboot

umount /new-root
reboot

Reinstalling GRUB [^]

When Clonezilla-SysRescCD menu appears, we select Tools > Super Grub Disk

Then we select Super Grub Disk > Super Grub Disk (WITH HELP) > English Super Grub Disk > Gnu/Linux > Fix Boot of Gnu/Linux (GRUB). From this entry we will be able to reinstall GRUB to our hard disk.

You may also want to have a look at Super Grub Disk "documentation".