Using clonezilla – how long should it take

You can use the free Idera R1Soft Hot Copy utility to accomplish this.

This is a utility that installs as a kernel module and allow you to take a copy-on-write snapshot of a running system. You can install it and run on-the-fly without a reboot.

The result is that you can create an on-demand read-write or read-only snapshot of any of your mounted filesystems. They'll show up in a path similar to /var/hotcopy/[device_name]_hcp1/ by default, but the mountpoint is also configurable... (I use /backup)

I actually use Hot Copy to augment the regular tape backups on my standalone Linux servers. It removes file-contention issues and gives a more accurate backup.

When done, you destroy the snapshot and continue as normal.

This component is a the core of the commercial R1Soft CDP backup software suite, but is an extremely handy way to obtain Linux system snapshots without LVM, ZFS or Btrfs.

After quite a lot of trial and error I found a way. Hopefully will be helpful for someone, sometime.

Mission accomplished, my disk is restored, and here is how:

1. Downloaded Clonezilla live as according to this doc, up to configuring GRUB (so, downloaded, unpacked, changed 'live' folder name);
2. Set up FAT32 partition on sdb (the disk to restore to, 'target' one) using fdisk and mkvfat. Partition size was enough to store live Clonezilla image (200M?) and was set bootable.

3. Configured GRUB by creating this entry: (explained below)

   menuentry "Clonezilla" {
   
   set root=(hd1,1)
   
   linux /live-hd/vmlinuz boot=live live-config noswap nolocales edd=on nomodeset ocs_live_run=\"ocs-live-general\" ocs_prerun=\"dhclient -v eth0\" ocs_live_run=\"/bin/bash\" ocs_live_extra_param=\"\" keyboard-layouts=NONE ocs_live_batch=no locales=en_US.UTF-8 vga=788 ip= nosplash live-media-path=/live-hd bootfrom=/dev/sdb1 toram usercrypted= ocs_daemonon=\"ssh\" i915.blacklist=yes radeonhd.blacklist=yes nouveau.blacklist=yes vmwgfx.blacklist=yes
   
   initrd /live-hd/initrd.img
   
   } 
   

4. The GRUB configuration was recreated to include this entry (grub2-mkconfig) and boot mode was selected. There are two routes:

   • set this entry as default in /etc/default/grub before creating conf
   • or just add it there and select on startup, if you have KVM IP set up (so kiiiinda like physical access to machine, won't allow BIOS manipulation, but boot entry switching - yep).

5. Reboot machine, wait for it to boot into Clonezilla and login via ssh as 'user' - it has sudo rights.

6. Run 'clonezilla' script in command line and follow along the lines of standard tutorial

7. Go back to terminal and swap boot to your normal system (otherwise it will fail, searching for clonezilla on now-nonexistent partition). Reboot. Enjoy.

What do the grub menu entry do?

It is compiled from two tutorials and some experiments: http://clonezilla.org/livehd.php http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/05_Started_with_sshd_on_and_passwd_assigned

Aim is to have it:

• configure network at startup, thus ocs_prerun=dhclient option
• run bourne shell (ocs_live_run=/bin/bash)
• ip=<empty> in order not to mess with dhclient
• toram with no options in order to put whole system in RAM, so it can overwrite the disk from which it was originally booted This makes it one-time operation, after that your live clonezilla is gone
• start SSH server (ocs_daemonon=ssh) with [optionally] password set for user ('usercrypted'). The password part works as described in second tutorial linked. Perhaps (untested) you can leave it empty and have access as 'user' with no password - in such case it's probably good idea to change password immediately after login.

Phew, that's it. I'm really glad I have this puzzle solved and at the same time I have nagging feeling that someone more experienced would just do it in a minute or two...