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Saturday, February 2, 2013

Clonezilla

The Free and Open Source Software for Disk Imaging and Cloning

Clonezilla Live - A small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for

 imaging and cloning

1. About Clonezilla Live
Clonezilla Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86/amd64 (x86-64) based computers. Clonezilla SE (Server Edition) has been developed from 2004, and it is used to clone many computers simultaneously. It is an extremely useful tool, however, it does have several limitations. In order to use it, you must first prepare a DRBL server AND the machine to be cloned must boot from a network (e.g. PXE/Etherboot/gPXE). To address these limitations, we have combined Debian Live with Clonezilla as "Clonezilla Live," a software that can be used to easily clone individual machines. The primary benefit of Clonezilla Live is that it eliminates the need to set up a DRBL server ahead of time and the need for the computer being cloned to boot from a network. Clonezilla Live can be used to clone individual computers using a CD/DVD or USB flash drive. Though the image size is limited by the boot media's storage capacity, this problem can be eliminated by using a network filesystem such as sshfs or samba.

2. How to install Clonezilla Live ?

To install Clonezilla live, the basic steps are to download pre-build Clonezilla Live then put it in a boot media (CD, USB flash drive or USB hard drive). Two types of files are available, iso and zip. The former one is for CD, the latter is for USB flash drive. Besides, you can put Clonezilla live on hard drive or PXE server, too.
  • For CD/DVD:
  • For USB flash drive or USB hard drive:
      To put Clonezilla live on a USB flash drive or USB hard drive, check this doc.
  • For hard drive:
      To put Clonezilla live on a harddrive with OS installed already, check this doc.
  • For PXE server:
      To put Clonezilla live on a PXE server and boot your client via PXE, check this doc.
If you are interested in creating the Clonezilla live iso or zip file from scratch, check this doc. //New for creating Clonezilla live 2.x!//.

3. How to use Clonezilla live ?

Once you have the bootable Clonezilla Live media, as created in the previous step, you can boot it in the machine you want to clone. Remember to use the Clonezilla live media, such as CD, USB flash drive, USB hard drive, hard drive or PXE to boot the machine. For example, if you have Clonezilla Live in USB flash drive, you have to boot it via USB device (Ex. USB-HDD or USB-ZIP). If necessary, you can set the first boot priority in the BIOS as USB-HDD or USB-ZIP so that it can boot Clonezilla Live from your USB flash drive.
  • You can refer to these step-by-step examples, which provide more details, e.g. how to save an image, to restore an image, to clone a disk, to restore an image to multiple disks, to create recovery CD, and more... //New for Clonezilla live 2.0.1-5!//
  • For general introduction about using the Clonezilla live, please check this doc.

4. Accounts

In Clonezilla live, two accounts are available: (1) account "user" with sudo privilege, password is "live", (2) administration account "root", no password. Therefore you can not login as root, the only way to get root privilege is to login as user, and run "sudo su -" to become root.
For better security, it is recommended to change the passwords of user and root by command "passwd" before you allow remote access. When Clonezilla live boots, the ssh service is NOT automatically started, and the setting in /etc/hosts.deny does NOT block any connection. If you want to remotely ssh login into your Clonezilla live, you have to start ssh service by "/etc/init.d/ssh start".

5. Advanced modes

Some advanced modes are available:

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