I used a CloneZilla LiveCD to back up a couple of Windows machines to a Samba share. Now I'm trying to restore those images, and CloneZilla won't even give me the 'restoredisk' or 'restorepart' options on the menu. I'm guessing that this is because CZ isn't recognizing a valid image… but why?
Here's a listing of the folder on the Samba share:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 319 May 31 03:45 blkdev.list
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 5307 May 31 04:41 clonezilla-img
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 4 May 31 04:31 disk
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 16091 May 31 04:31 Info-dmi.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 11029 May 31 04:31 Info-lshw.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 1502 May 31 04:31 Info-lspci.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 170 May 31 04:31 Info-packages.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 80 May 31 04:41 Info-saved-by-cmd.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 10 May 31 04:31 parts
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 2097152000 May 31 04:06 sda1.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 247361656 May 31 04:08 sda1.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.ab
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 823182034 May 31 04:31 sda2.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 36 May 31 03:45 sda-chs.sf
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 31744 May 31 03:45 sda-hidden-data-after-mbr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 512 May 31 03:45 sda-mbr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 315 May 31 03:45 sda-pt.parted
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 285 May 31 03:45 sda-pt.parted.compact
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 259 May 31 03:45 sda-pt.sf
(I've been experimenting with various permissions trying to get this to work; that's why they're currently all "rwxrwxrwx"…)
I've got my CZ LiveCD stuck in a (different) machine with a 160GB SATA disk that I'm fine with overwriting; although CZ doesn't show a directory listing, it does show that the correct folder is mounted as /home/partimag. But a moment later, after selecting either Beginner or Expert, I'm only presented with the "savedisk", "saveparts", and "exit" options. What am I doing wrong?
I am confident that the initial backup was successful; I can post the log if desired, or any other information that might be germane.
Edit:
I've copied the contents of the folder onto a 16GB USB stick and set THAT as /home/partimag. Still nothing. What the hell is CZ looking for?
Best Answer
I think I've figured it out - for local_dev, anyway; tomorrow I'll find out whether this applies to Samba as well. I suspect it does. (Edit: YES!)
When I backed up the Windows machines to Samba, it created a folder for each image. When I tried to restore one of those images, I specified that subfolder to be mounted as /home/partimag; apparently this was my mistake. When I copied the files onto a USB stick, I copied them to the root folder - and, as I mentioned above, it still didn't see anything to restore.
Out of some sort of inspiration/desperation, I created a subfolder on the USB stick, moved the files into it, and tried again - and lo and behold, I have now restored that image successfully! Tomorrow I'll try telling CZ to mount the root of the Samba share as /home/partimag, and I suspect I'll be given a choice of images to restore. (I'll update this answer according to my findings.)
Bottom line: CloneZilla has a blind spot in the root folder of whatever you specify as /home/partimag. You've got to tell it to look (at least? needs testing) one level above the folder containing your image files. This may be spelled out in the documentation somewhere - but I sure didn't see it, and I wish I had.