Live CD boots from hard drive in certain situations

A partition and disk imaging/cloning program

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#21 Live CD boots from hard drive in certain situations

Milestone: stable_clonezilla_live

Status: open-fixed

Owner: Steven Shiau

Labels: clonezilla live (129)

Priority: 5

Updated: 2008-10-28

Created: 2008-10-27

Creator: hux

Private: No

After installing Clonezilla to the hard drive (following the instructions here: http://drbl.sourceforge.net/faq/fine-print.php?path=./2_System/45_clonezilla_in_harddrive.faq#45_clonezilla_in_harddrive.faq\), I've found that if you then use a Clonezilla Live CD, the CD actually tries to boot from the version installed on the hard drive, which causes any custom scripts for that version to run.

Example:

Dell Optiplex 755, 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 80GB hard drive. sda1 = 39MB Dell system partition; sda2 = 12GB WinXP parititon, sda3 = 15GB Ubuntu 8.10 partition.

I removed everything from the Ubuntu partition except the "Boot" folder, then I installed Clonezilla (.zip version 1.2.0-25) to that partition using the instructions at the above link. Later, I tried to boot using a Clonezilla live CD (version 1.1.0-8) and found that it caused the Clonezilla on sda3 to load instead. I also tested this using a version 1.2.0-25 live CD with the same result. To troubleshoot, I renamed the /live folder on sda3 to something else. After this, the live CD worked normally.

So basically, it looks like the boot process of the live CD scans local hard drives and if it finds a folder called "/live" at the root of any partition it attempts to boot from that instead. This is obviously not a good thing for it to do! ;)

Discussion

Steven Shiau - 2008-10-28

You can assign a boot parameter {live-media|bootfrom}=**DEVICE**, say bootfrom=/dev/sdb (for your CD), then Debian live will try to find the right file system.
For more info, please check
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/live-initramfs-param.php

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Steven Shiau - 2008-10-28

assigned_to: nobody --> steven_shiau

status: open --> open-fixed
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Steven Shiau - 2008-10-28

status: open-fixed --> closed-fixed
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hux - 2008-10-28

"You can assign a boot parameter {live-media|bootfrom}=**DEVICE**, say bootfrom=/dev/sdb (for your CD)"

With respect, that doesn't fix the overall problem. In my opinion, a Live CD should *never* boot from anything other than itself and it certainly should never boot from the hard drive without user intervention. For example, imagine if the Ubuntu Live CD searched local partitions, found an existing installation and booted from that. It would defeat the whole purpose of the live CD.

Rather than requiring the user to make modifications in order to avoid this issue, would it not be better to just change all future releases of Clonezilla Live so that they already have the "bootfrom=" parameter set by default to only boot from CD? It seems like this would be a simple change that could save a lot of hassle for some users.

Or maybe I'm missing something?

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hux - 2008-10-28

status: closed-fixed --> open-fixed
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Steven Shiau - 2008-10-29

No. The device name will change depending on your disks layout.
How will we know how many disk drives you have and which one is the one have "right" Clonezilla live ?
How will we know your CD-ROM drive is hda, sda, hdb, sdb, hdc, sdc, hdd, sdd, sde, sdf... ?
Therefore it's impossible to preseed bootfrom=/dev/xxx in the clonezilla live. Especially when you put Clonezilla live on harddrive _and_ CD drive on the SAME machine.

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hux - 2008-11-03

"How will we know your CD-ROM drive is hda, sda, hdb, sdb, hdc, sdc, hdd,
sdd, sde, sdf... ?"

Well, I'm not a programmer or a Linux expert, but is there no way in Linux to say, "look for a folder called "/live" but only boot from it if it's on a CD drive"? If not then yes, that definitely makes it tricky! In that case, how about simply changing the .zip version so that it doesn't use a folder called "/live"? That would solve the problem for people who install Clonezilla from the .zip version but then use the live CD later on.

However, I'm guessing the problem would still be there if they installed the .zip version to both a hard drive and a USB drive, then tried to boot from the USB drive. Would it still attempt to boot from the hard drive version? I haven't tested this so I don't know.

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Steven Shiau - 2008-11-04

You can try to put a boot parameter to specify a different live system dir:
live-media-path=**PATH**
By doing this, you can make the clonezilla live in your hardware differ from that on CD or USB flash drive.
For more info, please check:
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/live-initramfs-param.php

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hux - 2008-11-06

Yes, I realize that's it's possible for users to modify Clonezilla to stop this from happening. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that it would be a very good idea to change the releases themselves so that this can't happen. Imo, it's not reasonable to expect a user to be aware of this potentially catastrophic behavior beforehand and then make a change to the packages they've already downloaded/installed in order to avoid it. It should just be fixed in the releases.

I'm not asking for help for myself here (you already kindly provided that in the help forum thread I posted earlier). I posted this in the bug tracker because I think it's a serious enough problem to warrant attention on your side of the fence, so to speak. If you disagree then that's your prerogative and if you don't want to address it then that's fine, Clonezilla is still a great app and I appreciate all your hard work on it. I'm just saying that if you could fix this issue it would be an even better app, that's all.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

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Steven Shiau - 2008-11-07

hux,
Yes, I knew what you mean. However, as you mentioned, if we changed the kernel name and live dir name in th release zip file, what it a user to use the same zip in the hard drive and his USB flash drive as you mentioned ?
I will address this issue more in the faq:
http://drbl.sourceforge.net/faq/fine-print.php?path=./2_System/45_clonezilla_in_harddrive.faq#45_clonezilla_in_harddrive.faq

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