#446 restoreparts omits assembled Linux RAID partitions but offers physical RAID member partitions

[Brian R OHern]

Title: restoreparts omits assembled Linux RAID partitions but offers physical RAID member partitions

Clonezilla Live version: 3.3.3-37

I am migrating an existing standalone IPFire installation to a preconfigured Linux software RAID1 array. The destination array was created by the IPFire installer and was bootable before attempting this restore.

Environment:

• Lenovo ThinkCentre M93p, SATA controller in AHCI mode
• Two Patriot P210 1TB SSDs
• Whole-disk Linux md RAID1, metadata version 1.0
• GPT partition table inside the RAID device
• External USB disk containing a Clonezilla savedisk image

Steps and observations:

1. Boot Clonezilla Live and select device-image, local_dev, then restoreparts.
2. Clonezilla detects the two physical SSDs but finds no usable destination partitions.
3. Open a shell. Initially, /proc/mdstat shows no assembled arrays.
4. Run:

sudo mdadm --assemble --scan

1. The array assembles successfully as /dev/md127, with both members active: [2/2] [UU].
2. lsblk shows the following unmounted partitions:

md127p1 — 4MiB BIOS boot partition
md127p2 — 512MiB /boot filesystem
md127p3 — 32MiB EFI filesystem
md127p4 — 1GiB swap
md127p5 — approximately 952GiB root filesystem

1. Return to restoreparts. The destination menu offers physical member partitions sdb1–sdb5, but does not offer md127p1–md127p5.

Expected behavior:

The destination menu should recognize unmounted partitions on an assembled Linux md array and allow restoration to them. Physical partitions belonging to an active whole-disk RAID member should be excluded or clearly identified to prevent users from bypassing RAID.

Actual behavior:

The RAID partitions are omitted, while partitions visible through an underlying physical member are offered as restore targets.

Workaround:

Directly piping the decompressed image into Partclone successfully restored the boot filesystem through the RAID device:

sudo zstd -dc sda1.ext4-ptcl-img.zst |
sudo partclone.ext4 -r -s - -o /dev/md127p2

This suggests that the underlying restore tools support the destination, but Clonezilla’s destination discovery/filtering does not handle this layout correctly.

Related enhancement request:

If existing md RAID metadata is detected but the array is not assembled, please offer to scan and assemble existing arrays, or display instructions explaining that this is necessary. This request concerns assembling an existing array, not creating a new one.

Screenshots are available showing the destination menu, successful array assembly, partition layout, and successful direct Partclone restoration.

[Brian R OHern]

Here is a photo depicting the image restore

[Steven Shiau]

Please give testing Clonezilla live >= 3.3.4-10 or 20261018-* a try:
https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php
We have made some improvement about MDRAID, so the results might be different.
Let us know the results. Thanks.