Clonezilla goes to login screen with FreeDOS installed
A partition and disk imaging/cloning program
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Hi,
in my company we are using HP Z440/Z840 workstations.
We get them with FreeDOS installed on the first HDD because there is no option to order them completely without OS.
When we now try to restore a Clonezilla Image (of the same type of workstations) from a USB thumb drive Clonezilla boots into start menu but after choosing any option (we tried them all) following errors appear:
After that it drops to the "xenial login:" screen.
When we remove/unplug the disk with FreeDOS Clonezilla starts normally.
We tested it with several different Clonezilla versions (Trusty, Xenial, i686, amd64, stable, alternative-stable...): Same behavior.
Interestingly when we boot the same Clonezilla Images from DVD it works fine.
But because of the size of our images and other reasons we need to use USB thumb drives.
Is there any solution to this?
Up !
Exactly the Same problem ! If someone knows a workaround....
Thanks !
Anyd and Marc,
This issue looks like that the Linux kernel comes with Clonezilla live does not support your hardware, so it can not find the file filesystem.squashfs on the boot media.
Did you try to use testing Clonezilla live, like 2.4.7-20:
http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php
It comes with newer Linux kernel 4.6.4 so it might support your hardware better.
Steven
Hello Steven !
First, i would like to thank you for your answer. i'll give a try. but, it is weird that is hardaware realated, because when i remove Freedos from main hard drive, everything seems to work well, as Andy says.
I come back to you after testing :)
Again, thank you !
Hello again Steven !
I comfirm it's not working even with the testing build. when disk is clean, formated, with Windows or simply unpluged: no problem, but when it comes with Freedos, it's not working :(
Last edit: Marc 2016-07-25
Hello Steven and Marc,
I also tried the Clonezilla 2.4.7-23 Release and I can confirm that it is not working for me neither.
@Steven: Can I provide you any more information to track down the issue?
Thanks
Andy
What a quirky issue...
Maybe you could try a ocs-prerun bash script to wipe the disk and refresh the mount status, not ideal but you have a powerful linux shell underneath clonezilla to do stuff with.
Hello ndog37.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to do so. Because this problem comes before osc_prerun launch. :/
Hello again !
i tryed a couple of thing to erase disk before cloning, but i failed. But i'm still a noob in bash scripting.
Can you help me to edit grub cfg file ?
Thank you !
PS : i heard about this command who can do the job but i don't know where to write it in my grub cfg file :
Last edit: Marc 2016-08-05
This is really weird. Somehow the free dos or anything else triggers this issue I believe. If you can find any live CD/USB to boot on that machine, and clean the system by dd command as Marc has mentioned, the issue will be gone.
BTW, did you try alternative Clonezilla live, like 20160726-* from
http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php
?
Steven
I was able to get it to work by using the last choice of CloneZilla Live (failsafe mode).
This isn't a hardware problem as I have cloned several hundred identical machines, it's related to FreeDos using same loader. These were for HP machines.
Hi, same problem here. HP probook 450 with FreeDOS. I managed to do it with the Ubuntu-release of CloneZilla. The normal Debian didn't work. I created the image and the iso with the Ubuntu-release. Copied the iso to usb-stick with Tuxboot, and it works fine on the FreeDOS-HPs.
Good luck!
Hi Sir ,
where i am willing to use clonezilla on one of my workstation HP-Z440 which is installed with Centos7.3
here , i need to know which Clonezilla version will work on it to create an image of the worksation
please help on it
I don't think you need a specific Clonezilla version to create an image, so just try the alternative stable version (20170905-zesty). Not sure if you could restore it, though. I don't have much experience with imaging and restoring Linux systems and the couple I have done had a really simple partitioning scheme (just a swap and root filesystem). Not sure if you will run in trouble if you have a more complex RAID/LVM configuration. Restoring probably won't be an issue, but whether it will boot afterwards? If you have a spare disk lying around I would test it to be sure, if I were you.
Repartitioning,
delete existing partition and ceate a new partitions. No freedos.
@Ernest,
Thanks for sharing this. It's very weird issue and at least this workaround you provide can avoid this issue.
Steven
Thanks Ernest. We were having a similar issue. HP laptops shipped with FreeDOS. Clonezilla got as far as the splash screen, but then regardless of which option was chosen, it stuck on a progress bar. Deleted all existing partitions and Clonezilla worked a treat this time. Lost about 3 hours work today because of this, what a pain!
Hi,
What is the issue of this problem ?
I have exactly the same problem (HP Elitebook) with new HP : Clonezilla
mount: mounting /run on /root/run failed: No such file or directory~~~
modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/4.4.0-22-generic/modules.dep: No such file or directory
INIT: version 2.88 booting
live-config: hostname user-setupadduser: The GID 1000 is already in use.
usermod: user 'user' does not exist
sudosudo: unknown user: user
:ERROR
~~~
But, if I install Win10 of the same PC, then clonezilla work perfectly.
Must i do a dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 for all my news PC (with the option "failsafe from clonezilla") or is there a another solution ?
No idea. Somehow this kind of layout triggers live-boot/live-config to enter the login screen. Those live-boot or live-config scripts are not run. Have to dig more to see why.
Steven
For information, I start the PC with the Ubuntu Live, I type the command
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=512 count=1
After that, I can use Clonezilla normaly
The PC was new, no OS was installed.
It is as if the content of the first blocks of the internal disk of the PC disrupted the start of Clonezilla.
Does anyone know how to reproduce this in a virtual machine?
I downloaded FreeDOS 1.2 image from
https://www.osboxes.org/freedos/
Then boot in VMWare WS 15.
However, I am not able reproduce this issue. Clonezilla live 2.6.2-15 amd64 is able to boot into the dialog menu.
Since the issue is not reproducible here, it is very difficult for me to fix it. If anyone know how to reproduce this issue in VM, please let me know. Thanks.
Steven
I've had the same problem with a new HP Laptop. I was trying to make a clonezilla-image of the HDD in case I would return the laptop. I dont know if it is of importance in this context: The laptop is with an AMD Ryzen CPU.
Stable clonezilla-live-2.6.4-10-amd64.zip does not start and presents me with a login-prompt.
Ubuntu based clonezilla-live-20191024-eoan-amd64.zip works without a problem.
I used an USB-stick in UEFI mode to boot clonezilla live. I didn't try if the problem also exists with the .iso-Version on a CD.
The HP laptop comes with two primary 4 GB FAT32 partitions. One is FreeDOS and one is "HP Documents". The rest of the drive is unpartitioned if I remember correctly. There is a bootloader menu asking which one you would like to boot.
I made a Clonezilla-Image with the Ubuntu-Version and restored it to a virtual-machine (virtualbox).
Clonezilla-Stable starts in this vm without a problem when used as a "optical drive" image. I couldn't test if the problem could be reproduced when booting from USB becaus virtualbox has no way to simulate booting from a USB-stick.
Last edit: Albert Uftata 2019-11-17
@Albert,
Thanks for your feedback. I just could not find why the FreeDOS will trigger this issue, and I guess it's related to live-config. However, very difficult to find the culprit.
If you find why, please let us know.
Appreciate.
Steven