can save image, cannot restore

[Bertrand Zidler]

Hi,

I am trying to clone a Dell R610 to another one. Getting the images of the 2 virtual disks was done without errors. But the restore on a replica of this server fails miserably.

Here is the content of the image:
-rw-r-r- 1 root root         8 Jun 23 14:19 disk
-rw-r-r- 1 root root     24433 Jun 23 14:19 Info-dmi.txt
-rw-r-r- 1 root root     51882 Jun 23 14:19 Info-lshw.txt
-rw-r-r- 1 root root      4009 Jun 23 14:19 Info-lspci.txt
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       168 Jun 23 14:19 Info-packages.txt
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       684 Jun 23 14:13 lvm_logv.list
-rw----- 1 root root      2682 Jun 23 14:13 lvm_vg01.conf
-rw-r-r- 1 root root        54 Jun 23 14:13 lvm_vg_dev.list
-rw-r-r- 1 root root        10 Jun 23 14:19 parts
-rw----- 1 root root   7344457 Jun 23 14:13 sda1.ext3-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw-r-r- 1 root root        37 Jun 23 14:13 sda-chs.sf
-rw-r-r- 1 root root     31744 Jun 23 14:13 sda-hidden-data-after-mbr
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       512 Jun 23 14:13 sda-mbr
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       246 Jun 23 14:13 sda-pt.parted
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       259 Jun 23 14:13 sda-pt.sf
-rw-r-r- 1 root root        37 Jun 23 14:13 sdb-chs.sf
-rw-r-r- 1 root root     31744 Jun 23 14:13 sdb-hidden-data-after-mbr
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       512 Jun 23 14:13 sdb-mbr
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       259 Jun 23 14:13 sdb-pt.parted
-rw-r-r- 1 root root       259 Jun 23 14:13 sdb-pt.sf
-rw-r-r- 1 root root        53 Jun 23 14:19 swappt-vg01-lv01.info
-rw----- 1 root root  90272075 Jun 23 14:13 vg01-lv00.ext3-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw----- 1 root root 310689481 Jun 23 14:13 vg01-lv02.ext3-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw----- 1 root root 252249580 Jun 23 14:14 vg01-lv03.ext3-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw----- 1 root root  38447500 Jun 23 14:19 vg01-lv04.ext3-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw----- 1 root root 296305381 Jun 23 14:19 vg01-lv05.ext3-ptcl-img.gz.aa

It seems that restoring sda is done well. But when trying to do sdb I get :
"The partition table in this disk is illegal/invalid: /dev/sdb
Does this partition table file fit this disk: /home/partimag/neptune_2011-060230130img/sdb-pt.sf?
Is this disk too small: /dev/sdb ?"

Of course the system panics when trying to reboot.

I have tried several options but no luck so far.

[Scorpion]

Hello bzidler,

I think this is because you use the sda partition to clone, and not sda partition to restore…
Clonezilla save the sda partition, therefore it must restore a sda partition.
I think that's right, but i'm not sure.

Sorry for my bad english but I'm french :)

Scorpion

[Scorpion]

Oh sorry, I badly read.

If your sdb backup success, but not the recovery, it's because the disk to restore is more small than the disk that you use to clone.

I express myself bizarrely, sorry ^^. I hope you understand me…

Scorpion

[Bertrand Zidler]

I am French as well (lol). Thank you for yor answer.

I should may be explain more what the configuration is. A Dell R610 comes with 6 RAID disks that you can check or change at boot time with CTRL-R to start the raid configurator. Here is a 2x146Gb raid 1 + 4x146Gb raid 5 config. But what you see when starting clonezilla are just the 2 virtual disks /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1. THe first one is with an 83 tag for Linux, the 2nd one with an 8e tag for LVM Linux. All this is exactly the same on my initial server and the one to which I want to restore the image. With gparted I tried to rewrite the partition table on /dev/sdb1 which is marked as unallocated. It does not change anything.Clonezilla complains that the partition table of dev/sdb1 is too small. But fdisk shows it ok :

Disk /dev/sda: 146.2 GB, 146263769088 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 17782 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          65      522081   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 438.7 GB, 438791307264 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 53346 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1       53346   428501713+  8e  Linux LVM

So that's where I am currently.

[Scorpion]

I had the same problem between two DELL devices.
The problem was that both machines made exactly the same size.
I believe that device to restore must be a little more big than the initial device (some Mo).

What is that you created exactly the same table of partition as in your initial server ?

[Bertrand Zidler]

After spending more days on this problem I reached the conclusion that Clonezilla would never be able to restore my logical volumes on /dev/sdb1 because of this virtual disk seen as slightly smaller. So I decided to reinstall Centos on the server using the same partitioning :

  Volume  Mount Point          Size (MB)
/dev/vg01/lv00          / -> 9.7 Gb
/dev/vg01/lv02          /usr -> 9.7 Gb
/dev/vg01/lv03          /var -> 9.7 Gb
/dev/vg01/lv05          /spare -> 350 Gb
/dev/vg01/lv04          /tmp  -> 9.7 Gb
/dev/sda1 /boot -> 500 Mb
/dev/vg01/lv01          swap -> 8 Gb

Then I used fsarchiver to copy and restore most of the files from my source server to the new one. You can use the savefs/restfs options only for the partitions that can be unmounted (tmp and spare here). For the other one you must be careful using the savedir/restdir options, especially for the root partition for which you must avoid copying the LVM configuration files, and many other files you want to keep.

This worked fine and I could then take an image from this new server rebuilt manually in this kind of DIY method, to clone it again to another one. This time Clonezilla accepted to do it.

[Steven Shiau]

Yes, that's Clonezilla's limitation, and it's mentioned here:
http://clonezilla.org/

Steven.

[Matthias Weiß]

I have the same problem when trying to restore an image to the same machine, any ideas?

[Steven Shiau]

What's the error message?

Steven.