Clonezilla Lite Server does not start to restore in clients...
A partition and disk imaging/cloning program
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steven_shiau
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Hello.
I am a high school teacher and I have been using Clonezilla Lite Server for
some time to do an internship with students. We use VirtualBox to clone a
virtual machine (server) into two others (clone1 and clone2). The fact is
that it has always worked well, but this year it fails. We are using this
version that we downloaded in September 2024 (at the beginning of the
course): clonezilla-live-20240715-noble-amd64
I think it may be a bug in this version that is fixed in later versions,
but I have not tried them yet. I preferred to ask here first.
I explain what happens to us:
+0 Starting situation:
+ The 'server' machine has 2 disks:
- disk0 - Operating System - It has W10 and Linux Mint installed
in dual boot.
- disk1 - Data.
- The 'clone1' and 'clone2' machines have only 1 disk, the same size
as disk0 of the 'server' machine.
- All 3 machines have UEFI BIOS enabled in VirtualBox.
+ All 3 machines are configured in "NAT Network" mode in VirtualBox:
- This makes all 3 networked and VirtualBox acts as DHCP.
- This is the ideal situation for each student to be able to do
their practice autonomously, without affecting the others.
-1 We start the 'server' machine with Clonezilla Live, and create an
image of its disk0 that we save on disk1 of the same machine, which we only
use for that.
-3 We restart the 'server' machine with Clonezilla Live, but this time
in "Lite Server" mode:
- We configure everything appropriately so that the image created in
the previous step is restored on the two clients (clone1 and clone2) by
PXE, and we leave the 'server' on waiting for the clones.
-4 We turn on the clones, they connect to the server and receive IP
but... the restoration does not start. I attach the screen where the clones
and the server are.
Several years ago I used DRBL and I had the same problem (I created a topic
https://sourceforge.net/p/drbl/discussion/Help/thread/1087347bf5/ about
it). The solution was to use Clonezilla's Lite Server mode and until now it
had worked well.
Thank you and I look forward to your answers.
We do not have similar issue here. Hence it's recommended to try the latest stable one, i.e., 20250303-oracular:
https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php
In addition, please make sure there is no any firewall which blocks your netboot clients.
Steven
I'll try the latest release and report back here.
I understand that the firewall can't be a problem, because VirtualBox doesn't create one as far as I know, and the PXE connection that Cloneizlla makes doesn't support it, right?
I am not sure your Virtualbox server is connected to a physical network switch or not. If it is, maybe your switch has some firewall rules.
In addition to the latest stable release, is this issue reproducible in your older version and working Clonezilla live?
Steven
Today I tried with the latest version of Clonezilla (2025.03.03-oracular) and with the one we used in the previous course that worked well (2023.04.26-lunar). With both it fails in the same way.
I think the problem is in VirtualBox, because last year we used version 7.0 and this year the new 7.1. Also the screen that indicates the PXE connection is different. I'm going to ask the question in the VirtualBox forum.
So any progress there?
BTW, we tested Virtualbox 7.1 as the server, and the client (also another VM from Virtualbox 7.1) can boot via PXE without any issue actually.
Steven
Well, in my case, it's still the same. Clonezilla "lite server" doesn't initiate the restore on virtual machines with UEFI enabled in VirtualBox version 7.1, although it does connect to the PXE server. However, I've tested with the latest version (7.0.24) and it does work, with the same scenario (3 virtual machines with UEFI enabled, one with Clonezilla "lite server" and the other two clients for the restore).
Apparently, this is an issue with VirtualBox version 7.1 that has already been reported on its forum (link). I've created another thread with my problem (link), but I haven't received any answers yet.
However, it works for you, so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong. I understand you're also testing Clonezilla "lite server" on VirtualBox 7.1, right?. You say the client boots via PXE without problems, but does the image restore start?.
Got it.
Sorry, my bad. I did not express well. My colleague told me it only works well for legacy mode of PXE booting. The uEFI netboot does have such issue.
Steven
Yes. It works with the BIOS in Legacy mode, but not in UEFI mode. So I think it's confirmed to be a bug in VirtualBox 7.1, which I assume will be fixed in future versions.