Cannot clone a Dell Inspiron 530

[sawback]

This past fall I used Clonezilla to clone about 100 Dells, Optiplex 260, 270 and 280. What an awesome tool!

I'm running into problems though now with a recent shipment of 70 Dell Inspiron 530 units.

At first my older Intrepid version of Clonezilla would not work with the new NIC that came with the Insp 530 units. So I installed Clonezilla on Hardy 8.04. Now the Insp 530 boots up but craps out starting with messages like:

/build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/hid/usbhid/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
qc timeout (cmd 0x27)
failed to read native ma address (err_mask=0x4)
ata1 failed to recover some devices, retrying in 5 secs

... and then I get lots of weird stuff including:

ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
ata2.00:cmd a0/00:00:00:24:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 pio 36 in
ata2.00: status: { DRDY }

that keeps coming up every couple of seconds. I do get a login prompt but the input seems to be disrupted. I tried ssh'ing to the unit but don't know what username/password will work to get on with root privileges.

Any ideas on how I can solve or at least further troubleshoot this? I tried reformatting the hard drive (an idea suggested from a seemingly related problem I Googled) but still get the same roadblock.

Thanks in advance,
Tom
PS Clonezilla really is an awesome product, I'm sure it's some Dell idiosyncracy.

[Steven Shiau]

sawback,
Are you using Clonezilla SE or Clonezilla live ?
From your description I guess it's Clonezilla SE.
If it's Clonezilla SE, maybe you can try to append boot parameters "acpi=off noapic" in your /tftpboot/nbi_img/pxelinux.cfg/default on your DRBL server.

Steven.

[sawback]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the suggestion. I am not exactly sure where to put these boot parameters. I have tried to add it to a few lines, e.g. to the end of the append line in the "label drbl" section as follows:

append initrd=initrd-pxe.img devfs=nomount .... ... ... edd=on acpi=off noacpi

But no change. Could you describe exactly where this line needs to be placed and whether I should rerun any of the setup? I noticed, for example, if I rebuild the tftp boot image that this file (default) gets overwritten.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

[sawback]

Hi again, here is the dmesg output of the Dell Inspiron 530 booting from Clonezilla SE:

http://www.morleyschool.net/clonezilla.dmesg

The problems appear to start around these lines (about 1/2 way down the dmesg output):

[ 1091.829589] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/hid/usbhid/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
[ 1121.137220] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0x27)
[ 1121.137284] ata1.00: failed to read native max address (err_mask=0x4)
[ 1121.137348] ata1: failed to recover some devices, retrying in 5 secs

The default file contains the following section:

label clonezilla
  MENU DEFAULT
  # MENU HIDE
  MENU LABEL Clonezilla: save disk sda as image 2009-03-31-10-img
  # MENU PASSWD
  kernel vmlinuz-pxe
  append initrd=initrd-pxe.img devfs=nomount drblthincli=off selinux=0 1 edd=on acpi=off noacpi clientdir=node_root
ocs_opt="--language en  --use-ntfsclone --save-hidden-data -p choose -z1 -i 0 savedisk 2009-03-31-10-img sda"
  TEXT HELP
  * Clonezilla version: 2.3.2-49. (C) 2003-2008, NCHC, Taiwan
  * Disclaimer: Clonezilla comes with ABSOLUTE NO WARRANTY
  ENDTEXT

Thanks again,
Tom

[sawback]

... by the way you were correct in guessing I'm using the SE of Clonezilla. It's my hope to get Multicasting working as well eventually as I finally have switches that will handle Multicasting. But first things first.
Tom

[Steven Shiau]

Hi Sawback,
For Clonezilla, you should edit the append line in the "label clonezilla" instead of "label drbl".

Please give it a try and let us know your results.

Steven.