Can't restore NTFS-to-Samba image

[Marc Tompkins]

I used a CloneZilla LiveCD to back up a Windows machine to a Samba share. Now I'm trying to restore the image, and CloneZilla won't even give me the 'restoredisk' or 'restorepart' options on the menu. I'm guessing that this is because CZ isn't recognizing a valid image... but why?

Here's a listing of the folder on the Samba share:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 319 May 31 03:45 blkdev.list
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 5307 May 31 04:41 clonezilla-img
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 4 May 31 04:31 disk
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 16091 May 31 04:31 Info-dmi.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 11029 May 31 04:31 Info-lshw.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 1502 May 31 04:31 Info-lspci.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 170 May 31 04:31 Info-packages.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 80 May 31 04:41 Info-saved-by-cmd.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 10 May 31 04:31 parts
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 2097152000 May 31 04:06 sda1.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 247361656 May 31 04:08 sda1.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.ab
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 823182034 May 31 04:31 sda2.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 36 May 31 03:45 sda-chs.sf
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 31744 May 31 03:45 sda-hidden-data-after-mbr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 512 May 31 03:45 sda-mbr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 315 May 31 03:45 sda-pt.parted
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 285 May 31 03:45 sda-pt.parted.compact
-rwxrwxrwx 1 marc users 259 May 31 03:45 sda-pt.sf
(I've been experimenting with various permissions trying to get this to work; that's why they're currently all "rwxrwxrwx"...)

I've got my CZ LiveCD stuck in a (different) machine with a 160GB SATA disk that I'm fine with overwriting; although CZ doesn't show a directory listing, it does show that the correct folder is mounted as /home/partimag. But a moment later, after selecting either Beginner or Expert, I'm only presented with the "savedisk", "saveparts", and "exit" options. What am I doing wrong?

The log of the backup (clonezilla-img) shows no errors and indicates success at every step; I can post that or anything else that might be helpful. I've also copied the contents of the folder onto a 16GB USB stick; CloneZilla sees the drive, but still doesn't offer to restore from it.
Help!

Thanks.

[Marc Tompkins]

Figured it out, I think... (I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see whether this answers the Samba situation as well.)

As I said above, I copied the contents of the folder onto the USB stick - i.e. into the root directory. Turns out you can't do that. I created a folder and moved the files into it and tried it again, and - although CloneZilla still only showed me the root folder - this time it worked. It's about 70% of the way through the restore now.

I actually backed up several Windows machine to the Samba share; each image created its own folder, of course. When I was beating my head against the problem earlier today, I was telling CloneZilla to connect to the sub-folder; apparently I needed to connect to the share's root folder instead. Does CZ just walk the whole tree (except, apparently, the root folder!) looking for images? I guess I'll find out tomorrow what it looks like when there's more than one image to choose from...

[Marc Tompkins]

Yes, indeed: CZ CANNOT find an image on a local device OR on a Samba share (the only things I've tested) if you specify the folder where the image is actually located; this is apparently a blind spot. Maybe it's in the documentation somewhere, but I definitely missed it; I think it needs to be pointed out a little more strongly.

If, on the other hand, you specify a folder one level above (I haven't had a chance to test further levels of nesting), CZ will find your image(s) just fine.

To give a concrete example: I had two images, called "warm" and "cold" (after the rooms where the computers are located, if you must know.) They were stored on the Samba share "UltraNew", so when I started CloneZilla I was mounting "/UltraNew/cold". What I SHOULD have been doing: mounting "/UltraNew". Once I did that, CloneZilla gave me a choice of "cold" and "warm", and everything was groovy.
When I copied the images to USB, I copied them (one at a time, in different attempts) to the root folder "F:\" (on my Windows laptop) and CloneZilla didn't see them; once I copied them to "F:\cold" and "F:\warm" (and then plugged the USB stick into the machine running CZ, of course), CZ gave me a choice of "cold" and "warm" and everything was groovy again.

Sorry to be long-winded, but this killed many hours for me and I'd hate for anybody else to make the same mistake.

[Steven Shiau]

Yes, that was mentioned here:
http://clonezilla.org/general-live-use.php

///Note/// The image name of Clonezilla is actually a directory name. For example, if you give the image name as 2007-05-NOVISTA, all the info will be saved as in the directory /home/partimag/2007-05-NOVISTA/. Inside that directory, MBR, partition table and partition files will be stored. Therefore when you want to restore an image, remember to mount the /home/partimag as the right device or path. i.e. the directory 2007-05-NOVISTA must be in the clonezilla home directory (Ex. /home/partimag)

Steven.