Restored image to same machine just takes me to a Grub prompt
A partition and disk imaging/cloning program
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steven_shiau
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I have run into a problem that when I restore an image of a disk I am just taken to a Grub prompt only, not the Grub menu.
GNU-GRUB version 2.04-9
GRUB >
I have used Clonezilla successfully for many years and I am very pleased with it but I do not know what to do about this problem.
Hardware: Lenovo Thinkpad T410 laptop, 350 GB HDD, 6 GB RAM
OS:
This is a dual-boot laptop.
Primary OS is Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit
2nd OS is Fedora Linux 5.7.16, ver 33, 64-bit
My aim was simply to clone the 360 GB HDD that is in the Thinkpad, to a 500 GB HDD, using the "Device to Image" option in Clonezilla. I have done this process between 70 and 100 times on various hardware and OS combinations and it has always worked well every time except this time.
First attempt:
I had made the disk backup image using clonezilla-live-2.6.4-10-i686. I used the same clonezilla version to restore the image. The Restore operation ran to its proper conclusion but when I started the Thinkpad with the cloned image it did not work. I was just led to the Grub prompt.
Second attempt:
I tried using clonezilla-live-2.7.0-10-i686 to restore the backup that I hade made with clonezilla-live-2.6.4-10-i686. The restore operation ran to its proper conclusion but the restored image was not correct, it only led me to the Grub prompt.
Third attempt
I used clonezilla-live-2.7.0-10-i686 to create the disk image and to restore it to the 500 GB drive, but again it did not work. I was just led to the Grub prompt.
Maybe important:
During the Clonezilla Restore operation I saw a few comments on the screen saying that Clonezilla had to change 6 bytes or 8 bytes of some partitions but the messages scrolled off the screen too fast for me to read them, and I don't know how to capture them for further investigation / analysis. I have never seen message like these before.
More information:
After I installed Fedora Linux on this computer I also installed Grub-Customizer (ver 5.1.0) by the command:
sudo dnf install grub-customizer
I don't know if grub-customizer has fouled up the grub configuration file, or which file it might have messed up.
The instructions I read for Grub-Customizer also had this note:
"In Fedora after Fedora 30, the way Fedora interacts with the bootloader changed.
Thanks, Timor, for that link. For others coming across this bug and want a quick workaround:
set "GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false" in /etc/default/grub
to revert to the previous behavior. According to the wiki article, you should also install grubby-deprecated, but in my case it wasn't necessary.
I did set the " GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false ", but I did not install grubby-deprecated because I did not know what it meant. I was not certain whether "grubby" was a particular program or just some "slang" shorthand that means something else.
Any hints would be appreciated.
Michael
Have you tried amd64 version of Clonezilla live? Especially alternative one, e.g., 20201102-groovy or 20210102-hirsute.
Steven
I tried the AMD64 version of Clonezilla; 20201102-groovy and it worked. It created an image of my 320 GB HDD and restored it correctly to my 500 GB drive. GRUB 2 works correctly.
However, as the Restore process was starting I noticed 6-8 messages saying things like "8 bytes have been erased from partition /dev/sdaxxx" but it all flashed off the screen so fast I could not record it.
Note that System Info reports my Processor as being an Intel Core i5, M560 not an AMD.
This is a dual boot machine running Windows 7 and Fedora Linux 33
The partitions are (as I remember)
sda1... Primary. Small boot partition
sda2 ... Primary. Windows OS partition
sda3 ... Extended partition
sda4 ... Primary partition containing System Restore
sda6 ... Logical. Small ext4 boot partition
sda7 ... Logical. Fedora Linux LVM
sda5 ... Logical. Data partition
This T410 Thinkpad is a spare machine and I have a couple of spare HDDs, so if you would like me to do any other tests to help you sort out this issue I would be glad to help you.
Michael
"as the Restore process was starting I noticed 6-8 messages saying things like "8 bytes have been erased from partition /dev/sdaxxx" " -> Before restoring a file system, Clonezilla will erase the file system of destination partition so that there will no stale file system data. I believe that was what you have seen.
"Note that System Info reports my Processor as being an Intel Core i5, M560 not an AMD." -> AMD64 is actually X86-64.
"Because of the technology paternity, Debian uses the name "AMD64". "
Ref: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAMD64Faq
Steven
Thank you.
Great help.
Michael