Fringe case that may have nothing to do with RescueZilla
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i was testing a bunch of stuff (mainly rescuezilla) on an old vista era pc
that doesnt quite boot to usb right,
it was on the cusp of that . when i was done it wouldnt boot anymore.
i figured it was the hard drive. i just use it to play n record antenna tv and
just used an old drive i had put a question mark on for some reason .
so this morning i take the drive out and look at it in my pc . its partition table
looks like the one on my multiboot flash drive
i plug it in and theres a drive sig conflict
somehow this hard drive has my flash drives mbr on it
i open that in ranish and the mbr says OldBootMan
ever heard of that? im still working on it ill be back
ps you can delete this after we talk.
i love what ya did and this may have nothing to do with that
i had some fedora 31 install in multi boot on my flash drive
and i forgot how i did that so i just plopped rz in the folder
and gave it a shot
it was probably some rufus thing i dont trust it
oh btw im trying this thing ventoy i saw today
suppose to just boot isos from usb even secureboot
im about to restore the mbr on my tv
not sure if i should dump this drive or not
thanks
ok oldbootman is back in his cave :) dont know where he came from
or how on earth my usb flash drives mbr was copied to my hard drive
without my consent but my computers back to how it was yesterday
thanks to a good backup :)
this is a perfect example of why i need rescuezilla going forward
(i currently use dos, mbrwizard, partition-saving)
built into the hard dive with ranish partition manager
which is nice for mom and dad
they just press 2 at boot and type restore
btw, i like that it backs up everything you checkbox
i dont wanna fool with grub and fstab
Thanks for using Rescuezilla!
I'm glad to hear that your Windows Vista-era PC is up and running!
I've never used Ranish Partition Manager, but the screenshots sure do look intimidating! You said that your drive had a signature conflict, and that there is an "OldBootMan" entry. This could be caused by a past operating system installation, or as you say, by the past use of a tool like Rufus. Without knowing the history of operations you have done to your disk it's hard to know for sure.
Please be careful with any tools you use, including Rescuezilla: as with most hard drive imaging programs, a backup made with Rescuezilla is best done when partitions and filesystems are in a good state. Then you can make any modification you want, and Rescuezilla will always be able to restore it back to its original state!
As for the offer to delete your forum posts after we talk, I generally prefer not too because any discussion is usually of interest to the broader community.
Great to hear you were able to create a multiboot USB stick. Some users of Rescuezilla have reported it's possible to make a multiboot USB stick using YUMI, but I haven't tried this myself. Also, I am definitely not yet officially encouraging using Ventoy for Rescuezilla until I have audited it.
You are correct, for almost all operations using Rescuezilla you will never need to fool around with GRUB bootloader or fstab. However if you're using Rescuezilla or any other tool, it always will be possible to get into a situation where the hard drive environment does not match what fstab is expecting, which causes Linux to stop booting at "Rescue Mode" until this is corrected. I have documented the cause and solution of this issue in the Rescuezilla Frequently Asked Questions (under "I restored my Linux backup using Rescuezilla. It boots past the GRUB bootloader fully, but the Linux boot gets stuck at "Rescue Mode" login prompt. How do I fix this?"). It's unlikely that you will hit this issue, but it's worth understanding!
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-06-29
you can delete this, i dont think it has anything to do with rescuezilla, i was just curious if youd ever heard of old boot man or had any ideas how that happened. my best guess is that the bios got my usb and hard drive confused and copied a backup mbr or mft from one to the other. maybe its a fringe case with etcher idk
yeah lol ranish partition manager is like a nuclear submarine without a manual
its served me well in the mbr days
man, i hope ventoy checks out, im definitely no letting it add any certs to my secure boot list
i just hate rebuilding my multiboot flash everytime some os updates
its so nice being able to just add an iso to a folder that im gonna trust the chinese for a little while :)
Yeah I agree Ventoy looks amazing and I also hope it works out.
Not letting your EFI Secure Boot certificates near Ventoy is definitely smart.
Just to play devil's advocate, Rescuezilla (and other other open-source tools like SysRescueCD, Clonezilla, let alone Acronis True Image) have similar risk profiles, being entire operating systems used for IT administration that are required to operate at high degrees of privilege. (Though Rescuezilla is not developed anonymously).
A Russian proverb made famous a few decades ago is very relevant: "Trust but verify". I have just created Rescuezilla task #104 to help reduce Rescuezilla's risk profile around this.
Don't hesistate to let me know if you have any issues!
btw, its rmprep that i dont trust (not rufus). rmprep made one of my flash drives read only w no filesystem or mbr once, it wouldnt even show up in disk manager. had to reflash firmware to get it back
Thanks for the information about rmprep.
While I've never used RMPrepUSB, over the decades I have definitely used extremely low quality USB sticks that causes similar issues (even from reputable brands like Lexar).
Apparently the factories making USB sticks and SD cards have extremely cutthroat margins, so they have problems with recycled faulty parts entering the supply chain, as well as "ghost shift counterfeiting" that use poor yield offcuts etc without sufficient quality control.
I suspect the issue you describe is more an issue about the flash drive, and less an issue about RMPrepUSB.