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Mounting Clonezilla image by creating img file

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Systems Linux Ubuntu Backup Partitions
Rubén Infante Docio
Author
Rubén Infante Docio
Software engineer

When we make a backup of a system Linux, either at the user level or for a computer survey, the most used tool is Clonezilla.

Its main features are as follows

  • It’s Open Source

  • It’s easy to use

  • Its user interface is not as friendly as other proprietary solutions like Norton Ghost, True Image etc

  • It is the most stable solution for typical Linux file systems such as EXt2/3/4

  • Its translation into Spanish in my opinion can be improved (I recommend its use in English, if you have a minimum knowledge of the language)

  • It allows us to store the image on the same PC, on an external device, through SMB, NFS etc.

    • If it is an expert report, of course we cannot store it on an HDD of the system.

If we make an image of a hard disk or partition of an EXTx file system. Clonezilla will use an Open Source tool called partclone.

This image will be stored in a folder located in /home/PARTIMAGE by default, although we can specify its location.

The files will be divided into compressed parts of 2GB each, for backward compatibility with the FAT File system.

These files will be named as follows

PCNAME-PCPARTITION.FILESYSTETYPE-ptcl-img.gz.aa
PCNAME-PCPARTITION.FILESYSTETYPE-ptcl-img.gz.ab
PCNAME-PCPARTITION.FILESYSTETYPE-ptcl-img.gz.ac
PCNAME-PCPARTITION.FILESYSTETYPE-ptcl-img.gz.**

If you want to restore this image to another disk or partition, you can do so using the Clonezilla Wizard.

But if we want to examine its content, we can generate an IMG image, mountable as if it were an ISO:

STEPS TO FOLLOW:

  1. Start a Linux system on the computer that contains the image
    1. It can be a Linux already installed on the PC
    2. Or use a Ubuntu Live disc as explained here.
  2. In case you do not have all the repositories activated. We activate the universe and multiltiverse repositories if you don’t know if you have them activated or want to know how to do it, click here
  3. We will install the necessary tools
//Actualizamos los paquetes disponibles
sudo apt-get update
//Instalamos las utilidades
sudo apt-get install partclone ntfsclone
//Instalamos otras utilidades
////Para 64bits SO
wget http://free.nchc.org.tw/drbl-core/pool/drbl/live-unstable/partclone-utils/partclone-utils_0.2.1-drbl1_amd64.deb
////Para 32bits SO
wget http://free.nchc.org.tw/drbl-core/pool/drbl/live-unstable/partclone-utils/partclone-utils_0.2.1-drbl1_i386.deb
///Para old ubuntu (10.10)
http://www.idealworldinc.com/partclone-utils/partclone-utils_0.1-1_i386.deb
//Para instalar
sudo dpkg -i partclone-utils_0.2.1-drbl1_amd64.deb

  1. Next, we’ll enter the following commands into a terminal

    //Dademos acceso a logueo como root en la terminal
sudo passwd root
//Montaremos la partición dónde se encuentra la imagen , abriendo Nautilus y haciendo click en su nombre
//Volveremos a la terminal para entrar como root
su
//crearemos una imágen con extensión .img mediante el siguiente comando
cat PCNAME-PCPARTITION.FILESYSTETYPE-ptcl-img.gz.* |gzip -d -c | partclone.restore -C -s - -o RUTA/IMGNAME.img
//Si por algún motivo la imágen está corrupta el proceso fallará puedes evitar la comprobación de CRC mediante el
//siguiente comando
cat PCNAME-PCPARTITION.FILESYSTETYPE-ptcl-img.gz.* |gzip -d -c | partclone.restore --ignore_crc -C -s - -o RUTA/IMGNAME.img

  2. We have already created our .img file

  3. Now we will mount the file to be able to examine it

    //Creamos la ruta de montaje
sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
//Montamos la imagen
sudo mount -o loop,offset=65536 RUTA/Fichero.img /mnt/tmp

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