Using clonezilla as an installed package

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Hi all, :wave:

it turned out it´d be a bit difficult or cumbersome for my friend (who lives pretty far away from me) to get her router settings and everything else sorted out, so ssh-ing into her system seems a bit of a hassle.

Yet I still want to help her performing a disk backup of her system making use of clonezilla. :blush:

As a result of that situation I was looking around a bit for an alternative way of helping her with clonezilla. I came up with a certain scenario but am not sure whether it would work as desired:

I found out that there´s clonezilla available as a deb-package (see Ubuntu – Details of package clonezilla in focal ).
I tried it out on my system and indeed clonezilla can be installed locally. :wink:

So I was wondering if my friend could run e.g. Lubuntu as a live system (she has still got the installation media) and after sudo apt update install clonezilla as well as anydesk or teamviewer for remote help.

Then I´d be able to connect to her live system as she has a desktop environment available and I could start sudo clonezilla on her laptop.

Her main system wouldn´t be running that way (nor would the partitions to be backed up be mounted) and I could initiate the disk backup for her this way.

If that works it should also be possible to use rescuezilla instead of Lubuntu as a live system on her part.

To be clear: I don´t want to use rescuezilla in itself (nor does she) but rather clonezilla. Yet the latest version of rescuezilla (2.2) does have clonezilla 3.35.2-2 installed by default!

(see DistroWatch.com: Rescuezilla ).

That way she would have to install just anydesk/teamviewer and we could go ahead. :thinking:

What do you think of my theory :question:

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Many greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

P.S.:

I´ve also posted the very same topic on Clonezilla / Discussion / Open Discussion: using clonezilla as an installed package but haven´t received an answer so far.
So I thought I ask here on the forum.

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It’s one of the solutions I proposed in the earlier thread. It’s a good solution, if it works as expected.

If Clonezilla just has a window opening on that live system, like any other normal program, then all should work just fine.

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Hi @Akito, :wave:

and thanks so much for the confirmation.

Oh, sorry. :slightly_frowning_face:

We´ve talked about so many different aspects of ssh and vpn lately that it seems to have slipped my mind that you already pointed out such a solution.
I really didn´t want to seem unattentive. :blush:

Yes, I tried it on my machine and it really seems to be the case.

Well, that´s what I´ll propose to my friend then.
In the end only the actual test will show how it works I guess.
But it seems promising …

Thanks a lot, Akito, for your help and opinion on the matter.

Many greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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No need, it’s a complicated topic if you do not deal with it very often. :wink:

Again, you did not. It was just information I wanted to provide. :slightly_smiling_face:

If you checked it out and see for yourself, that it apparently works, as expected, then all should be fine.

As a final test, I would recommend that you treat your VM as if it were the computer of your friend. Then you AnyDesk into it and simulate fiddling with Clonezilla. If that works, you will definitely successfully do the Clonezilla job on her machine.

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Hi @Akito, :wave:

thanks for your kind words.

Great!
Well, i kinda did that - but with a slight change.

I first installed clonezilla (as a package) in my BodhiLinux VM.
Then (instead of AnyDesk-ing into it) I ssh-ed into it. With my VMs I fortunately don´t have any difficulties with ssh connections. :wink:

Otherwise I would have had to install AnyDesk on my host first - something I deliberately don´t want to do.

Some years ago I tried exactly that (connecting host and VM via TeamViewer) and the result was that I somehow got my desktop indefinitively mirrored…
I really can´t explain… :thinking:

Well, that´s not so important as I already know that the connection of my system and her live-system (using AnyDesk) does work. That´s how I set up her laptop in the first place. :wink:

So I ssh-ed into my VM and started sudo clonezilla in it and I got the clonezilla CLI (or rather TUI mode).
Fiddling around with it worked just fine except of course for the fact that nothing could be backed up in that scenario:

In order to backup or clone a partition with Clonezilla, an original partition must exist and it must not be mounted!

So in effect everything works and I don´t see any reason why the “problem” cannot be solved by making use of the AnyDesk/clonezilla combination… :blush:

Thanks so much, Akito, for your help. :hearts:

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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