Clonezilla

Lord Chaos · 07-31-2008, 01:08 PM

I am not very familiar with the meat and bones of Linux sadly, but how exactly would you go about adding additional drivers to a bootable standalone image of Linux (like the Clonezilla Live CD) since I need special drivers for my raid controller or it can't see my harddrives.

Also, anyone familiar with Clonezilla know of a place where I can ask questions about it. I can get it set up fine and do just about all the things I need, just need to have a few questions answered (like how to make a disk independant image so you can restore an IDE image on a SATA drive and visa versa)

Lord Chaos · 08-26-2008, 03:47 AM

Does anyone know how to add drivers to such bootable CD's?

lensman3 · 08-26-2008, 10:02 PM

It has been a long time since I compiled a kernel. The drivers have to be added into the "initrd" file that the kernel gets its "first" drivers from. That is if the drivers aren't already compiled into the kernel itself. As I vaguely recall that the driver modules are compiled as loadable modules and are compressed into "initrd" when the kernel is finally linked. The kernel unzips this file, loads all the drivers. At sometime during all this, a ram file system is created and used. The part of ram file system is released and the rest of the memory is "converted/reclassified" as the final kernel ram.

There are a series of programs that the kernel needs when it is compiled that do all this for you. I no longer remember their names or the package.

If I were you, I would start here:
1. Take a look at the file in /boot called "config-?????". This file is the kernel configuration that your current kernel was compiled with. (It should be in /boot).
2. Down load the kernel that "config-????" was compiled from.
3. Copy the config-???" to the root of the kernel code tree.
4. Read the build instructions and use the "config-????" as your build template. Try to build a boot DVD from this. The instructions are there.
5. Look in a directory just of the root of the Linux code tree called "Documentation". Somewhere in this huge directory is what you want to probably do.

Hope this helps. This is non-trivial exercise!!

melanie2 · 08-27-2008, 01:33 AM

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Lord Chaos · 08-28-2008, 11:36 AM

Darn, yeah, that does sound fairly complicated. Thats pretty sad that its so difficoult as the tool is really awesome and easy to use, but completely useless if you have hardware it doesn't have drivers for :(

melanie2 · 08-29-2008, 12:03 AM

Clonezilla Live allows a user to clone an individual machine. A particular partition or entire disk can be cloned to another medium. This can be saved as an image file or as a replicated copy of the data.
---------------
melanie
word of mouth marketing
Email:drivenwide@hotmail.com

07-31-2008, 01:08 PM	#1 (permalink)
Lord Chaos Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 188 OS: XP SP3 and Vista SP1	Clonezilla I am not very familiar with the meat and bones of Linux sadly, but how exactly would you go about adding additional drivers to a bootable standalone image of Linux (like the Clonezilla Live CD) since I need special drivers for my raid controller or it can't see my harddrives. Also, anyone familiar with Clonezilla know of a place where I can ask questions about it. I can get it set up fine and do just about all the things I need, just need to have a few questions answered (like how to make a disk independant image so you can restore an IDE image on a SATA drive and visa versa)

08-26-2008, 03:47 AM	#2 (permalink)
Lord Chaos Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 188 OS: XP SP3 and Vista SP1	Re: Clonezilla Does anyone know how to add drivers to such bootable CD's?

08-26-2008, 10:02 PM	#3 (permalink)
lensman3 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Littleton, Colorado USA Posts: 470 OS: xp 64 sp2 Fedora Core 8 (vmware xp core 8 x32) Minix	Re: Clonezilla It has been a long time since I compiled a kernel. The drivers have to be added into the "initrd" file that the kernel gets its "first" drivers from. That is if the drivers aren't already compiled into the kernel itself. As I vaguely recall that the driver modules are compiled as loadable modules and are compressed into "initrd" when the kernel is finally linked. The kernel unzips this file, loads all the drivers. At sometime during all this, a ram file system is created and used. The part of ram file system is released and the rest of the memory is "converted/reclassified" as the final kernel ram. There are a series of programs that the kernel needs when it is compiled that do all this for you. I no longer remember their names or the package. If I were you, I would start here: 1. Take a look at the file in /boot called "config-?????". This file is the kernel configuration that your current kernel was compiled with. (It should be in /boot). 2. Down load the kernel that "config-????" was compiled from. 3. Copy the config-???" to the root of the kernel code tree. 4. Read the build instructions and use the "config-????" as your build template. Try to build a boot DVD from this. The instructions are there. 5. Look in a directory just of the root of the Linux code tree called "Documentation". Somewhere in this huge directory is what you want to probably do. Hope this helps. This is non-trivial exercise!! Last edited by lensman3; 08-26-2008 at 10:04 PM.

08-27-2008, 01:33 AM	#4 (permalink)
melanie2 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2 OS: xp	social marketing, I took a look at your site and recommend it to my visitors. I agree with you on the importance of becoming valuable in many different areas. I believe that it sustains any entrepreneur during challenges that inevitably occur. ----------------------------- melanie social marketing, Email:drivenwide@hotmail.com

08-28-2008, 11:36 AM	#5 (permalink)
Lord Chaos Registered User Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 188 OS: XP SP3 and Vista SP1	Re: Clonezilla Darn, yeah, that does sound fairly complicated. Thats pretty sad that its so difficoult as the tool is really awesome and easy to use, but completely useless if you have hardware it doesn't have drivers for :(

08-29-2008, 12:03 AM	#6 (permalink)
melanie2 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2 OS: xp	online marketing Clonezilla Live allows a user to clone an individual machine. A particular partition or entire disk can be cloned to another medium. This can be saved as an image file or as a replicated copy of the data. --------------- melanie word of mouth marketing Email:drivenwide@hotmail.com