Extra Partition comes with 13.2

I am trying to copy a drive with 13.2 installed. For reasons beyond my knowledge Clonezilla cannot cope. It may be because the “drives” are raid arrays and are still in quick-init mode. One array building sync is stuck and running all the time which will wear disks out eventually. That is the drive that has all my OS installed and working so I want to copy it to another place while I rebuild the array and then reinstall the OS with all my applications and profiles etc. (Perfect job for clonezilla if it would work!)

In the absence of clonezilla, I understand the way to do this is create matching partitions on the target drive, boot to a live version of the OS, mount the respective partitions in source and target in pairs and use cp to copy the directories across.

In looking at the source drive I see it has an extra 1MB boot partion at /sda1 in addition to root, home and swap. This is the first time I have seen this. Is it new to 13.2?

It is not possible for me to create a 1MB partition using Yast Partitioner, the smallest it will build is over 7MB. If this approach is OK, how should I proceed and how do I create this extra partition in order to copy everything back again?

Budgie2

On Wed 18 Feb 2015 10:56:01 PM CST, Budgie2 wrote:

I am trying to copy a drive with 13.2 installed. For reasons beyond my
knowledge Clonezilla cannot cope. It may be because the “drives” are
raid arrays and are still in quick-init mode. One array building sync
is stuck and running all the time which will wear disks out eventually.
That is the drive that has all my OS installed and working so I want to
copy it to another place while I rebuild the array and then reinstall
the OS with all my applications and profiles etc. (Perfect job for
clonezilla if it would work!)

In the absence of clonezilla, I understand the way to do this is create
matching partitions on the target drive, boot to a live version of the
OS, mount the respective partitions in source and target in pairs and
use cp to copy the directories across.

In looking at the source drive I see it has an extra 1MB boot partion at
/sda1 in addition to root, home and swap. This is the first time I have
seen this. Is it new to 13.2?

It is not possible for me to create a 1MB partition using Yast
Partitioner, the smallest it will build is over 7MB. If this approach
is OK, how should I proceed and how do I create this extra partition in
order to copy everything back again?

Budgie2

Hi
Sure it’s 1MB?? Maybe it’s 1GB?

Use fdisk (for legacy/mbr) or gdisk (for gpt) as required to create the
partition on you target drive.

I would not use copy but dd, for example;


lsblk

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 298.1G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0   300M  0 part
├─sda2   8:2    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3   8:3    0   128M  0 part
├─sda4   8:4    0    40G  0 part /
├─sda5   8:5    0   150G  0 part /data
├─sda6   8:6    0     8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7   8:7    0  99.4G  0 part
sdb      8:16   0 698.7G  0 disk

fdisk /dev/sdb

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.25.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector (34-1465149134, default 2048):
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-1465149134, default 1465149134): +1M

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux filesystem' and of size 1 MiB.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 698.7 GiB, 750156374016 bytes, 1465149168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 43FDCE05-6178-4A2E-AF6F-7D2CF647ED8C

Device     Start   End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1   2048  4095    2048   1M Linux filesystem


Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdb1

Again, use lsblk and check the partition size.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.36-38-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

Is that a BIOS Boot partition? It is needed on a GPT partitioned disk for installing grub in the MBR.

If I want to create that, I use “gdisk”. I set the partition boundary to 1 sector alignment, and put the partition at sectors 34-2047, which is normally unused space before the first regular partition.

It would not surprise me if clonezilla doesn’t know how to handle it. I expect the proper way is to reinstall grub2, and allow that install to take care of using it appropriately.

Yes you are right it is a BIOS root partition. If I use malcolm’s approach I can prepare the new array with grub2 before copying back the partitions.
Am working on this now but giving the latest edition of Clonezilla a try which seems to be working. The version I used before was over a year old!!!
Thanks for the advice.

Hi Malcolm,
Many thanks. Working on this now. Will use your method but still struggling with RAID. I suspect my drives are too big for the controller, given its age.

That will make a difference, as there have been changes in partition tables and filesystems in that time.:wink:

Just to close this thread, the latest Clonezilla available v 2.3.2-22-i686 pae ran without a hitch on new openSUSE 13.2 system on installed on RAID array. The “Extra” partition captioned is the BIOS boot partition which is new to 13.2 or to me at least, hence the posting.
The RAID array was still marked as in auto-sync mode but that didn’t appear to cause any problems. I used the copy to local disk option rather than disk image option so I would be able to access the files if necessary rather than trying to restore onto a different sized drive.
Will only report back if I have further problems.
Budgie2