1. About Clonezilla Live

Clonezilla server edition is used to clone many computers simultaneously. It is an extremely useful tool, however, it does have several limitations. In order to use it, you must first prepare a DRBL server AND the machine to be cloned must boot from a network (e.g. PXE/Etherboot). To address these limitations, the Free Software Lab at the NCHC has combined Debian Live with Clonezilla to produce "Clonezilla Live," a new software that can be used to easily clone individual machines. The primary benefit of Clonezilla Live is that it eliminates the need to set up a DRBL server ahead of time and the need for the computer being cloned to boot from a network. Clonezilla Live can be used to clone individual computers using a CD/DVD or USB flash drive. Though the image size is limited by the boot media's storage capacity, this problem can be eliminated by using a network filesystem such as sshfs or samba.

2. How to make Clonezilla Live ?

To make Clonezilla live, the basic steps are to download pre-build Clonezilla Live then put it in a boot media (CD, USB flash drive or USB hard drive). Two types of files are available, iso and zip. The former one is for CD, the latter is for USB flash drive. Besides, you can put Clonezilla live on hard drive or PXE server, too.

• For CD/DVD:
  
  Download an ISO file for CD/DVD. Then you can burn the iso file to a CD/DVD with any burnning program, such K3b on GNU/Linux or InfraRecorder on MS Windows, and remeber to choose "Burn Image" to burn the ISO file on the CD. The CD can then be used to boot the machine you want to clone.
• For USB flash drive or USB hard drive:
  
  To put Clonezilla live on a USB flash drive or USB hard drive, check this doc.
• For hard drive:
  
  To put Clonezilla live on a harddrive with OS installed already, check this doc.
• For PXE server:
  
  To put Clonezilla live on a PXE server and boot your client via PXE, check this doc.

Now you may continue with the next step to use Clonezilla live.

3. How to use Clonezilla live ?

Once you have the bootable Clonezilla Live media, as created in the previous step, you can boot it in the machine you want to clone. Remember to use the Clonezilla live media, such as CD, USB flash drive, USB hard drive, hard drive or PXE to boot the machine. For example, if you have Clonezilla Live in USB flash drive, you have to boot it via USB device (Ex. USB-HDD or USB-ZIP). If necessary, you can set the first boot priority in the BIOS as USB-HDD or USB-ZIP so that it can boot Clonezilla Live from your USB flash drive.

• You can refer to these step-by-step examples, which provide more details, e.g. how to save an image, to restore an image, to clone disk, to create recovery CD, and more... New! Examples are updated with Clonezilla live 1.2.5-35!
  
  
• For general introduction about using the Clonezilla live, please check this doc.
  

4. Accounts

In Clonezilla live, two accounts are available: (1) account "user" with sudo privilege, password is "live", (2) administration account "root", no password. Therefore you can not login as root, the only way to get root privilege is to login as user, and run "sudo su -" to become root. Note, for old clonezilla live (naming is clonezilla-live-2007XXXX), root's password is "drbllive".
For better security, it is recommended to change the passwords of user and root by command "passwd" before you allow remote access. When Clonezilla live boots, the ssh service is NOT automatically started, and the setting in /etc/hosts.deny does NOT block any connection. If you want to remotely ssh login into your Clonezilla live, you have to start ssh service by "/etc/init.d/ssh start".

5. Advanced modes

Some advanced modes are available:

1. Create your own recovery CD or USB flash drive.
   
2. Use your own script and run it on clonezilla live.
   
3. Use boot parameters to pre-set some selections

6. Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Mr. Jr-Jung Lin from Taipei County, Mr. Wei-Ji Hsiao from Huallien County and all others who helped put together this project for their time, effort, contribution and input.

7.Copyright

This copyright is preserved for the author and publisher. Anyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document under the terms of the GNU FDL Free Documentation License. If you do make any distribution or modification of the document, please add your name to the authors list.

We recommend this document principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference. The author and publisher will not take any responsibility if there is any damage caused by this document.

8. Authors

Steven Shiau (steven _at_ nchc org tw)
K. L. Huang (klhaung _at_ gmail com)
H. T. Wang (c00wht00 _at_ nchc org tw)
Ceasar Sun (ceasar _at_ nchc org tw)
Jazz Wang (jazz _at_ nchc org tw)
Thomas Tsai (thomas _at_ nchc org tw)