The launch of the Linux distribution was recently announced "Clonezilla Live 2.6.3-7" which is designed for fast disk cloning (only used blocks are copied). The tasks performed by the distribution are similar to the proprietary Norton Ghost product.
The distribution It is based on Debian and in its work uses the code of projects such as DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, partclone, udpcast. It can boot from CD / DVD, USB Flash, and over the network (PXE). Supported file systems: ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, xfs, jfs, FAT, NTFS, HFS + (macOS), UFS, minix, and VMFS (VMWare ESX).
Clonezilla supports many types of file systems, so it is suitable for cloning MacOS, Windows, Linux and other systems.
Clonezilla is a software similar to Norton Ghost which, unlike this Clonezilla it's totally free and open source then is based on a number of open source projects, such as Partition Image.
Clonezilla main features
- The Supported file systems are as follows: ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs of GNU / Linux, FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, HFS + of Mac OS, UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD and VMFS of VMWare ESX.
- Multicast support, which is very useful when cloning systems in bulk.
- You can rely on Partclone (default), Partimage (optional), ntfsclone (optional), or dd to create the image or clone a partition. However, it is also possible to clone entire disks and not just separate partitions.
- Using drbl-winroll it is possible to automatically change the server name, group and SID of the cloned Win system.
There is a bulk cloning mode in multicast mode, which allows you to simultaneously clone the source disk on a large number of client machines.
What's new in Clonezilla 2.6.3-7
With the release of this new version the distribution has been synced with the package database Debian Sid as of September 3, with which the distribution packages have been updated to their latest versions including the Linux Kernel which has been updated to version 5.2, (In the previous version of Clonezilla the version of the Kernel included was 4.9).
Another of the updated packages that stand out is Partclone, which comes with version 0.3.13 + git0819-2f1830e-drbl1.
Regarding the system changes, the zfs-fuse module, which has not been updated for a long time, has been removed distribution, so to support ZFS mounting, openzfs package can be used, which is present in alternative versions of Clonezilla Live based on Ubuntu.
Of the other changes that stand out in this new version of the distribution:
- Modified BT parameters in drbl-ocs.conf: use gen-torrent-from-ptcl (ezio-ptcl) to create torrent files from torrent.info, without using authoring flow. This can save a lot of time when the source image is large.
- Removed "-t 3 -k 60" from ezio_seeder_opt
- A new sample program custom-ocs-3 has been added.
- Updated mechanism to generate a new machine identifier to recover GNU / Linux.
Download Clonezilla Live 2.6.3-7
If you are interested in being able to download the new version of Clonezilla to be able to test it or make your backups immediately.
You just have to go to the official website of the project and in the download section we will find the link to download the system, or if you prefer I leave the link here.
The size of the ISO image layout is 266 MB (i686, amd64).
The hardware requirements we need to have are minimal. To run the system we require:
- An x86 or x86-64 processor
- At least 196 MB of RAM
- Boot device, for example, CD / DVD drive, USB port, PXE, or hard disk.
As for the amount of requirements for the execution of Clonezilla, it is minimal, since the system does not have a graphical interface, so it is only limited to use through the terminal.