# Clonezilla



## balanga (Feb 24, 2016)

Is it possible to run Clonezilla on FreeBSD?


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## Oko (Feb 24, 2016)

What do you mean by running it on FreeBSD. It is a live CD Linux distro? As of the support for FreeBSD file systems IIRC UFS is not supported and thera better ways to reolicacte ZFS It does support BSD partition scheme


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 24, 2016)

Oko said:


> IIRC UFS is not supported


It is according to their web site.


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## kpa (Feb 24, 2016)

It is most often used from the live-cd version of it but it can be also installed and run *) as a regular Linux application on any Linux system. No FreeBSD port exists.

*) This is the server edition it turns out, the standard edition is the live-cd.


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## balanga (Feb 24, 2016)

I installed Debian earlier and just tried `apt-get install clonezilla` which worked, and I was able to run it from the cmd line.

Is it possible to run Linux programs on FreeBSD? I thought there was a Linux-compatibility layer...


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## ANOKNUSA (Feb 24, 2016)

balanga said:


> Is it possible to run Linux programs on FreeBSD? I thought there was a Linux-compatibility layer...



There is, but it's intended for instances in which running a pre-compiled, Linux-only binary is the best or only option. That's a rare circumstance. There's a hierarchy of options to run through:

If a program is open-source, and doesn't depend on the Linux kernel, try building it on FreeBSD.
If it won't build on FreeBSD as-is, but could with a little modification, then make those modifications. Consider creating a port.

If it won't build, and modifying/creating a port of it isn't really an option, consider any alternatives to that program that exist.
If neither building from source/creating a port _nor_ using an alternative are options, try using the Linux compatibility layer.
If the only reason for using Clonezilla--a LiveCD deliberately designed to back up Linux systems--is out of habit, it's time to consider changing those habits a bit. FreeBSD has its own backup programs for the UFS filesystem: dump(8) and restore(8). dump is very fast and reliable, and backs up entire filesystems in a manner similar to Clonezilla. restore can be used from the FreeBSD LiveCD to restore a whole filesystem, or interactively from a running system to retrieve individual files.


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## wblock@ (Feb 24, 2016)

Oko said:


> What do you mean by running it on FreeBSD. It is a live CD Linux distro? As of the support for FreeBSD file systems IIRC UFS is not supported and thera better ways to reolicacte ZFS It does support BSD partition scheme


Recent versions do support UFS.  However, it will want to back up swap partitions as a big binary, which is less than optimal.

A Clonezilla backup is more efficient than an image copy with dd(1), but it still has the problem of only being able to access files after restoring the whole image to a device that is at least as large as the original.


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