MX Linux 19: Clonezilla fails w/ error "syntax error near unexpected token `<"

Question

I've created an MX-Linux 19 LiveUSB with Clonezilla (ver. 3.27.16-3) installed by Synaptic Package Manager from the MX Linux repository, which I then remastered. The remastered LiveUSB passed several tests and allowed me to install MX 19 to an SSD which itself runs AOK.

Clonezilla is started from a launcher on the desktop which runs sudo /usr/sbin/clonezilla . After booting from that MX-Linux LiveUSB completes, I then plug in a second USB (not Live) which holds a Clonezilla image, and unmounted it after it appeared in Thunar File Manager. The destination to install the image on is an erased GPT SSD and appears in Thunar and Gparted both.

I launch gparted, select device-image mode, assign the location of the image to read from as local_dev, and when prompted to, insert the second USB, the non-Live USB with the Clonezilla image. I then open Thunar, and when it automounts the LiveUSB, I unmount it, and close Thunar.

Back into Clonezilla where I tell it to proceed. It shows me sdd1 as available to mount as /home/partimage but when I select that, errors scroll down the screen and repeats rapidly in a loop.

https://pastebin.com/6dsvGRbA has the error message which begins with

Scanning dir /tmp/ocsroot_bind_root.............../usr/share/drbl/sbin/ocs-functions: eval: line 12703: syntax error near unexpected token `<'

I found a Clonezila bug in https://sourceforge.net/p/clonezilla/discussion/Clonezilla_live/thread/d37e37ee/?limit=25 which suggests updating drbl but there are no instructions to do so for Debian 10, the foundation for MX Linux 19.

How might I resolve this?

Answer 1

Your error on the eval on line 12703 on version 3.27.16 of ocs-functions is evaluating: eval $cmd where $cmd is cmd="cd "$option on line 12702 so it looks like the $option is containing a < which is interpreted by the shell as a input/output redirection.

I would put an echo $option before line 12703 as this would hopefully show why eval is failing.

Answer 2

Not really an answer to your original question, more of another way of doing the same that you're trying to do, but in a more elegant way:

1. I have an external hard drive with CloneZilla Live installed on a small 2GB partition with the rest of the hard drive's space to keep the actual images to be able to image any other computer than mine.

2. On top of that, I also keep the CloneZilla Live ISO in /opt/Live-ISOs and boot the ISO from grub if I want to make an image of my own machine (boot that already while I go to the other room where I keep my Backup hard drive).

This way, I can respectively:

1. Take a Cold System Backup of any machine (OS is not running)
2. Easily test a new version of CloneZilla / use CloneZilla on my own machine and update the HDD when needed.

Item 1 above is easy to install and the trick to item 2 is to add the following text to the end of /etc/grub.d/40_custom:

menuentry "CloneZilla ISO" {
  set ISOFile="/opt/Live-ISOs/clonezilla-live-20191024-eoan-amd64.iso"
  loopback loop ($root)$ISOFile
  linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live components config findiso=$ISOFile ip=frommedia toram=filesystem.squashfs union=overlay
  initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
}

and perform an update-grub and presto: you've added an entry to your grand unified boot loader that allows you to just boot a CloneZilla environment completely separate from your own Operating System instead of executing it from said OS.