Howto change Clonezilla default menu selection items - clonezilla

Question

I am using clonezilla-live-2.6.1-11-amd64.iso
I would like to change the default section when booting off the live USB to perform full backups of the whole drive. for example:
on screen "Mount Clonezilla image directory" I would like to change the default from local_dev to use samba_server
on screen "Mount Samba server" I would like to change the default from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.2
on screen "Mount Samba server" account change the default administrator to clonezilla
When I enter the items in
/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
.
ocs_repository="smb://clonezilla:password#192.168.1.2/zilla/
the menu's still ask me the default address of 192.18.1.1 and username administrator
so it appears I am not understanding the documentation. Does anyone have an example cfg?

Answer 1

I have delved into customizing "LiveISO's" and CloneZilla specifically so I will give a general idea of how I would attack this.
Looking at my notes this is all I had. To enable SSH Deamon I would unpack the ISO, edit the following and repack the iso using mksquashfs.
Eg:
Preparing to unpack ISO:
sudo apt-get install -y squashfs-tools
Copy iso to /tmp & rename live.iso
mkdir /tmp/mnt
sudo mount -o loop /tmp/live.iso /tmp/mnt
sudo find /tmp/mnt \( -name '*.squashfs' -o -name "*.SQFS" \) -exec unsquashfs -d /tmp/squashfs-root/ {} \;
sudo umount /tmp/mnt
sudo rm /tmp/mnt -R
cd /tmp/squashfs-root
This leaves you with:
/tmp/live.iso
/tmp/squashfs-root/FilesFromSquashedFS
Make Changes…..
sudo nano /tmp/squashfs-root/etc/ocs/ocs-live.conf
scroll to bottom & add:
ocs_daemon=\"ssh\"
Then Repack ISO:
cd /tmp
sudo mksquashfs /tmp/squashfs-root filesystem.squashfs
sudo rm /tmp/squashfs-root -R
This leaves you with:
/tmp/live.iso
/tmp/filesystem.squashfs
Now use an ISO editing Program to insert the filesystem.squashfs into the original ISO making sure to use the same name as the original ISO "squasedfs" used. Sometimes it's a different extension.
The above method is quite "General" but I found some LiveOS creators have scripts for booting the OS, making changes and then creating an ISO from the running OS.
For CloneZilla this is what I have found after a quick google.
https://clonezilla.org/advanced/customized-clonezilla-live.php
Simple Version of that Link:
Create Custom Script named custom-ocs ( A sample script file /usr/share/drbl/samples/custom-ocs)
Mount /home/partimag/
Copy script to /home/partimag/ and cd to /home/partimag/
Run the following to generate ISO
ocs-iso -g en_US.UTF-8 -k NONE -s -m ./custom-ocs
For other options, please run ocs-iso -h or ocs-live-dev -h to get more info.
Another Link (https://clonezilla.org/related-articles/012_Automated_USB_thumb_drive_using_Custom/Automated_USB_thumb_drive_using_Custom.html) shows this method which seems to indicate to me that if you place a script inside the ISO and then point to it via an edited syslinux.cfg (You could edit it using either of the above methods) you can auto-run it that way. The link says to boot USB and select first menu option, but I would want it to be fully automated where if you do nothing that option is selected regardless.
Here is the edit to syslinux.cfg that he uses:
kernel /live/vmlinuz1
append initrd=/live/initrd1.img boot=live union=aufs noprompt noprompt ocs_live_run="/live/image/live/custom-ocs" ocs_live_extra_param="" ocs_live_keymap="NONE" ocs_live_batch="yes" ocs_lang="en_US.UTF-8" vga=791 ip=frommedia nolocales
Note: ocs_live_run="/live/image/live/custom-ocs" This to me means run this script after booting, but I haven't tested/messed with CloneZilla in a while.
Personal Opinion: I love Parted Magic but some people don't like that it has some weird licensing now and isn't really free, but old 2013 version can be found and/or buy it for like $10. It has CloneZilla built in and also an MKISO script for making an ISO out of the booted/edited/LiveOS, but again, I generally would unpack the ISO using squashfs and then repack and inject into ISO.
Here are my links to what I've done customizing "LiveISO's". My final project years ago was a "Parted Magic" LiveISO that booted, started a PWD protected VNC sessions + ssh and e-mailed me the DHCP IP address. (I had hit and miss results with the e-mail portion, but depending on your setup you could use static IP or check router for DHCP IP address)
https://www.freesoftwareservers.com/display/FREES/Customize+LiveISO%27s

Answer 2

You can indeed have your Samba share automatically pre-mounted by using ocs_repository= in your vmlinuz kernel boot arguments.
However, it needs to be in the right boot file.
According to the boot parameters documentation, the relevant file is one of:
/syslinux/isolinux.cfg when booting from CD on a MBR machine
/syslinux/syslinux.cfg when booting from USB flash drive on a MBR machine
/boot/grub/grub.cfg when booting from a uEFI machine
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default or similar on your PXE server, when booting from PXE on a MBR machine
/tftpboot/grub/grub.cfg or similar on your PXE server, when booting from a uEFI netboot machine
Depending on your Samba server, you might also need to specify the SMB version to be used. From the same documentation page:
To assign the image repository via URI (Uniform Resource Identifier),
use "ocs_repository". URI supported in Clonezilla live:
[dev|smb|smb1|smb1.0|smb2|smb2.0|smb2.1|smb3|smb3.0|smb3.11|smb3.1.1|ssh|nfs|nfs4|http|https|ram]:[//[user:password#]host[:port]][/]path