CLONETOSDA(8)

📦 version 3.7, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 CLONETOSDA 💖

okay bestie, so this is the cloneToSda page from the cloneToSda User Manual, section 8 of the manual (that's the sysadmin-y one, iykyk). it's short, it's iconic, and it will absolutely nuke your hard drive, so like… let's go 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

cloneToSda — clone the Freeduc system from a live session to the machine's hard disk 🌸

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

cloneToSda

no flags, no args, no drama. she just does it 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so cloneToSda lets you clone the core of a live Freeduc system straight onto the local machine's hard disk. that's the whole vibe. 🪄

⚠️ bestie. listen. ALL data on the hard disk will be erased. all of it. gone. not me warning you twice but i am warning you twice. ⚠️

four partitions get created on the hard disk, and they are, in order:

  • /dev/sda1 — the first partition, and she is thicc (some gigabytes, no cap). it holds a bootable iso-9660 filesystem, which means the core of Freeduc lives in read-only mode. cozy. locked. safe. 🔒
  • /dev/sda2 — the second partition is a hidden NTFS partition, and here's the fun part: it sits inside the iso-9660 partition, so it can do that iso-hybrid boot thing ✨. this one holds the files you need to boot in EFI mode. main character energy tbh.
  • /dev/sda3 — a vestigial vfat partition 🍓. for pluggable disks it lowkey makes sense to have a vfat partition, because that's how you get files that Windows and Mac machines can actually reach. but when the same system is living on a hard drive? allocating disk space to this partition just does not make sense. it's giving leftover. 💀
  • /dev/sda4 — this partition carries an EXT4 filesystem and it's called the "persistence" partition 👑. some of its directories get mounted in overlay mode, which means every change you make to the original system gets written right there. that's where your whole personality lives now.

so like, if you erase the directory rw/ near the root of this partition, all persistence data are removed 😭. and there's one important file that must be kept in its root directory: persistence.conf — it defines how overlays are mounted. by default, this file defines one single overlay for all the system. do not touch her. she is doing her job. 🙏

💜 AUTHOR 💜

  • Georges Khaznadar <georgesk@debian.org> — wrote this manpage for the Debian system. king behavior, honestly. 🫡

Copyright © 2020 georgesk

this manual page was written for the Debian system (and may be used by others).

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or (at your option) any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

on Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL. 📜

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one was cloneToSda from 10/04/2020 ✨ mwah, go forth and please back up your data first 💖🎀🦋

📦 where this page comes from