Creating a Clonezilla bootable flash drive

If the flash drive on which you wish to use to install Clonzilla isn't partitioned and formatted or you wish to wipe out any existing partitions and/or reformat, you can use GParted. Insert the USB flash drive into the system then start GParted, which you can do by typing gparted at a command prompt. Click on GParted from the GParted menu, then select Devices and then the USB flash drive, e.g., /dev/sdb or whatever the designation given to it happens to be on your system. You can, hopefully, distinguish it from the system's internal hard drive by the listed capacity. You can then select a partition, if one already exists and you wish to delete it and choose Partition and Delete from the menu. Note: the flash drive should not be mounted at this point in order for you to delete or modify a partion. You could then create a new partition by clicking on Partition and then selecting New. If you created a new partition, click on it to select it and then select Partition and choose Format to and pick fat16 or fat32 as the file system type. Note: make sure you have the correct drive selected and will be performing operations on the flash drive not the system's internal hard drive before proceeding. Then click on Edit and select Apply All Operations.

You next need to mount the drive on the system, e.g., if the device is /dev/sdb1, you might be able to use something like mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb if you created a usb directory under /mnt.

Unzip the zip file you downloaded to the USB drive. E.g., if I have the USB flash drive mounted under /mnt/usb, I could use a command such as the one shown below:

Keep the directory structure. E.g., the file "GPL" should be in the USB flash drive or USB hard drive's top directory, e.g. /mnt/usb/GPL.

To make the USB flash drive bootable, change the working directory to be the utils/linux directory on the flash drive. E.g.

cd
/mnt/usb/utils/linux

, then run bash makeboot.sh /dev/sdb1, replacing /dev/sdb1 with your USB flash drive device name, if it differs. WARNING! Executing makeboot.sh with the wrong device name could cause your GNU/Linux not to boot, so be sure to confirm that you are using the correct drive designator befoere running the command, since you don't want to apply the command to the system's internal hard drive.

root@sysresccd /mnt/usb/utils/linux % bash makeboot.sh /dev/sdb1
This command will install MBR and syslinux bootloader on this machine
--------------------------------------------
Machine: Dimension 2400               :
Model: SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1031MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  1031MB  1030MB  primary  fat32

 --------------------------------------------
 Are you sure you want to continue?
 [y/n] y
 OK! Let's do it!
 --------------------------------------------
 File system of /dev/sdb1: vfat
 --------------------------------------------
 sdb1 is not marked as bootable! The partition table of /dev/sdb:
 --------------------------------------------
 Dimension 2400 :
 Model: SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro (scsi)
 Disk /dev/sdb: 1031MB
 Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
 Partition Table: msdos
 Disk Flags: 

 Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
  1      1049kB  1031MB  1030MB  primary  fat32

  --------------------------------------------
  Do you want to mark it as bootable ?
  [y/n] y  
  OK! Let's do it!
  Running: parted -s /dev/sdb set 1 boot on
  --------------------------------------------
  Do you want to install mbr on /dev/sdb on this machine "Dimension 2400
  " ?
  [y/n] y
  OK! Let's do it!
  --------------------------------------------
  Do you want to install the SYSLINUX bootloader on /dev/sdb1 on this machine
  "Dimension 2400               " ?
  [y/n] y
  OK! Let's do it!
  A filesystem supporting Unix file mode for syslinux is required. Copying
  syslinux from FAT to /tmp/...
  '/mnt/usb/utils/linux/syslinux' -> '/tmp/syslinux_tmp.aiYaSj/syslinux'
  Running: /tmp/syslinux_tmp.aiYaSj/syslinux -d syslinux -f -i /dev/sdb1 
  done!
  //NOTE// If your USB flash drive fails to boot (maybe buggy BIOS), try to
  //use "syslinux -d syslinux -fs /dev/sdb1", i.e. running with "-fs".
  root@sysresccd /mnt/usb/utils/linux %

You can then unmount the USB flash drive, e.g.,

umount
  /dev/sdb1

and use it to boot a system.