NOTE: This doesn't answer the OP's question as it is posted. This is merely a work-around.
Check on the GitHub NOOBS page. While it doesn't actually allow you to clone the installation, you can just bypass the splashscreen and boot automatically into the selected partition.
From the page:
How to bypass the Recovery splashscreen and boot directly into a fixed
partition
After you have installed your chosen OSes, add the following file to
the root directory of NOOBS to force the indicated partition to be
booted at power-on.
This will also prevent the splashscreen from being displayed at boot.
As for the partition you are going to be using, my guess is that it will be /dev/mmcblk0p1
, though I can't be certain, as your installation is going to be different than mine. To find out which partition you are on run sudo parted
, then run print
. This is example output for print
within parted:
Model: SD SDC (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 8069MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 4194kB 62.9MB 58.7MB primary fat16 lba
2 62.9MB 8069MB 8006MB primary ext4
The smaller partition is going to be your boot partition. In Raspbian it is anyways. I have yet to use NOOBS very much, so it may be different. The first is also most likely the boot partition, so just take the Disk name (Disk /dev/mmcblk0:
...) and then tack on p
and the partition Number (marked below):
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
--->1 4194kB 62.9MB 58.7MB primary fat16 lba
2 62.9MB 8069MB 8006MB primary ext4
of the first partition. In this case it will be /dev/mmcblk0p1
. Thus, your autoboot.txt
file would look like this:
boot_partition=1
I could be wrong, so if that fails, try boot_partition=/dev/mmcblk0p1
though 1 is the boot partition number in my case and thus would be what it looks like should go in that file.