How can i Back up my system?

[Hadi]

Hello guys

I'm looking to Back up my system and its settings, and then have the ability to  restore them easily when I reinstall my system -- Are there any easy tools that would let me to do that?
If so will you recommend one.
I'm new to Linux, and I'm trying to learn how it works, sometimes I break my system in a way that I need to reinstall.
(Last weak my sound never worked so I had to reinstall and I lost all of my settings and packages)
Heres what I'd like to be able to restore

1: my files which are in /home/hadi/
2: My applications that I installed, and it's settings.
(for example I have three mails connected to my thunderbird now, I want to  have my thunderbird settings also saved, and firefox +it's addons,  and some more apps)
3: apps that I installed from yaourt, BTSync, for example.
4: I disabled some services to boot, and added some,, btsync and openvpn. I want this also to be backed up.
5: My gnome settings, extentions and themes.
 

If you know a simple easy tool or a way to do a complete back up like this, please let me know.

Thank you a lot for reading!
Cheers
Hadi

[xkaspian]

Hi

You have to google  for  filezilla  or through the command  'dd'  inside the terminal.


Nice searching.

Sorry   . It was not  filezilla   but   clonezilla  !!!

MOD - I merged Your posts. Please use MODIFY option in future - FadeMind

[ron]

have a look at this

https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=5530.msg48841#msg48841

[Hadi]

Sorry   . It was not  filezilla   but   clonezilla  !!!

Hi, Clonezilla sounds not bad but it sounds too complex for what I want to do.
From my understanding it wants me to create a live image which I don't want to do
I read it about it a little but I still don't understand how it works.

have a look at this

https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=5530.msg48841#msg48841

Hi Ron.
Is there any particular program you recommend from those? or I just have to try and install them one by one and test them out.

[Hadi]

I managed to  build 'backintime' since it wouldn't be installed by yaourt.

What folders and files should I take back up? backintime wants me to give folders to it for backing up.
I know /home is one of them, but what about  the applications and configurations?
Thanks

[aaditya]

Hi Hadi,

rsync is what I use to backup my system. I find it quite flexible, and you can backup just your home folder or your entire system (root directory).

Here is a link on how to make full system backup using rsync:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Full_System_Backup_with_rsync

A graphical front-end for rsync called gadmin-rsync can also be found in the AUR:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gadmin-rsync/

Btw the pacman cache directory is at /var/cache/pacman/pkg
A link about making list of installed packages:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Tips#Backing_up_and_retrieving_a_list_of_installed_packages

Some other threads related to backup:
System Backup with two OS installed?
[How-To] Automatically backup your system
Backup/Restore - transfer your Manjaro installation to another machine

[Hadi]

Hi aaditya

Thanks for that, I'm looking to gadmin-rsync right now, sounds a great GUI for rsync, I will use it.
I just have some newbie questions that it'll be cool if I could figure the answers.

1: So After let's say, I reinstalled my system, I just need to  restore all the directories and files as  the root?
 will it restore my OS to the back up state? or I need to do something after that.

2: I want to back up only the needed directories and not  the entire / directory if possible. depending on my first post, What directories should I grab?
I believe if I  grab the entire / directory and move all of them into my new system it will break my operating system as some system configurations  are different from the old one.
For example in archlinux wiki it says that I should not replace my old fstab with the new one.

3: regarding the installed packages. The arch wiki page sent my head spinning, so I've searched through manjaro forums and  on this topic, https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=10274.15, donutello suggested these commands:
pacman -Qqne > /home/$USER/pkg.list  (for grabbing a list of installed apps)
To restore,
pacman -S --needed $(< /home/$USER/pkg.list)
This means that  I need to install aur packages manually and I cannot back them up, right?
I love BtSync, and I like to have it at all of my new operating system installs,  unfortunetly it's on aur and not on manjaro repos.

Thanks!
My English is not great, if something needs more explaining please let me know

Cheers
Hadi

[aaditya]

Hi aaditya

Thanks for that, I'm looking to gadmin-rsync right now, sounds a great GUI for rsync, I will use it.
I just have some newbie questions that it'll be cool if I could figure the answers.

1: So After let's say, I reinstalled my system, I just need to  restore all the directories and files as  the root?
 will it restore my OS to the back up state? or I need to do something after that.

2: I want to back up only the needed directories and not  the entire / directory if possible. depending on my first post, What directories should I grab?
I believe if I  grab the entire / directory and move all of them into my new system it will break my operating system as some system configurations  are different from the old one.
For example in archlinux wiki it says that I should not replace my old fstab with the new one.

3: regarding the installed packages. The arch wiki page sent my head spinning, so I've searched through manjaro forums and  on this topic, https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=10274.15, donutello suggested these commands:
pacman -Qqne > /home/$USER/pkg.list  (for grabbing a list of installed apps)
To restore,
pacman -S --needed $(< /home/$USER/pkg.list)
This means that  I need to install aur packages manually and I cannot back them up, right?
I love BtSync, and I like to have it at all of my new operating system installs,  unfortunetly it's on aur and not on manjaro repos.

Thanks!
My English is not great, if something needs more explaining please let me know

Cheers
Hadi

1) Technically speaking, you may not need to reinstall
You could just format the partition, and use rsysnc to move the files back (from another distro or a live cd, link for restoring from rsync backup is mentioned in the backing_system_with_rsync article I mentioned earlier).

If you are just doing backup of the home directory, you could just restore the home folder (again from a different distro or live cd).

2) I think you can backup the whole system barring some directories, which are mentioned in the rsync backup article.

An alternative way would be to only backup the pacman cache directory (if you are only interested in packages but not in system configuration), and doing sudo pacman -U /pacman-cache-backup-directory/*.tar.xz

3) It took me some time too (months) to learn how this stuff works
You can view a list of the AUR (foreign) packages with

Code: [Select]

pacman -Qqme
I checked btsync, seems to be popular with 218 votes on the AUR. Maybe you can contact Rob (core team), and ask if him whether btsync could be included in the repos.

[Hadi]

aaditya thanks for your great post.
I will just make a back up of /home /etc /var /root and /opt for now, If I get the time I will reinstall my system and replace these directories and see what happens.
Your other solution to format the partition and move all the files in also sounds great, but it's not accessible to me since I'm blind and I depend on speech feedback software.

I will contact Rob and ask him that if it's possible to have btsync and btsync-autoconfig in the repos.  bittorrent sync is just the best  awesome program for sharing between your devices.

[Kiyoshi]

If you want to backup your Firefox and all its settings, you can simply make a Firefox account and use the built-in "sync" option, which will sync all your tabs, bookmarks, add-on's, settings, etc to any other computer that you log into Firefox with.

Also you can export your Firefox bookmarks to a file, then upload that file to mediafire, dropbox, or other services.

A similar thing can be done with Thunderbird(I think) but don't quote me on that, i'm currently using sylpheed so I wouldn't know 100%.

[Stefano Franzato]

Hello Everybody,
 I'm new with Manjaro Linux and I usually rely on Ubuntu. I found and installed Manjaro Linux almost by chance. I found it great and I would like to substitute my modded Xubuntu just with Manizro but...
 A piece of software allowing the user to backup his system and make a bootable ans well as installable ISO out of it, graphically and eaasily is just what Majaro lacks. How did I manage to mod my Xubuntu?
 By using Systemback (see: http://sourceforge.net/projects/systemback/). It just does what Hadi asked for.
 Please, have a look at http://www.unixmen.com/systemback-restore-linux-system-previous-state/ too.
To realize my "personal distribution" so to speak, I:
installed and unistalled the programs I wanted (and unwanted);
 then I used systemback to make a snapshot of the system and later, always using systemback, I made a bootable iso out of it. I burned this ISO on a DVD-RW
Now, if or when I want to re-install my Xubuntu "personal distribution" I hahe nothing else to do but to start miy DVD and than load Suystembak and tell it to install the system and write a new name and password etc. It takes more orless  (less) 20 minutes for the operation.
 There is even no need to include in the distro "Ubiquity" i.e. Ubuntu or Linux Mint graphical installer program.
I wonder whether the skilled manjaro developers would soon like to port Systemback to Manjaro distro: it would really be great and necessary IMHO. It shouldn't be so difficult to them; after all, Systemback is a collection of .deb files and many programs working in Manjaro come from original .deb files.
Could we ask them for a port of Systemback for Manjaro?
 I hope so

Kind regards

Stefano

P.s. As for Firefox profiles, bookmarks password bacvkups install Firefox add-on FEBE. It works perfectly. Ciao!

[bfa1509]

+1 on the clonezilla idea. I found it daunting at first but the step by step guides on the website are very easy to follow:

http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image

I have a dedicated pen drive for clonezilla. The first time I used it my old hard drive was giving up so I just cloned it onto a new one. The second time I used it I ran out of space so I cloned everything to a bigger hard drive. Its very handy.
Every year or so I use it to save an image onto an external hard drive just in case a tree falls on the house or something!

[AJSlye]

Mint Backup:
yaourt -S mintbackup

[dicktater]

aaditya thanks for your great post.
I will just make a back up of /home /etc /var /root and /opt for now, If I get the time I will reinstall my system and replace these directories and see what happens.
Your other solution to format the partition and move all the files in also sounds great, but it's not accessible to me since I'm blind and I depend on speech feedback software.

I will contact Rob and ask him that if it's possible to have btsync and btsync-autoconfig in the repos.  bittorrent sync is just the best  awesome program for sharing between your devices.

Hadi,
In looking for new additions to this thread, I discovered in reading your post on July 10th that you are blind. Are you using Sonar Linux, the distribution focused on assistive technology? If so, we would be interested in hearing how Sonar is working for you because there is now Sonar Linux 2014.1 Beta1, a new Manjaro Linux based distribution. If you didn't know about Sonar Linux 2014.1 Beta1, I hope its development is exciting news.
For those who may be unaware,
Sonar Linux includes:

• a screen reader for blind and low vision people called Orca.
• a magnification program to help magnify the screen for low vision people.
• an on-screen keyboard for people who have low motor skills and have difficulty using a keyboard. (The on-screen keyboard can be used with a mouse or trackball to navigate the keyboard on the screen.
• a font for people with dyslexia.

Sonar Linux  is focused on being the most accessible operating system available using Free assistive technology.
Sonar Linux 2014.1 Beta1 is online now!
http://manjaro.org/2014/06/29/sonar-linux-2014-1-beta1-is-online-now/
If you ever wanted greater involvement with the operating system and assistive technology you currently use, Sonar is for you. Join the mailing list and get involved. You can ask for feature request and also help to make Sonar better. Sonar is sponsored by the Accessible Computing Foundation. Come and join the community and take back control of your computing and assistive technology.
http://sonargnulinux.com/

[MadmanRB]

Get an external HDD and use and install deja-dup