recommendations for backups / cloning / redistribution

70 respuestas [Último envío]
OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

OK I'm looking into this and would like recommendations about what actually works.

I'd prefer well designed GUI tools, but I'll use the terminal in preference to a bad GUI.

Things I need to do:

* Make bootable usb sticks from an iso -frenetbootin seems to have this covered though I haven't tried it yet. The persistence function says ubuntu only, what counts as ubuntu for this purpose? trisquel is mostly downsteam so will work? what about a debian live usb?

* regular automatic backups of my files - deja dup has been recommended - seems like a copy of time machine and easy to use, assuming it works. Please share any issues.

now it gets a bit harder:

* copy an entire tweaked and working system from one drive or one computer, to another, in a bootable form, in as few steps as possible. Would rather not have to partition format, install grub etc manually every time.

* remix a system to make a live CD installer. remastersys seems like it is designed for this, and I found this fork which still seems to be alive. https://github.com/mutse/remastersys however it complains about lightdm not being installed. is there a compatibilty issue with trisquel? are there better ways to achieve the task?

thanks!

moxalt
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/19/2015

I really have no clue about anything else, but as to your first point, Trisquel
and Debian ISOs are already in a hybrid format. They can be written to both
optical drives and flash drives. For writing hybrid or USB ISOs to disks,
there's an insanely simple command-line solution: dd (aka Disk Destroyer).
Syntax:

dd if= of= bs=

So to write a USB-friendly ISO named example.iso to /dev/sdc with 512 KB blocks:

dd if=example.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=512k

Learn to love it.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

yes i was using dd on osx to create my first GNU/Linux installs.

like all command line tools it slows me down because I have to look up the syntax each time i use it. If my vocation was administering computers this wouldn't be a problem, but computers are just a tool i want to spend as little time on maintaining as possible and my brain is already way too full of other things - so i'll use the command line and make myself a cheat sheet of commands for each task if I have to, but I'd prefer a GUI.

also dd doesn't allow the addition of a persistence partition. (though maybe it can be manually created afterwards?)

I also think if we want GNU/linux , and by extension free software, to be widely used for personal computing it is essential that the computer can be administered using mainly well designed gui tools.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gezakovacs/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unetbootin

nobody really needs to make linux boot discs for personal computing. Its usually made, one time, from a windows or mac machine to install gnu/linux. I suspect thats why ubuntu and fedora abandoned their projects.

I don't have an answer to your other questions either.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

"nobody really needs to make boot discs for personal computing"

speak for yourself. i find on any os, given the propensity of software to break, being able to do a clean install of a known good system pretweaked by me, is pretty important.

on osx i use superduper, and i couldn't have coped without it or something like it.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

buy a little 3 dollar 4gb usb and dedicate it for your trisquel install disc.

If your o/s breaks, how are you going to use it to make the bootable disc in the first place. Burn it once and keep it in a safe place is what most people do.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

that's exactly what I want to do, but I want that installer on the usb stick to be pre-tweaked by me to be working for my needs, it make the difference between installing on a new machine or restoring a broken system taking an hour or taking a day or more.

pre-tweaked for my needs is a criteria that changes from time to time with changing needs or software updates so i would anticipate redoing it maybe 3 times a year, and that's not counting trying out other systems.

not entirely relevant- but once i get a system i like, i'll be using it on multiple machines, any of which can be used to rescue one that has broken.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

well thats very advanced, is that what you do with windows or your mac? I don't know how to do that man, I'm sorry.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

yes that's what I do on my mac, as best I can. apple don't make it as easy as they should.

i have never used windows more than casually.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

Ya I guess your right, you can create an updated bootable install iso from within windows too now that I think about it. But I don't think it auto installs anything apart from core software and default settings. I wouldn't know how to do this on linux.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015
OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

yeah, thanks, but that's the sort of thing i'm trying to avoid, i want to clone a currently working system that has been tweaked and tested while running rather than customise an install disk, which could too easily result in a system that doesn't work right.

moxalt
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/19/2015

Couldn't you make an ISO out of your current installed disk, put that on a USB
(not burn it to the USB, just store it on the USB) and then boot with a live
distribution from one USB port, stick the USB storing the ISO in the other
port, and then dd the ISO from the other USB to the disk. Just a thought.

You'd need two USBs, and two USB ports. The live distro doesn't need to be
fancy, as long as it comes with at least text mode. It'd be a lot simpler than
trying to set all this up on one USB.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

that seems like a good start, and similar to what clonezilla does - If i understand correctly. How would you make the initial iso of the installed system?

moxalt
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/19/2015

The beauty of UNIX is that you can just dd from a drive to a file, and you've
just made yourself an ISO. Say the drive I wanted to clone was /dev/sda, and
the drive I wanted to put the file on was /media/usb2. Simply boot with one
drive, and then:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/usb2/example.iso

This should work, as long as the USB has enough space and a usable filesystem.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

i have freenetbootin now (from help on other thread) and assuming it works then that's sorted.

it is my latter two questions I am mostly wanting answers to, unless I find problems with the first two when i try them out properly.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

I don't know what freenetbootin is. Do you mean unetbootin? It should work give it a try.

And I don't have an answer to your other questions. I'm just a normal avg user.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

freenetbootin is a fork of unetbootin that removes the option to install non-free oses over the net, although you can still do so from an iso i guess. made by someone on this forum, who gave me instructions on compiling it on one of my other threads.

i'll try it tomorrow, as i should be practising for rehearsal tonight right now...

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

interesting. did he add trisquel to the list?

I've always downloaded iso's separately and never downloaded anything with usb creators, even in fedora. I've always found them outdated and made me feel leery to begin with.

tomlukeywood
Desconectado/a
se unió: 12/05/2014

"interesting. did he add trisquel to the list?
yes
you can find the code here:
https://notabug.org/tomlukeywood/FreeNetBootin

btw if your worried about the trisquel iso being out of date
heres the exact url were its downloaded from:

trisquel 32-bit:
http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel-images/trisquel_7.0_i686.iso
trisquel 64-bit:
http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel-images/trisquel_7.0_amd64.iso

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

cool tks. it checks the signature and everything?

I only said that because the linux usb creator, i believe the same as the fedora usb creator always listed an old version. I think they have been abandoned.

tomlukeywood
Desconectado/a
se unió: 12/05/2014

thats a good point i should add signature checking

i will try now

moxalt
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/19/2015

When are they going to get round to adding LibertyBSD to the FSF-endorsed
distros? It should have the honour of being the first FSF-approved BSD.

moxalt
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/19/2015

> it slows me down because I have to look up the syntax each time i use it.

Is the syntax really that hard to remember? I mean- dd, if, of, bs. That's it.
I haven't even used dd for months and I still know it off by heart. My vocation
isn't administering computers either, and it really isn't that much of an
inconvenience.

> I'd prefer a GUI.

Again, I can understand someone wanting a GUI for, say, word processing, where
you actually need one, or for some process that would otherwise be really
complicated, but this is such a simple task, I would much rather just do it
with a command-line tool- and a simple one like dd at that.

I find it much easier to just flip open a terminal and dd than have to hunt
through menus filled with superfluous options in some GUI. I feel far secure
and in control in the terminal.

> doesn't allow the addition of a persistence partition

I believe you could do that afterwards, and/or some ISOs come with that already
set up. dd follows the UNIX philosophy- it is designed to do one thing, and do
that one thing well.

> free software, to be widely used for personal computing it is essential that
> the computer can be administered using mainly well designed gui tools

Fair enough. Well designed GUI tools can speed things up and be convenient-
like the GNOME control centre, which is a great piece of software. On the other
hand, GUIs can be cumbersome and get in the way- and I'd much rather have a
good old UNIX command line than a badly-designed GUI.

GUIs are good- but it's important not to perpetuate the culture of stupidity
that companies like Apple and Microsoft do. By distancing people from the
underlying processes of their computing, by breeding ignorance of computing and
trying to make things trendy, they prevent any real questioning of the system
they are sat down in front of.

This guy has a point here:
https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/winstupid/1 and here:
https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/userfriendly/1

When people refer to user-friendliness, they don't actually mean it. Accepting
the non-pejorative meaning of stupid, they don't mean 'user friendly' (easy to
use), they mean 'stupid-user friendly' (easy to use without learning).

We were promised a microcomputer revolution, a world where everyone could code-
or, realistically, at least have some sort of basic technical proficiency.
Alas. Thanks to the software business, we have far more computer useds and far
fewer computer users.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

fundamentally, we sort of agree, but are coming from very different angles.

bad GUIs are certainly worse than no GUIs.

It isn't just remembering dd, it is in general each terminal task requires me to remember a few different commands, I have to remember them precisely, not just roughly, whereas with menu i just need to know the option i want is there and i can find it again without having to remember exact positions of spaces hyphens etc.

Also in terminal you have to type precisely, which is not my strong point, and text editing is minimal, in most terminals only backspace seems to work, i can't correct like in a normal text editor, furthermore if I have assembled a long command, i can't copy and paste using ctrl-c ctrl-v but have to use the menu items for copy and paste - what is that about??)

I imagine you have better typing and more precise memory than I do.

most fundamentally though in terminal you have to know in advance exactly what you want to do and the commands to do it (or try to understand man pages which already assume considerable knowledge) but looking around a well designed gui I can see what options are on offer and learn about the system.

I think it is critical to distinguish between stupid users and ignorant users, a system should be usable and explorable by an intelligent but ignorant user, it should teach the user how to use it, which a good gui does and the terminal emphatically does not.

There's not a lot we can do about genuine stupidity, but even those people should be helped as genuinely stupid people usually can't help it.

I think what both of us probably object to most is users who behave stupidly even though they are not fundamentally unintelligent, through laziness, identity issues (they identify as a technophobe perhaps) or weird social normatives that I don't understand. Those people do need to improve, yes.

While you wouldn't know it to look at apples default settings now, in the 80s and 90s their systems really did work for people who wanted to understand the system sensibly but not interact with it on an intimate level. Basically intelligent people who understood what a computer is and what it is and isn't capable of, but wanted to use it to get on with work unrelated to computing with minimal fuss, this is why mac became the default platform for musicians, visual artists, many scientists etc - these people are feeling very betrayed by apple now. Despite not requiring the user to know all the details from the outset, when you looked the system was fairly transparent - In the 90s I could look through folders in the finder and get a pretty good idea what every (system) file on my mac was for , I certainly can't do that on GNU/linux. In short (to use the concepts from one of those links you posted) the system was learnable, now they are trying to make it easy to use without learning and have broken it in the process.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

this seems like a good place to mention an idea I had for learnability in GNU/linux, and indeed any OS.

By default every folder that is part of the system structure should contain a text file that explains why the folder is there, why it is in that place in the tree, what sort of files it contains, and what they do and why they are needed.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010
OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

thanks that is really helpful, should be prominently linked to in every install!

i suspect from a quick scan that it is not well adhered too though, which probably explains some of my confusion. I think less than half of applications I have installed have ended up in /opt for example.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

looking again, i have exactly one application in /opt (the music player deadbeef)

seems to me from the spec that all apps that are independent of the system itself should be in there. have I misunderstood the spec or is it just not adhered to at all?

so there must be some other convention, I have at least a dozen other apps that by my reading should be in /opt, but are not, where are they?

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

I misunderstood the spec or is it just not adhered to at all?

It just not adhered to. I would not say "at all" though.

I have just discovered a new version of that standard was released 47 days ago: http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs.shtml

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

thanks! if i ever make a distro I'm going to add text files of each section of that spec in the folders referred to... and the full document at /

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

any suggestions for enforcing it on my own system? when using a repo or even a .deb file it decides for you where to put the application...

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

If you start to mess with the system files, you will enter great troubles. Making a coherent ensemble is the purpose of a distribution.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

but a user application is not really a system file, and the makers of the installer that put the app somewhere other than /opt have already "messed with" the "correct" way of doing things...

there's no point in having a spec, and me spending time trying to understand the system if it is not adhered to.

but yes I certainly wouldn't change system files i don't understand. My point is that files being somewhere unexpected degrades the learnability of the system and perpetuates my not understanding it.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

but a user application is not really a system file

They are not user files.

There are dependencies between the applications installed on your system, between the applications and the libraries, between the applications and the data files, etc. If you start to move those files, you will definitely get into troubles. Some applications will stop working because they will not find some necessary files anymore. And the package manager will put the updated files where the distribution decided to put them whenever there an update is available.

the makers of the installer that put the app somewhere other than /opt have already "messed with" the "correct" way of doing things.

According to http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch03s13.html#purpose14 , "/opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages". Applications usually are in /usr.

I believe packagers (especially Debian and Ubuntu packagers, whose work is reviewed) must have a good reason to sometimes not respect the FHS.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

It isn't just remembering dd, it is in general each terminal task requires me to remember a few different commands, I have to remember them precisely, not just roughly, whereas with menu i just need to know the option i want is there and i can find it again without having to remember exact positions of spaces hyphens etc.

You only really need to remember the 'man' command that brings up the manual for most commands. E.g., 'man dd'. 'info' describes in more details the GNU commands (such as 'dd'). E.g., 'info dd'. The bottom of their 'man' page reminds you of using 'info' for a more complete manual. The 'apropos' command search in the description of the commands (useful if you do not their names) but it actually is an alias to 'man -k' (an option you could find described in 'man man'). You need to know how to search in a manual page (with /). In fact, 'man' shows pages using the 'less' command. You can read a lot about it in 'man less'.

I use the terminal on a daily basis. Yet, I cannot remember the options for all commands I need. I need the manuals!

Also in terminal you have to type precisely, which is not my strong point

In the terminal, every second key you press is the tabulation to try to auto-complete the command name, the file name, etc. If it does not auto-complete after you typed a prefix you are pretty sure is unique (you can press the tabulation twice to check), then you know you made a typo. Thanks to the auto-completion, using a terminal usually is much faster than using GUIs.

text editing is minimal, in most terminals only backspace seems to work, i can't correct like in a normal text editor

Is Emacs normal? :-)

The terminal uses Emacs shortcuts by default (but you can configure a terminal to use vi shortcuts). You can move the cursor character by character (C-b and C-f), or word by word (M-b and M-f), move it to the beginning (C-a) or to the end (C-e), delete one character (C-d and backspace), swap characters (C-t) or words (M-t), cut one word (M-d and M-backspace), cut everything after the cursor (C-k), paste (C-y), search the history (C-r), etc.

Those shortcuts were invented before the Microsoft ones (they come from the 70s, at least).

furthermore if I have assembled a long command, i can't copy and paste using ctrl-c ctrl-v but have to use the menu items for copy and paste - what is that about??

From within the terminal, you can use the shortcuts I listed above (by the way, "C" means "Ctrl" and "M" usually is the "Alt" key). To copy/paste from/to a virtual terminal to/from another application, you can use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

again an essential guide, and explanation of the culture clash that occurs when asking mouse users to realign to a pre-mouse set of shortcuts. I had actually found one or two of those, but had forgotten, which is part of my point.

It is a pretty significant set of skills to learn to do fast. It may be worth it, but it is not explorable - you have to know / have a guide.

I have often found that I don't have the background to understand the man page sufficiently to actually use them. The moment i have to read a manual it is definitely slower than using a GUI. It would have to be a terrible gui for reading a man page and typing to be quicker.

I think there's a real vicious cycle of the system is full of bad guis so developers have contempt for guis and don't use them, and don't think about what is required, so when forced to write one they write another bad gui.

I've written a few little programs, and I know that good guis are hard - it is at least 75% of the work of writing a gui app, and requires design skills that are entirely separate skill set from coding. So I totally understand why people don't do it , or don't do it well. It doesn't help that the culture of forking stuff all over the place results in loads of essentially half finished versions of things being used. If that effort could be consolidated a much better result could be achieved. Which brings us back to the basic politic of anarchy and the difficulty of getting people working together without coercion, especially in a coercive economic environment where most people need to be paid to be able to do a job properly. If you know of anyone working on models for commercial paid-for free software that respects the effort of both developers and users whilst also remaining free for anyone to modify it, I'd love to read more. I think the free as in beer is really getting in the way of the free as in freedom.

As usual I'm getting somewhat off my stated topic, which is what tools for cloning systems exist and work easily.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

I think you are pretending to be more noob then you really are. I hate asking this question, but I have to ask it now. What exactly are you trying to do?

Do all these computers you want to install trisquel on have the same exact hardware? Otherwise cloning is probably not your answer...

If you are just wanting to back up/copy of your computer, on the same hdd, which defeats the purpose imo. Use clonezilla with another partition?

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

I'm a total noob to Trisquel specifically, a relative noob to GNU/linux since I have dabbled in it intermittently a few times often years apart, never become adept, become frustrated, and then forgotten most of what I learned. This time I'm making the extra effort to break through that and learn what I need to to free myself from apple..

I am an experienced mac user and that has led me into using the terminal in osx sometimes in the (15!) years since the original mac os was replaced by the unix based osx. As apple have departed further and further from what I want in an os, i have been forced into the terminal and hacking at the system one way or another. Some of that experience, like using the terminal, is somewhat applicable to GNU/linux and some is not. Some is similar but treacherously different.

So yes you'll find that to an experienced GNU/linux user I am a weird mixture of ignorant and knowledgeable and of opinionated and open-minded, depending on quite specific areas of context.

Yes I am expecting to have to make modifications for different hardware, but those are small compared to the modifications which would be the same for all computers.

A distro install disk has to install on a wide variety of hardware, but has a fixed set of user software, that's what I'm aiming for basically. However, cloning is usually faster than running a installer. I haven't yet worked out the pros and cons of each.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

as to what i'm trying to do I thought it was clear from the second two starred points in first post on this thread.

or did you mean more generally?

more generally I am trying to move my complex and specific computing needs off apple to something free, or at least free-er.

I'm also working out how to understand and get involved with any projects that might make the future of computing look better than the train wreck it is today. I believe free software is an essential, though ideologically insufficient, part of that. I don't have the full answer, but that interest explains my tendency to digress, and my presence on this forum of presumable ideologues, rather than just looking about for the most fast practical short term answer. We don't make the world a better place by accepting what is already there uncritically, not even in free software.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

A distro install disk has to install on a wide variety of hardware, but has a fixed set of user software, that's what I'm aiming for basically.

You can export the list of packages installed on your system with the Synaptic package manager (since you like GUIs). Use the menu "File/Save Markings", check the box "Save full state, not only changes", choose the name for the file and a place for it on a removable device (e.g., a USB key). Plug that device in the computer with a freshly installed Trisquel (with the default configuration), launch Synaptic there, choose "File/Read Markings" and the file on the device. The applications will then be ready to be installed. Just click the "Apply" button.

To save some download, you can first copy /var/cache/apt from the first system to the second one.

For user data, you can just take them from the backup. Notice that you may only want to copy some of those data, e.g., only the personal configuration for the applications that are hidden files (i.e., files whose names start with a dot) right inside the home folder. Thanks to its integration with the GNOME file manager (Nautilus), Déjà-Dup makes that process easy: right click in the blank part of a folder displayed by the file manager and you will see an entry to restore files from a backup. You will probably get a message that the computer is different but I am pretty sure I have already done that (i.e., it is a warning and not an error).

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

thanks, this process with exporting the list of packages intriques me as it creates a guide to the state of the system without an actual clone.

however when using that guide to restore, it will presumably fail to restore packages for which it doesn't have a repo - ie anything compiled manually or installed from a deb file.

can synaptic actually create a local repo of packages installed on my system? (I'm being lazy asking i'm sure i can look that up)

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

when using that guide to restore, it will presumably fail to restore packages for which it doesn't have a repo - ie anything compiled manually or installed from a deb file.

Indeed. It will only install what is available in the Trisquel repository plus additional repositories, such as PPAs, that you could have added and need to add as well on the new system (you can just copy the whole /etc/apt directory).

can synaptic actually create a local repo of packages installed on my system?

The packages you install are in /var/cache/apt/archives. That is why I told you you can copy /var/cache/apt/ to avoid some download. It is also interesting to notice that you can remove those packages to save space. 'sudo apt-get clean' does that and 'sudo apt-get autoclean' only removes the .deb packages that are not at the latest version. There certainly are buttons in Synaptic to do the same things.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

thanks, that archive is good to know about.

I understand about usr/bin now, when the spec says commands, translated/updated to any time in the last 20 years, that means applications, not just terminal commands.

this is a VERY different system structure paradigm from what I am used to, and I'm having trouble perceiving any benefits so far, but I will keep learning and thinking about it.

Magic Banana

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/24/2010

I'm having trouble perceiving any benefits so far, but I will keep learning and thinking about it.

I think that much of it does not make much sense nowadays. The current FHS evolved from the file hierarchy of the UNIX systems from the 70s. Some distinctions only exist to have some kind of degraded mode, the single user mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_user_mode

Some users see some advantages when it comes to partition the disk and choose the filesystems according to the files on that partition (need for a journal, performance consideration w.r.t. the size of the files, etc.).

A files hierarchy à la Mac OS X would probably be better nowadays. GoboLinux (a GNU/Linux distribution) experiments in this way: https://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/5/9/05015/62649

By the way, 'man hier' displays a basic documentation of the file hierarchy (the text file you wanted).

And here is how Debian (Trisquel derives from it through Ubuntu) deviates from the standard: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

hmm that Gobolinux looks very interesting indeed...

I haven't read it properly yet but:

"In short, what we have is a database-less package management system: the directory structure itself organizes the system (wasn't that its original purpose, after all?)"

YES!

No doubt actually trying to use it is difficult since its a niche project with few users... and presumably doesn't have the levels of support you can get for debian derivatives.

wow i have a LOT of homework...

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

"If you are just wanting to back up/copy of your computer, on the same hdd, which defeats the purpose imo. Use clonezilla with another partition?"

the destination of the clone / backup is immaterial if it is an iso that can be easily copied.

I would prefer to clone or create a distro installer from within the running system that is also the source for the clone.

However i think clonezilla will work, and i will try it along with the other tools people have kindly recommended once i get some other work done.

I was just hoping someone might know of a slightly more convenient option, analogous to superduper on osx. http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

i particularly like these features and wondered if there was a gnu/linux equivalent.

* clone the currently booted system

* make a read/write "smartbundle" disk image that can be mounted and read and modified like it was a disk, but also cloned back to the boot drive as a restore or to another computer to install a fully tweaked system in one step. that disk image can then be copied to whatever location is convenient or secure as a backup, where it is initially created doesn't matter.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

Superduper sounds like it is to backup your own system, similar to clonezilla, not to install on a bunch of other systems. I still don't believe I'm understanding what you are trying to do. Are you just wanting to backup your disk? Or install a similar setup on other computers? These two things are not the same. If you tried to use clonezilla or superduper to restore your operating system to a bunch of other systems with various hardware you will run into problems.

If you want to make a custom install disk, with specific packages to automatically install, you can do that. And imo this is the better option to install trisquel on a bunch of other systems. As far as the repos go, its going to be a good idea to check for updates after the install anyways.

I would also recommend backing up to a remote medium. Backing it up on the same hdd defeats the purpose imo.

OSXrefugee
Desconectado/a
se unió: 07/18/2015

I use superduper for both tasks. backing up a system configuration and installing it on another machine. But not for regular backups of my own documents, I use time machine, like deja dup, for that, which is a much easier task. (or simply drag and drop them onto another drive for a one off backup)

superduper is not an exact block for block cloner like dd, it copies files with some knowledge of each file and there are no problems with mismatched source and destination size, as long as there is enough space on the destination for the files.

unless there's a GNU/linux twist i don't know about the two things are not nearly as different as you seem to think. AFAICT the only difference is device drivers and grub. even less of an issue on real macs where device drivers are all included and there is no grub. nevertheless the basic approach works even when running osx on generic hardware.

the twist is I want to make an install disk of my running installed system, so I know it is a working setup.

It's one of those things, i guess everyone has them, that seems really obvious and you think surely everyone must want that until you try to explain it and people think you are mad...

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

Superduper's own descripition explains its for easy backup and recovery to restore your system with bootable media.

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't know how cloning one machine and restoring it to another machine with different hardware doesn't cause problems, even on gnu/linux.

You can make an install disk with to install the extra packages you want, and even make scripts for certain settings, but I don't know why you are against using the repos to install the packages. To save time? I dont' think its a big deal, and figure even if the clone is about a week old you would need to update some software anyways.

cooloutac
Desconectado/a
se unió: 06/27/2015

maybe something like this would be appropriate for you

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization

instead of https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization

I think its more common for people to compile their own kernel then do either of these, lol, but I can't find any other option that relates to what you are asking.