Best total system AND files backup? [Solved]

[asqwerth]

In theory? Yes. You can archive an MX system with MX Snapshot, come back to that snapshot a year later, and pick it up again. In practice, I just booted a copy of mx-23.2_sysVinit-only-respin_x64.iso, released in January 2024. It immediately recognized 236 new updates, weighing in at about 462 MB of data that would need to be re-downloaded if I were to install a new machine with it.

MX-23.3_sysvinit_only_x64.iso was released only about a day or two ago and contains most or all of these updates. It's only been about five months between these two ISOs. A year of updates isn't exactly something to sniff at, especially if you plan on installing your snapshot to multiple machines. I like making a fresh up-to-date snapshot, for installing or just as a rescue live session, every 6-to-8 weeks or so.

Like I said in my post above, compared to Arch updates, Debian Stable updates are really minimal.

Every 2 weeks I update an Arch-based distro (I rotate their update days). In 2 weeks, the updates can be as large as 1 to 2GB.

But I agree that if the snapshot is going to be used on multiple machines, it's best to make more frequent snapshots. Also, if you have a monthly cap on downloadable data, then you shouldn't let updates accumulate.

On my side, I make my Gparted partition copies every 2-3 months.

[Eadwine Rose]

Interesting, how do you do that? The partition copies.

I guess I missed something in gparted?

[asqwerth]

Interesting, how do you do that? The partition copies.

I guess I missed something in gparted?

1. prepare your backup external drive so that it has partitions that are bigger than the ones you want to copy over (eg if your PC's MX21 partition is 40GB, I make a 45GB partition on the external drive for it). I use gpt partition tables and ext4 formatting (all my PC's partitions use ext4)
2. Connect your backup drive to PC
3. open Gparted on your machine, it will read all the partitions on all your connected drives (ie, devices), including the external drive.
4. click on a PC partition and press the "copy" button on the toolbar.
5. Navigate to the ext drive and click on the partition you want to paste your PC partition into. Press the "paste" button.

6. Check the warning and details in the popup and if correct, click to proceed.

7. That just sets up the task list. Now you can press the "Go" or "Apply" button for the copying and pasting to start.

It will take maybe 10 mins for each partition. [I do each partition one by one, I don't set up more than 1 task at a time.]

ADDED - all my partitions are labelled so I know which is which. The copy and paste process will copy over the labels as well.

[debianix]

Yes. You can archive an MX system with MX Snapshot, come back to that snapshot a year later, and pick it up again.

A year of updates isn't exactly something to sniff at, especially if you plan on installing your snapshot to multiple machines. I like making a fresh up-to-date snapshot, for installing or just as a rescue live session, every 6-to-8 weeks or so.

Alright, I absolutely can see why u prefer doing snapshots on a quite frequent basis.

But I would like to have a "basic snapshot", with nothing personal installed yet, that I can refer to whenever I want to install an MX system on a new machine, which already contains all my favorite basic programs and configurations of KDE etc., and where I then only have to add personal data, add Thunderbird profile folders and customize the specific preferences of each user without having to set everything up from scratch.

A snapshot would be sufficient for this, wouldn't it? To exaggerate: If I put a 1 or 2 year old MX snapshot from such a system into a brand new computer today, with enough time, patience and disk space for all the updates, then the end result would not differ significantly from an installation that I perform from a regularly kept fresh MX snapshot, would it?
I don't intend to go to such extremes, but I still want to be aware of the possibilities and limitations of this tool within my use case.

The thing is, when I created that "basic snapshot", then I move on to more specific program installations and settings that are different for different computers, users and scenarios, and which I prefer to set up anew and individually each time.
The basic snapshot should only represent my personal favorite basic configuration, so to speak. Whether the updates take 10 minutes or 6 hours after installation is less important to me as long as everything works correctly in the end.

If this is impossible in this way, I would consider buying an inexpensive extra computer on which I only have the basic installation / basic configuration installed, but which I don't use otherwise and only carry out updates once a month. If I then need my "basic snapshot" that I described above, be it for distribution or reinstallation or whatever, I could create an up-to-date snapshot directly from this dedicated computer and that's it?

[asqwerth]

That's how mx monthly iso snapshots are done. Run an installation of mx in VM or another machine /partition, update monthly, then generate a new iso with mx-snapshot.

Many ways to use the snapshot tool.

[debianix]

That's how mx monthly iso snapshots are done. Run an installation of mx in VM or another machine /partition, update monthly, then generate a new iso with mx-snapshot.

wow! your solution is so simple, so obvious and yet, for me, so endlessly ingenious. Because I tend to overcomplicate things, I often don't see the most obvious solutions. Since I've only used VM's to test other distros so far, I didn't even think of this idea. One more reason to install VirtualBox as soon as possible

[Eadwine Rose]

1. prepare your backup external drive so that it has partitions that are bigger than the ones you want to copy over (eg if your PC's MX21 partition is 40GB, I make a 45GB partition on the external drive for it). I use gpt partition tables and ext4 formatting (all my PC's partitions use ext4)
2. Connect your backup drive to PC
3. open Gparted on your machine, it will read all the partitions on all your connected drives (ie, devices), including the external drive.
4. click on a PC partition and press the "copy" button on the toolbar.
5. Navigate to the ext drive and click on the partition you want to paste your PC partition into. Press the "paste" button.

6. Check the warning and details in the popup and if correct, click to proceed.

7. That just sets up the task list. Now you can press the "Go" or "Apply" button for the copying and pasting to start.

It will take maybe 10 mins for each partition. [I do each partition one by one, I don't set up more than 1 task at a time.]

ADDED - all my partitions are labelled so I know which is which. The copy and paste process will copy over the labels as well.

Ohhhh is THAT what that copy button is for. Nifty! Thanks for explaining

[Duliwi]

Best total system AND files backup?

I have never used it, but it sounds very interesting:
https://kopia.io/

[davidy]

"MX-23.3_sysvinit_only_x64.iso was released only about a day or two ago..."
Do I have to install clean to run it over 23.3 regular? And more importantly where is the download? Sourceforge is no help.

[DukeComposed]

"MX-23.3_sysvinit_only_x64.iso was released only about a day or two ago..."
Do I have to install clean to run it over 23.3 regular? And more importantly where is the download? Sourceforge is no help.

Links are in the first post in the dolphin_oracle's respins thread. Given the amount of work needed to make a sysvinit-only respin, I have to imagine a clean install is de rigueur. Keep in mind it's not officially supported and should be considered for entertainment purposes only. That being said, I've been running the sysvinit-only respin since December on a daily driver without issue.