Migrating from laptop to USB stick, and installing over the laptop "instance". [Solved]

[bradhamilton]

My apologies in advance if this has been posted anywhere else - if so, please point me to the thread - thanks!

This is not really a "help" question - I want to know if this has been done before/can it be done?

I have a live USB stick with the most up-to-date Fluxbox (23.5) with "persist-all" - I have been slowly customizing to my needs software-wise. My current laptop environment is MX-23.6 KDE. My question is - could I migrate all my laptop folders to the live USB stick (space is not an issue), and then install from the updated USB stick back on to my laptop?

Has anyone tried this? Is it possible?? If so, what were/are the "gotchas"?

As I stated at the top of the post, if this has been discussed elsewhere, a pointer to the "proper" thread would be greatly appreciated, and I will follow up "there" as needed. Thanks again!

[DukeComposed]

My question is - could I migrate all my laptop folders to the live USB stick (space is not an issue), and then install from the updated USB stick back on to my laptop?

"Laptop folders" is pretty vague. You can back up your ~/Desktop directory, install MX, and copy Desktop back, if that's what you're asking. Somehow I'm guessing that's not what you're trying to ask.

[bradhamilton]

My question is - could I migrate all my laptop folders to the live USB stick (space is not an issue), and then install from the updated USB stick back on to my laptop?

"Laptop folders" is pretty vague. You can back up your ~/Desktop directory, install MX, and copy Desktop back, if that's what you're asking. Somehow I'm guessing that's not what you're trying to ask.

Thanks! The folders would be Home, Desktop, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos - bog-standard. Of course, I could always back up those folders to an external hard drive, install my current "live" system, and then restore the folders. It just seems overly-simple, which is why I was wondering if there are things I'm not taking into account. I'm a simple man, and sometimes I overlook what is obvious to others.

I gather by your response that it might be "do-able". I'm thinking that one of the intermediate steps that needs to happen, is to use "User Installed Packages" to make a list of software (and then restore those packages after the installation).

[CharlesV]

I run several systems like this - usb live with persistence and then a partition on the USB that is the "Data" part of my install. I remove my "home" folders, (Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Video, Music) and place ALL of that in my "Data" folder and then links back to my home folder.

I actually run my rigs like this too, but they are regular installs. This allows me to have all real data on a totally different partition, and I leave the 'stuff that installs and configs' alone, so it IS in my regular home.

I think this what your asking about - and this IS how I setup my "USB Loads", complete with login password etc. It has worked VERY well for me - the only thing that might be different is that for my main USB installs ... it is just that a REAL install.

[DukeComposed]

I gather by your response that it might be "do-able". I'm thinking that one of the intermediate steps that needs to happen, is to use "User Installed Packages" to make a list of software (and then restore those packages after the installation).

You can preserve your home partition at install time if you have one, but there's a big difference between "keeping some directories" and what you're implying about retaining packages.

If you have a USB drive with MX on it, you can probably install it to your laptop. You can probably keep the data you have on the laptop in /home. But now you've moved the goal posts and are talking about User Installed Packages. OK. What about them?

Do you want to duplicate your USB configuration or not?

[bradhamilton]

Thanks, guys for the feedback - it helped me to solidify a strategy going forward - clone the drive on my laptop to an external drive (fail-safe), make a list of installed packages, backup my folders to a different external drive, boot from MX live USB, install to my laptop, copy the folders from the external drive, and finally, re-install from the list of installed packages.

I'll mark this as "solved", and thanks again!