MX Snapshot tool usage for migrating my system to a new laptop - snapshot or backup tool??

[fehlix]

The peculiar thing though is - on my old laptop the /root partition had 60 GB.

Now it wanted a minimum of 260 GB on the new laptop to install and wouldn't go below that.
Both systems have a 1TB ssd.
Did something go wrong there or does that make sense to you??

When running the installer from the booted LiveUSB made with the
personal snapshot-iso, you can set within the installer the size of root as you like.
That's just the same procedure as installing from the released ISO
or the official monthly snapshot ISO.
The difference with a personal snapshot you would not
being asked to create a user during install as
it would take the existing user from the snapshot.
At least that's the way the installer is currently setup.

Whether a 260 GB "/"-root partition makes sense or not, that's another matter,
as it really depends what else you want to put onto the "/"-root partition.
E:g you could assign within the installer a separate /home partition,
instead of having /home in the "/"-root partition, so in case
the big-data lives on the /home partition you have those on
a separate partition.

[monamtb]

Hello Fehlix,

When running the installer from the booted LiveUSB made with the
personal snapshot-iso, you can set within the installer the size of root as you like.

That is what I was referring to when I said I can't get the /root size lower that the 260GB because the installer slider wouldn't allow me and blocked me at 260GB.

I had a 60GB /root and a 930 GB home in the old laptop.

That is why I don't understand what is going on.

I thought the personal iso will copy the /root and /home as it was on the old laptop.

Or did I miss to modify any parameters while building the snapshot,???

[DukeComposed]

I had a 60GB /root and a 930 GB home in the old laptop.

That is why I don't understand what is going on.

I thought the personal iso will copy the /root and /home as it was on the old laptop.

You're mistaking a snapshot of files in a file system for a block level backup of one or more partitions. MX Snapshot wouldn't be very useful if it only made a duplicate of the machine on which is was run. It would never be able to install onto a larger hard disk. When you make a snapshot with MX Snapshot you're creating a customized copy of the file system as it existed on the machine where you ran MX Snapshot. And Linux, in general, really doesn't care about how your machine is partitioned as long as the important files are accessible when it needs them. So MX Snapshot doesn't bother remembering partition sizes.

If you want to duplicate the exact partition sizes onto a second disk without using a cloning utility designed to handle exactly that kind of thing, you can either do it by hand like how you set up the first machine or use a partitioning utility that can export and import configuration data. I believe sgdisk is good at this.

[fehlix]

Hello Fehlix,

When running the installer from the booted LiveUSB made with the
personal snapshot-iso, you can set within the installer the size of root as you like.

That is what I was referring to when I said I can't get the /root size lower that the 260GB because the installer slider wouldn't allow me and blocked me at 260GB.

I had a 60GB /root and a 930 GB home in the old laptop.

That is why I don't understand what is going on.

I thought the personal iso will copy the /root and /home as it was on the old laptop.

Or did I miss to modify any parameters while building the snapshot,???

Maybe, but we need some more data to understand what's going on.
Perhaps show the size usage with the generated snapshot iso.
e.g. this way:
Open terminal as normal user, within the same directory the snapshot.iso is located:
Now let's "mount" the iso this way:

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sudo isomount snapshot.iso

replace "snapshot.iso" with the iso-name used for your snapshot.iso.
The command will "open" the iso and mount the content at
two newly created directories under
/mnt/iso/iso1
and
/mnt/iso/sq1

We are only interested into the content of linuxfs mounted at /mnt/iso/sq1
Now we get the size used with:

Code: Select all

sudo du -h --max-depth=1 /mnt/iso/sq1/. | grep -v ^0

which looks in may personal snapshot example like this:

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sudo du -h --max-depth=1 /mnt/iso/sq1/. | grep -v ^0
236M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./boot
24M     /mnt/iso/sq1/./etc
327M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./home
609M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./opt
450K    /mnt/iso/sq1/./root
7.0G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./usr
703M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./var
8.9G    /mnt/iso/sq1/.

with last line as the total size used of the linux file system
at top/root dir "/" here mounted at /mnt/iso/sq1/.
Perhaps post the commands used and the output.

To unmount the iso and clear the mount points run:

Code: Select all

sudo isoumount all

[monamtb]

Hello Fehlix,

What I get when I follow your steps is this:

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monamtb@mxlinuxmona:~/Templates
$ sudo du -h --max-depth=1 /mnt/iso/sq1/. | grep -v ^0
433M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./boot
24M     /mnt/iso/sq1/./etc
195G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./home
1.6G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./opt
68M     /mnt/iso/sq1/./root
9.2G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./usr
411M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./var
207G    /mnt/iso/sq1/.

Am I correct that it seems that the snapshot iso put the /root and the /home directory in the new root directory???

If so, how can I avoid that when making a snapshot or when installing the personal iso???

[DukeComposed]

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195G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./home
207G    /mnt/iso/sq1/.

Am I correct that it seems that the snapshot iso put the /root and the /home directory in the new root directory???

If so, how can I avoid that when making a snapshot or when installing the personal iso???

I think you're not taking into consideration that directories are hierarchical: if you have a tree of files, say a, b, and b/c/d, then c will contain d, and its size will reflect that. b will contain c and d, and its size will reflect that. and / will contain everything and its size will reflect that. /mnt/iso/home has size x, so /mnt/iso will have size greater than x. The files all exist under one mount point.

File trees are not disk partitions, don't confuse the two. You don't make partition decisions with MX Snapshot. That's a choice you make at installation time.

[davidy]

You're going to have separate the majority of whatever you can off that disc in order to get the snapshot down to a working size or be forced to reinstall clean. Don't you have a secondary drive so that your "OS", the main bootable disc, isn't carrying the entire workload? An external USB-c nvme drive transfers between 150-450 MB/s and is a great choice for quickly moving stuff around. Also with such a large setup you should think about using partition schemes. It would be much more manageable and then you could use something like clonezilla to backup each partition separately. No matter what you need to get the actual bootable OS disc down to as small a size as you can period. Makes backups much quicker and if the drive fails completely you only lose the OS and not everything as seems to be in your case.
I'm pretty sure clonezilla will not clone a vm but it will clone your entire drive.

[DukeComposed]

I'm pretty sure clonezilla will not clone a vm but it will clone your entire drive.

Cloning a VM is probably best done through the specific virtualization platform on which it exists, and most if not all VM platforms support that functionality in one way or another. All clonezilla really does is make images from a system. If you can boot the clonezilla ISO on that VM, clonezilla can make an image of it, or apply an existing image to it, regardless of what that VM already contains.

[fehlix]

Hello Fehlix,

What I get when I follow your steps is this:

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monamtb@mxlinuxmona:~/Templates
$ sudo du -h --max-depth=1 /mnt/iso/sq1/. | grep -v ^0
433M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./boot
24M     /mnt/iso/sq1/./etc
195G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./home
1.6G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./opt
68M     /mnt/iso/sq1/./root
9.2G    /mnt/iso/sq1/./usr
411M    /mnt/iso/sq1/./var
207G    /mnt/iso/sq1/.

Am I correct that it seems that the snapshot iso put the /root and the /home directory in the new root directory???

If so, how can I avoid that when making a snapshot or when installing the personal iso???

Looks all good. Except of course I would personally not create a 200++ GB iso snapshot,
but rather exclude all data directory and backup data differently.

To "/root": Seems to me you got bit confused . The linux filesystem hierarchy has a top-directory "/",
underneath of the top-directory other sub-directories exist, where either files/directories exist within those sub-directories,
or some of those sub-directories are just empty directories, where other partition-filesystems get mounted on.
E.g if home lives on another partition, the "/home" directory is an empty mountpoint-directory,
where the filesystem of the home-partition get mounted on during boot-up.

The filesystem hierarchy is sometimes also represented as a tree (but upside-down)
The top-directory of the filesystem is sometimes called root-directory of the filesystem tree.
Now, within the top "/"-directory you have one special "/root" directory, which is just
the home directory of the system-user "root", this "/root" directory has nothing todo,
when we talk about "/"-top directory. Sometimes the top-directory is also referred to as "/"-root directory,
where "root" is now referring to the "root" of the tree, not to the home directory of the system user "root".
uff...
Now back to the issue, perhaps try again to install and move the "slider" to assign space for "/"-top and "/home".
If that does not work. Do post the log file of the installer to be found within the QSI-tool (also as /var/log/minstall.log)
It may well be you encountered a "bug", or something else.
Normally I do always prepare partitions manually, either before running the installer,
e.g. using Gparted or from within the installer itself.
Good luck.

[monamtb]

Hello Fehlix,

I manually partitioned the new laptop ssd with 78 GB / - and 920 GB /home.

I created a new snapshot with all /home files excluded

Upon install the installer now wants 390 GB for /root - and again won't install my /root directory into the / partition I want to use with the 78 GB / partition - even more than last time: with some /home data included it was 226 GB.

QSI gives me that output:

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[CODE]2024-09-16 23:38:38.355 DBG default: Installer version: 24.05.01mx23
2024-09-16 23:38:38.394 DBG default: << void MInstall::startup() >>
2024-09-16 23:38:38.394 DBG default: Detect EFI: 64
2024-09-16 23:38:38.395 DBG default: Exec #1: uname -m
2024-09-16 23:38:38.403 DBG default: Exit #1: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:38.403 DBG default: Detect arch: "x86_64"
2024-09-16 23:38:38.403 DBG default: Live boot: BOOT_IMAGE=/antiX/vmlinuz quiet splash lang=en_IE kbd=us tz=Europe/Berlin
2024-09-16 23:38:38.409 DBG default: Check MD5: /live/boot-dev/antiX/initrd.gz
2024-09-16 23:38:38.445 DBG default: Check MD5: /live/boot-dev/antiX/vmlinuz
2024-09-16 23:38:38.471 DBG default: Check MD5: /live/boot-dev/antiX/linuxfs
2024-09-16 23:38:45.744 DBG default: -- Check halted --
2024-09-16 23:38:45.750 DBG default: Exec #2: du -scb /live/aufs/boot
2024-09-16 23:38:45.796 DBG default: Exit #2: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:45.797 DBG default: Basic image: 389831884800 true "/live/boot-dev/antiX/linuxfs.info"
2024-09-16 23:38:45.797 DBG default: Source inodes: 760992 Assumed block size: 4096
2024-09-16 23:38:45.797 DBG default: Minimum space: 540548339 (boot), 392948908032 (root)
2024-09-16 23:38:45.825 DBG default: Exec #3: find -L /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix -mindepth 2 -type f -printf %P\n
2024-09-16 23:38:45.840 DBG default: Exit #3: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:45.840 DBG default: Bash #4: guess-hwclock
2024-09-16 23:38:47.009 DBG default: Exit #4: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:47.010 DBG default: Bash #5: locale -a | grep -Ev '^(C|POSIX)\.?' | grep -E 'utf8|UTF-8'
2024-09-16 23:38:47.021 DBG default: Exit #5: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:47.022 DBG default: Bash #6: ls -1 /home | grep -Ev '^(lost\+found|demo|snapshot)$' | grep -q '[a-zA-Z0-9]'
2024-09-16 23:38:47.030 DBG default: Exit #6: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:47.030 DBG default: check for possible snapshot: true
2024-09-16 23:38:47.031 DBG default: Bash #7: dpkg -s samba | grep '^Status.*ok.*' | sed -e 's/.*ok //'
2024-09-16 23:38:47.058 DBG default: Exit #7: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:47.061 DBG default: Exec #8: lsblk -T -bJo TYPE,NAME,PATH,UUID,ROTA,DISC-GRAN,SIZE,PHY-SEC,PTTYPE,PARTTYPENAME,FSTYPE,FSVER,LABEL,MODEL,PARTFLAGS
2024-09-16 23:38:47.082 DBG default: Exit #8: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:47.082 DBG default: Exec #9: parted -lm
2024-09-16 23:38:47.132 DBG default: Exit #9: 0
2024-09-16 23:38:47.132 DBG default: Bash #10: lsblk -T -bJo TYPE,NAME,PATH,UUID,ROTA,DISC-GRAN,SIZE,PHY-SEC,FSTYPE,LABEL /dev/mapper/*
2024-09-16 23:38:47.139 DBG default: SErr #10: "lsblk: /dev/mapper/control: not a block device\n"
2024-09-16 23:38:47.139 DBG default: Exit #10: 32

[/code]

What is happening here that makes that install into / impossible and why does my 68 GB /root now need 390 GB??