Solved REDO BACKUP vs RESCUEZILLA....you want simple, easy to do backup....Here it is.

[Condobloke]

PLEASE NOTE: i HAVE NOW ADDED AN EXTRA LORD KNOWS HOW MANY LINES TO INCORPORATE RESCUEZILLA. FEEL FREE TO COMPARE TO YOUR HEARTS CONTENT.

Thanks to @Thunderpants for his contribution.



REDO BACKUP

Redo Rescue: Backup and Recovery

Download Redo Rescue: Backup and Recovery for free. Backup and Recovery Made Easy. Redo Rescue Backup and Recovery can backup and restore an entire system in minutes with a point-and-click interface anyone can use. Bare metal restore to a new, blank drive and be up and running in minutes.

sourceforge.net

(it also works on windows and mac)

Download the .iso

'Burn' it to a usb stick...in exactly the same manner you would make a bootable usb stick. On Linux Mint 21.1 and similar, right click the download .iso file and select 'Make Bootable usb stick'

**** Go to the place where you are going to store the backup....and 'Create a NEW Folder'....name it..redo backup *****
It is semi important to do this BEFORE you start making a backup...otherwise you will not have an empty folder to store your intended backup in......and you may have to go back and do it before you can progress !! (pita)



Reboot your pc with usb stick inserted
change your boot order .....so the pc boots to that usb stick.
it will present a screen looking like :

Select 'Backup'
Then follow the screenshots

The screen will tell you when the Backup is finished.

It is a good Idea to VERIFY the backup....DO THIS EACH AND EVERY TIME

AFter Verification, go to the destination and right click on the redo folder, and select properties. Look for the ""6 items, totalling 13.8 GB"" (in my case...it will, of course, be different in yours.

What you are doing here is making absolutely sure that what you have backed up represents the entire drive, which you just backed up.

In the case of RESTORE....should you be unfortunate enough to have to use that function....

In a nutshell, if you can make up a usb stick and install Linux......you CAN do this.

kudos to @bob466 for finding this. !

 

[wizardfromoz]

'....name it..redo backup *****

Better to call it eg

redo_backup_*****

Linux sometimes does not like spaces.

Cheers

Wiz

 

[Condobloke]

Apparently, Linux Mint 21.1 is fine with the spaces.

 

[bob466]

Very nice Tutorial Condobloke...I tried this tool years ago but then it didn't have the Verify tool...it was updated in 2021 and now it does...which makes all the diference.

You can also drag the Redo ISO in to Ventoy...

 

[wizardfromoz]

On #2 I should have been more specific. If you need to access the content of your Redo exercise from the Terminal you may likely encounter trouble with the spaces.

I am in Linux Mint Vera Cinnamon now and have material ready to post, I can do it here, or if you prefer, I can do it over at my Timeshift thread. Let me know.

Wiz

 

[Condobloke]

Here is super !!

 

[wizardfromoz]

OK (and thanks, Bro'), this could be considered TL;DR by some, but hopefully The Viewers can gain something out of it.

For purposes of this exercise, I have taken Brian's mention here of

Go to the place where you are going to store the backup....and 'Create a NEW Folder'....name it..redo backup

Disclaimer here is that I have not yet had the pleasure of using Redo.

I use Cinnamon's FM (File Manager) Nemo to create a folder

redo backup

in my Home folder, and Nemo obliges. I run the backup, all good, but later I want to check how much space it consumed.

So in place of not having used Redo and to have some content in the folder, I copied only the contents of my /var/log , which I knew would be a couple of hundred MB.

So I open a Terminal (which defaults to a present working directory of /home/chris), and cd as follows

chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~$ cd /home/chris/redo backup
bash: cd: too many arguments
chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~$ ls /home/chris/redo backup
ls: cannot access '/home/chris/redo': No such file or directory
ls: cannot access 'backup': No such file or directory

Likewise I have no good result from using

du -ah /home/chris/redo backup

...trying to establish the files and folder produced in a human readable format that includes those items hidden.

Some may wonder "Why does he not just look at the folder in Nemo to get the space consumed?"

Because where there are files and folders concerned, the FM will not provide an accurate picture.

Nemo shows me

11 folders selected, 51 other items selected (12.7 MB)

which I know to be way off base.

There are three (3) methods I know of that will produce an accurate result.

1. With an open Nemo, toggle the location so it shows the path, open a Terminal and drag and drop the entry onto it, and it appears with a single quote at each end. Then press your Home key and add at the beginning cd or ls or du -ah

chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~$ cd '/home/chris/redo backup'
chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~/redo backup$

You can get the same outcome with manually placing the single quotes in Terminal, having typed in the path.

2. With Terminal only open, you can also type in the path and have double quotes before and after.

chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~$ ls "/home/chris/redo backup"
log
chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~$ cd "/home/chris/redo backup"
chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~/redo backup 12345$

3. Use an Escape character, in this case it is a backslash. I have just used it with wildcard globbing.

chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~$ cd /home/chris/\redo*
chris@vera-cinnamon-SSD:~/redo backup$

So that is a forward slash right after chris and immediately followed by a backslash.

Now, using any of those 3 methods, I can get an accurate picture with, eg

du -ah /home/chris/\redo*

which reels off a lot of output and ends with

145M /home/chris/redo backup/log
145M /home/chris/redo backup

145 MB is much more like it.

This represents what Brian described as

Look for the ""6 items, totalling 13.8 GB"" (in my case...it will, of course, be different in yours.

This applies in both Linux and Macintosh. In Windows, they use the backslash where we use forward, and have a different workaround.

I expect that our good friend Jas @JasKinasis and others could better explain this, but just thought I'd put it out there.

Cheers

Wizard

 

[Condobloke]

I have a question myself....which I am unable to find an answer to.

Background. I have a 250gb m.2 drive. Since I installed LM21.1, the drive has hovered between 13.9% and 14.9% Full
This has mainly been as a result of kernels and their bits and pieces coming and going, and a few apps which have failed to pass muster and been deleted etc etc

Immediately after running redo, and saving the backup to an external hard drive......I checked the %age full figure...I usually check it once each day and I had not done so at all today

Imagine my surprise....it is sitting at 12.3% Full

Why ?

No kernels etc have come or gone....no apps have been given the flick....there have been no changes...except for an update fro apparmor & libapparmor1....changem of version....no big deal.

Why is it so ?

I later ran RescueZilla....and it put this up on screen before it started....
The last 7 or 8 lines will mean something to someone here.....I hope.

 

[Thunderpants]

Rescuezilla is a fork of Redo Backup and also works well.

Easy disk cloning and imaging | Rescuezilla (Clonezilla GUI)

Free bare metal restore solution with graphical interface on a live CD. Point-and-click to backup and restore an entire computer. Bare metal disaster recovery restores all programs, documents and settings. GPL open source.

rescuezilla.com

 

[Condobloke]

RESCUEZILLA

'Burn' it to a usb stick...in exactly the same manner you would make a bootable usb stick. On Linux Mint 21.1 and similar, right click the download .iso file and select 'Make Bootable usb stick'

**** Go to the place where you are going to store the backup....and 'Create a NEW Folder'....name it..RescueZilla backup *****
It is semi important to do this BEFORE you start making a backup...otherwise you will not have an empty folder to store your intended backup in......and you may have to go back and do it before you can progress !! (pita)



Reboot your pc with usb stick inserted
change your boot order .....so the pc boots to that usb stick.

Then...follow the screenshots

TO VERIFY:
Choose the file you are going to verify. If you have more than one backupo on the external hard drive, be careful to select the correct one. It will not do any damage if you choose the incorrect file....you will simply have top go back and choose the correct one.


TO RESTORE:

Please....pay attention to the added piece of text at the bottom of the restore window. If the partitions have been resized , new ones added, added OS installed etc etc....it will be rendered inaccessible .....READ IT

ALL of the above came from:

Screenshots | Rescuezilla (Clonezilla GUI)

Free bare metal restore solution with graphical interface on a live CD. Point-and-click to backup and restore an entire computer. Bare metal disaster recovery restores all programs, documents and settings. GPL open source.

rescuezilla.com

 

[Condobloke]

A great number of questions are answered HERE for Rescuezilla....by the developer

@bob466 ....worth a read, mate.....and even more so worth trying !

@Thunderpants ....thanks for the link !

 

[bob466]

I have a question myself....which I am unable to find an answer to.

Background. I have a 250gb m.2 drive. Since I installed LM21.1, the drive has hovered between 13.9% and 14.9% Full
This has mainly been as a result of kernels and their bits and pieces coming and going, and a few apps which have failed to pass muster and been deleted etc etc

Immediately after running redo, and saving the backup to an external hard drive......I checked the %age full figure...I usually check it once each day and I had not done so at all today

Imagine my surprise....it is sitting at 12.3% Full

Why ?

No kernels etc have come or gone....no apps have been given the flick....there have been no changes...except for an update fro apparmor & libapparmor1....changem of version....no big deal.

Why is it so ?

I later ran RescueZilla....and it put this up on screen before it started....
The last 7 or 8 lines will mean something to someone here.....I hope.

View attachment 15310

This is why I never suggested Rescuezilla because it sucks...too many problems getting it to boot and work.

Download Rescuezilla ISO and burn with Etcher...try to open Flash Drive to see files get this...

Re-boot computer...boot to rescuezilla loads English...then black screen...then text...no such directory.
They claim doesn't work with old computers and might need Grahical fallback mode...use at your own risk if you can.

Redo Backup on same Flash Drive...

I know which one I'll use because it works.

 

[Condobloke]

Well that is certainly different to my experience with RescueZilla

Zero problems booting it, manoeuvring around it, etc etc....ran like a dream

The screenshot I posted up above ....I actually welcomed that....because I had the feeling that Redo removed something when it ran......the used space figures did not change by themselves.....it was immediately after using REDO that I noticed the drop.

Now that i have run Rescuezilla, the numbers have gone back up....I find that reassuring. It feels like r'zilla has found something missing and has put it back in place.
The line: "The gpt table is not on the end of the device"...is a vild concern....it should be there.....

Partition and File System Extension Preparations (Linux)_Elastic Volume Service_User Guide_Disk Capacity Expansion_Extending Disk Partitions and File Systems (Linux)_Huawei Cloud

Before extending the disk partition and file system, you must check the disk partition style and file system format, and then select the appropriate operation accordingly

support.huaweicloud.com

• Error: The backup GPT table is not at the end of the disk, as it should be. This might mean that another operating system believes the
  disk is smaller. Fix, by moving the backup to the end (and removing the old backup)?
  
  The GPT partition table information is stored at the start of the disk. To reduce the risk of damage, a backup of the information is saved at the end of the disk. When you expand the disk capacity, the end of the disk changes accordingly. In this case, enter Fix to move the backup file of the information to new disk end.
• If the following warning information is displayed, enter Fix.

The 'fix' was done via R'Zilla and this shown by the user space figures


I was also impressed with the support page of R'Zilla......very thorough, and the developer spends a lot of time answering questions.

I know which one I'll use because it works.

Me too !
My pc is approx 10+ years old....it does have an nvme drive and a quick cpu.....but it is still old.

 

[Thunderpants]

Strange, when testing Redo Rescue there was an error message on the initial boot something about 'loading a kernel first' but this disappeared on second and subsequent boots. Considering the complexity of these tools a one-off initial glitch is of no concern. It's a good tool but rescuezilla has proved reliable with my kit so see no need to change.

 

[NORD]

So this replaces timeshift?

 

[Thunderpants]

Not like-for-like but it can sometimes be advantageous to have backups and restoration tools totally independent of an installed OS on a bootable USB drive. These tools can be particularly useful with multi-boot systems.

 

[Condobloke]

No.

This backs up everything.....

Timeshift concentrates mainly on the OS....it will also include your /home if you so choose to do that....which gives you quite a good backstop etc....but Timeshift does not include compression......so the snapshots are fairly large......whereas the backup which either redo backup or rescuezilla puts out is very efficient, and does not take up nearly as much space.

eg, my pc only has approx 23GB taken up in total....that has been reduced to just over 13GB on the rescuezilla backup....and only took a total of 10 minutes to both backup and verify that backup

There is definitely a 'place' for an image backup in addition to Timeshift's regularly scheduled snapshots.

I take an image backup once per month....whereas Timeshift take s snapshot each and every day....and then discards any snapshots when and if I choose to discard them. This based on how the pc is running on any particular day as well as any kernel updates (i take a snapshot before a new kernel is installed)...etc etc

I can also restore that Image backup to a completely new hard drive or ssd etc

 

[bob466]

At the end of the day people are free to use whatever they like but when I have so much trouble trying to get rescuezilla to work I'll use something else...because it doesn't happen with Foxclone or Redo Rescue.