Elive Wishlist

Hello all.
I was looking for something in my Elive and accidentally broke my installation to a point where I needed to reinstall a fresh Elive. However after using and configuring my old installation , starting a new one made it difficult for me to work efficiently to many new things needed to be set like of old but i cannot get them back . I was wondering whether there is a way to save my system wide configurations as a backup some where so when i need to do a system migration or fresh install these can be imported straight from somewhere. So i thought of starting up a thread like this one where maybe we can mention and put our wishlist of things we would like to see in Elive . Ofcourse No pressure @Thanatermesis @triantares :pray:

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My wife is using Linux Mint since a few years. And before there was the integrated backup/upgrade tool, they described the way really good. Working for all dpkg based system.

Paketlist (Backup on source, reset on destination and perform):

sudo dpkg --get-selections > mypackages.txt
sudo dpkg --set-selections < mypackages.txt
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

But I wouldn't save the /etc/, instead you should configure specials on ~ (/home/[user]/) and backup the whole /home/. In my case it is a own partition.

I am backup only:
/etc/fstab
/etc/exim4/
/etc/passwd (and /etc/shadow)
(on some systems the /etc/pam.d/, when I'm too lazy to rebuild the fingerprint or LDAP auth)

Since quite a time I am using a special partition scheme, with
/dev/sda1 - first OS
/dev/sda2 - second OS
/dev/sda3 - SWAP
/dev/sda5 - home
/dev/sda6 - media

First OS and second OS are both linux, but only the latest is mentioned in grub (bootloader). So if I forgot to rescue a config, cert or something else, I am able to recover it at any time from the other partition. There is no trouble to keep the unused 25GB till the next upgrade/downgrade/crossgrade.

Well there is the integrated back-upper through :accessories". "File management", "backup" which is, in itself a fairly simple method to keep personal stuff safe.
Obviously Elive, when upgrading from iso cannot and will not take into account those personal settings and changes because, if so; it would recreate exactly that broken setup you were trying to fix in the first place. :smile_cat:

  • What I do is (if an installation is exactly to my liking) is use "Clonezilla" to backup/clone the whole disk to an image ton USB hat I can copy back if/when I really bork my install. As the disk structure including bootloaders is kept .... it'll be smooth and fairly simple.

Personally I always keep a separate partition for my /home directory which I "rsync" separately (and more often) using the afore metionned backup tool, too. as it can get biiiiig and would take ages with Clonezila. That way rolling back the system is fast and fairly painless. :w00t:
I've got images going back to 2009. :madness:

Another good trick is to keep a list of everything you've installed from the standard repos, since the initial install and add them to the "packages to retain" list when upgrading from the iso. The best way is to kep a list on a separate [bakup]USB so you can copy/paste the list thus avoiding typos or misnaming.

So not much of a wishlist addition, as the backup tool is already there but a method to avoid trouble. :smile_cat:

Oops i hadnt foreseen that, i guess i was using a slightly similar situation from Winblows$$$, where you can do a system rescue from the last known functional setup based on scheduled automatic backup dates. I dont want full backups because of time and space constraints. Rather i am thing of just the configuration settings. like keyboard ,mouse and screen settings, favourite applications. A program or setup that periodically backs up the configuration settings and not the content, so when i install a clean Elive I can just import last best custom settings/ profile that worked.

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Ok this is an interesting property , so could this be put in the Elive installation process so it asks you if you have settings you want to import as you are installing a new System?

You can do that with the mentioned backup tool that is already installed.
You can set it to make backups of any specific directories you wish.

OTOH, if you want "old" settings back check out the .e16 (obviously for E16) or .e (for E23) directories in your $HOME folder.
After an upgrade (with the iso) , the old settings will have been kept with -bak or -old added to the name. Use those to replace the new version (maybe keep a backup of that one too just to be able to go back). There might even be multiple old versions there.
If you can remember (sort of) the date of the previous config you can get the creation time by using " ls" with the "-alt" flag, thus:
"ls -alt |grep e16"

That way you'll at least have the desktop settings back as they were.

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I encountered very good experience with
'Aptik' for this.
But honestly never tried on Elive,
but on Cinnamon, KDE and Xfce has been always successful.
It looks simple on sight,
but actually it is very smart ( ya, you have think over and read before you press the buttons)

Aptik only backs up your repository settings which is totally unneeded for Elive.....they don't change, other than being updated.
For apps it might have some merit i.e if it could make a list of the apps that were installed after the first installation from iso so that list could be added to "packages-to-retain".
I can see some hurdles there as you would need access to them during an installation session. :thinking:

Ahm.... No.
It especially copies your settings, themes, application profiles (e.g: .thunderbird , .mozilla , etc.)
which is very helpful.
But as mentioned above, dunno if it's a good tool for an Enlightenment driven DE,
I also need to check out by myself.
If someone is searching for a solution like this,
he can try out and report herein, if he is in a hurry ... :smiley14:

I very much doubt if "aptik" is DE centric at all, especially if it needs user intervention.
It isn't in the repos for Buster so I'd go for the backup tool that's already there.

That would be as simple as copying (syncing like the backup tool is actually better and faster) the needed . (dot) files in your $HOME.
Where keeping a full backup in sync (you can set the tool to do that in the hours you never use the machine) is the simple way.

Agreed then - Aptik is an external tool/util.

Looks like the same tool with some preconfigured options ..... not sure if it can be scheduled but I should think so.

moved thread to the #get-involved:suggest section