System restore for 18.04

I have a just installed 18.04.3 on a laptop. I want to make a recovery point here so that when something goes wrong, I can simply reset to this point and avoid installing Ubuntu again.

Is it possible ? Which tool should I use ? Thanks.

Check this out:

I use this script on Debian, Linux Mint 19, and my Ubuntu servers.
You need to set it up accordingly:
-stoareg_dir
-max_size
-max-rp-num
It always worked for me, and few times it saved my ass :slight_smile:

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timeshift is also an option.

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I have dual boot Windows 10, will Timeshift mess it up ? Just curious.

@kovacslt

I will try. Thanks.

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full disclosure: i don’t dual boot with windows, but i don’t think there is any more danger of that than if you were to perform a system restore in windows that it would affect your ubuntu partition. there is probably more danger of affecting other partitions when you install than working with timeshift.

i have a few distros installed and resetting one with timeshift has never affected any of the others. if you are booted into ubuntu, you choose a snapshot to reset to and it reverts your files to their previous state. i can’t see how any of that would affect an entirely separate partition.

if you were to try and repair/reinstall from a live usb, then you would need to make certain you knew which partition was which. i can’t see how there would be a problem in a regular use situation.

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What is the difference between rsync and BTRFS ? Which one do you use with Timeshift ?

btrfs would be used if you set up your ubuntu with btrfs (b-tree file system) when you installed it instead of ext4 (for example). since ext4 is pretty much the default, i think you would know if you chose btrfs. you could run lsblk -f if you want to make sure.

i use rsync because all of my installations are ext4. i have yet to be adventurous enough to try a different file system :slight_smile:

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I have made backups by using DD to copy the install to an image to restore if needed. It makes a whole filesystem snapshot that can be restored to any drive if needed.

The benefit of BTRFS (or ZFS) is the built-in snapshot features. You can take the snapshots at any interval, use your favorite tool to copy the snapshot to your backup medium, then clean the snapshots when you like. Rolling back to a snapshot still on the drive is instantaneous and if the system dies, you can use your backup tool to move the copied snapshots to the new drive and restore.
Note: Snapshots take up additional space on your drive when files change. This is because the version in the snapshot is kept for rollback purposes until the snapshot is deleted. If a file exists in multiple snapshots, it won’t take up any more space. It just means there is multiple pointers to the one file.
Example: You can take a snapshot every hour, then at night delete the hourly snapshotsexcept for the last one. Then your backup daily after the last daily snapshot. At the end of the week delete the dailys except the last one to keep as a weekly. You will then be able to roll back to any hour of the day within that day or to any day of the week etc to keep only the last 4 weeklys to maintain a month of rollback. You can teir it however you like.

See also:

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I personally use

on my pools.

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I have dual boot Windows 10, will Timeshift mess it up ? Just curious.

Redo Backup (now called Rescuezilla) and dd did the trick for me a lot of times (I’m testing new distros all the time). Another FOSS Partition & HDD clone app is Filezilla, no matter if Linux, Windows or MacOS. Finally and Non FOSS but Free Windows-only cloning partition is AOMEI Backupper/ AOMEI OneKey Recovery. Great in case yo’re too much security paranoid as me and want to make a separated Backup of your Linux HDD/Partitions (you can do it with the help of dd, RedoBackup or Clonezilla for example [aso works with Windows partitions/whole disk]) and use Aomei for Windows side…

Hope that works for you!

I have used Aomei OneKey. Great tool. Sad that they do not support Ubuntu yet.