Hello,
I am using LMDE which I recently updated, but after that the whole system was messed up. Luckily, I had saved the whole Linux partition before with "Redo Backup and Recovery", but I don't know if I can just restore it, because Grub might still contain the information of the messed up system. How could I solve this problem?
Anyway, I don't know if "Redo Backup and Recovery" is a good tool to save multiple operating systems (in my case LMDE and Windows 7) that reside on one harddrive. Maybe there are better recommendations?
Another question: How can I generally separate programs and configuration from the operating system, so that a new installation isn't such a daunting task?
Thanks for any help.
Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
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LMDE 2 has reached end of support as of 1-1-2019
Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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- Fornhamfred
- Level 6
- Posts: 1243
- Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:38 pm
- Location: Suffolk UK
Re: Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
The first question is how did you do the backup? Was it as a complete back up of the disk or did you separate windows from Linux?
Assuming you just did one backup then restoring should just re-instate your machine to how it was prior to the backup.
IMHO Linux should always be installed on three partitions, the system(/), swap and home. In this way if something like this happens then it only the system (/) that would need to be re-installed. Additional programmes that you have added would need to be re-installed as well but all your settings are in the home partition. When dual booting between windows and linux I always have a data partition formatted to NTFS on which I keep all my information. This allows windows and linux to access it as windows does not recognise the linux partitions.
If you are sucessful in reinstalling your backup then I suggest you use luckybackup to backup your home file and I think you should be able to install it to a new home partition, you would how-ever have to point fstab to the new location. I have not tried this but think it would work.
Edit: Found this article which should assist. http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to-create-a-separate-home-partition-after-installing-ubuntu/
Assuming you just did one backup then restoring should just re-instate your machine to how it was prior to the backup.
IMHO Linux should always be installed on three partitions, the system(/), swap and home. In this way if something like this happens then it only the system (/) that would need to be re-installed. Additional programmes that you have added would need to be re-installed as well but all your settings are in the home partition. When dual booting between windows and linux I always have a data partition formatted to NTFS on which I keep all my information. This allows windows and linux to access it as windows does not recognise the linux partitions.
If you are sucessful in reinstalling your backup then I suggest you use luckybackup to backup your home file and I think you should be able to install it to a new home partition, you would how-ever have to point fstab to the new location. I have not tried this but think it would work.
Edit: Found this article which should assist. http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to-create-a-separate-home-partition-after-installing-ubuntu/
Re: Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
Thanks for your answer. I have installed Linux on three partitions: system, swap and home and I have a separate NTFS data partition that can be used by both operating systems.
Unfortunatley, on the backup drive is one backup file for both operating systems, hence I can't restore Linux without restoring Windows. Anyway, it seems that I don't have any other choice here, but for the future I would like to improve that, so that I can restore one OS independently of the other. Which backup tool is most flexible? Maybe Clonezilla?
Unfortunatley, on the backup drive is one backup file for both operating systems, hence I can't restore Linux without restoring Windows. Anyway, it seems that I don't have any other choice here, but for the future I would like to improve that, so that I can restore one OS independently of the other. Which backup tool is most flexible? Maybe Clonezilla?
Re: Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
AFAIK Redo is Clonezilla nicvely dreesed up, and.. what is more important, redo can back-up partition by partition, if you order it to do so.so that I can restore one OS independently of the other. Which backup tool is most flexible? Maybe Clonezilla?
The fourth screenshot from top on this page shows you how-to: [url]http://redobackup.org/[/url]. Admitted, sometimes you have to use a live-distro to repair GRUB, but that's a minor issue.
Re: Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
Thanks. I tried to restore the old partitions with Redo Backup and Restore, but after restart GRUB didn't show a list of all installed OSs, instead there was a message "GRUB loading", but it didn't load Does anyone know how to fix that?
- Fornhamfred
- Level 6
- Posts: 1243
- Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:38 pm
- Location: Suffolk UK
Re: Restoring messed up system (LMDE)
Follow this thread.
http://www.av8n.com/computer/htm/grub-reinstall.htm
http://www.av8n.com/computer/htm/grub-reinstall.htm