NEW foxclone50 linux image backup

[MikeNovember]

Not really, you can't image a live filesystem.

Hi,

This is not true. Under Windows 7 it was possible, you could make an image of your live filesystem, to an external disk or to a DVD / Blu-ray with a Microsoft system backup program included in Windows 7. And, if you had made separate system / documents partitions, you could backup system only. And Windows 7 even proposed you to create a bootable ISO image to restore your backup.

Apparently Microsoft was able to take a system snapshot while the system were functioning. It seems abandoned in Windows 10.

I don't know if it possible with Linux Mint, however the principle, if it worked, could be nice.

Note that today use of Foxclone is not that bad .

I use an USB Key made with Ventoy, with three ISOs: Foxclone, Mint 20.3 (to use Timeshift), System Rescue (to do repairs).

At launch of Foxclone, I need to change Grub options and add "pci=nomsi,noaer"; I know how to do, however my keyboard is a French one (AZERTY) and Foxclone expects an US one (QWERTY). Is there a way to select the keyboard before GRUB changes?

Regards,

MN

[diabolicbg]

Certain ISOs (such as Mageia 8, Knoppix v8-9) are larger than the max. 4GB accepted by FAT32. Since Ventoy wants FAT32 on the stick how would it deal with such large image files? Simply reject them, I assume?

Sorry for the confusing site descriptions - I am not responsible for them. But otherwise things are very easy if you just try the installer.

Ventoy only requires FAT32 to install its software. During installation it formats its .iso container in exFat and has no problem even with 8 GB .iso. Larger files I have not uploaded and do not know about.

At launch of Foxclone, I need to change Grub options and add "pci=nomsi,noaer"; I know how to do, however my keyboard is a French one (AZERTY) and Foxclone expects an US one (QWERTY). Is there a way to select the keyboard before GRUB changes?

Regards,

MN

Ventoy has one settings file in the folder. I don't know for sure if it has keyboard settings.

[Drugwash]

The partition on the stick where you put your isos is formatted exfat. It puts the boot files in a small EFI partition formatted fat16.

Ah, I remember now, it just slipped my mind (tired after 21 hours non-stop). Thank you! So it's alright for any sized image, no limitations.
Darn, wish I didn't fill up the 64GB and the 128GB sticks with all those files.

Ventoy only requires FAT32 to install its software. During installation it formats its .iso container in exFat

Admittedly it is quite confusing and convoluted even for an advanced computer user. Hopefully Jeannie's tutorial would be more simple and clear. An additional requirement would be a clear and fresh mind too - which mine isn't right now, so will step back for a while.

[MikeNovember]

At launch of Foxclone, I need to change Grub options and add "pci=nomsi,noaer"; I know how to do, however my keyboard is a French one (AZERTY) and Foxclone expects an US one (QWERTY). Is there a way to select the keyboard before GRUB changes?

Regards,

MN

Ventoy has one settings file in the folder. I don't know for sure if it has keyboard settings.

Hi,

I don't see this settings file; is it in Ventoy, uncompressed archive, or on the unmounted partition on the USB Key? (and, in the second case, how to access this partitioon?)

Regards,

MN

Edited: I have modified "ventoy.json" in "/home/username/opt/ventoy-1.0.64/plugin/ventoy". I have modified it with:

{
"control": [
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_KBD_LAYOUT": "FRENCH" },
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_MENU_MODE": "1" },
{ "VTOY_FILT_DOT_UNDERSCORE_FILE": "1" }
],

(added the line "{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_KBD_LAYOUT": "FRENCH" },")

And then, I have updated Ventoy installation on the USB key.

I will check if t changes the keyboard layout.

[AndyMH]

This is not true. Under Windows 7 it was possible, you could make an image of your live filesystem, to an external disk or

More accurately, if you had the intelligence and the requisite linux-fu, you could load the relevant bits of the OS into RAM, lock the / partition (probably remount read-only) and do an image backup within your running system. I have neither.

I think the win7 backup tool is still in win10, they just don't advertise it.

Change keyboard before grub, not that I am aware off - not saying you can't, just I don't know how.

[MikeNovember]

This is not true. Under Windows 7 it was possible, you could make an image of your live filesystem, to an external disk or

More accurately, if you had the intelligence and the requisite linux-fu, you could load the relevant bits of the OS into RAM, lock the / partition (probably remount read-only) and do an image backup within your running system. I have neither.

I think the win7 backup tool is still in win10, they just don't advertise it.

Change keyboard before grub, not that I am aware off - not saying you can't, just I don't know how.

Hi,

Like you, "I have neither. "

Note that the Windows partition were not locked, you could still use Windows while creating image! (sometimes, Microsoft people are clever ones!)

Edit: Apparently, Fsarchiver succeeds in making a live system backup:

About
FSArchiver can be used to backup linux operating systems when they are running. In other words, if you have linux installed on your hard disk, and it’s currently running, you can make a backup of that disk using fsarchiver. It’s called a live backup or hot backup. All you need is an fsarchiver binary, an another filesystem where to save the archive. It can be on another partition on the hard-disk, or a network file-system such as Samba of NFS.

Web site: https://www.fsarchiver.org/live-backup/
Available from Ubuntu / Mint repos (8.5-2 version available for Fossa / Mint 20.x, while latest is 8.6).
It works in two ways:
- create a LVM, mount it read only, make a backup, delete the LVM (this can be automated with rubackup, written in Ruby)
- or force the backup of a read-write system, with risk of unconsistency if system is written while the backup is made.

Of course, you still need to boot on an USB key or DVD to retore the system.

I have not tested it. Anyone have tested?

Regards,

MN

[rossdv8]

There's a really easy to follow guide to get Ventoy itself up and running here:

I made a tutorial on how to install Ventoy onto a USB stick back when I first got it. Here it is:
How to Install Ventoy.pdf
download/file.php?id=75959

[AndyMH]

There is now a version of foxclone50 with a 5.13 kernel on foxclone.org.

[AZgl1800]

There is now a version of foxclone50 with a 5.13 kernel on foxclone.org.

Thank you Andy,
got it downloaded and transferred to Ventoy stick

[AndyMH]

And I've tweaked foxclone to make it 'ventoy aware'. When booting from ventoy, it will find that drive and it will not give you that drive as an option to backup or to clone to.

[AZgl1800]

And I've tweaked foxclone to make it 'ventoy aware'. When booting from ventoy, it will find that drive and it will not give you that drive as an option to backup or to clone to.

I booted it up from Ventoy, but on a spare laptop to look around at it.
Did not try to do a backup, so that feature did not show up for me.

thank you for doing that.

[JohnBdigital]

AndyMH,
Thanks, I just tried a backup and a clone using foxclone50-07-27.iso and it worked great!

[AndyMH]

I get a notification of a new post on foxclone and always open them with trepidation - what went wrong? Glad you liked it

[diabolicbg]

Today I attempted to clone the SSD to another SSD with an intermediate snapshot from which to move the information onto the new SSD. Something happened that I don't know if it was my fault or Foxclone's fault. When I tried to check an image taken half an hour ago Foxclone returned a message that it could not find my SSD "MT-128 serial: xxxxxxxx". If I check the image immediately after making, I don't have this problem.
When trying to transfer the image to the new SSD, the program returned a message that it could not find such a drive, even though it was visible in the list after the scan at the beginning.
I then ran a clone from the old SSD to the new SSD and everything worked without problems.

[AndyMH]

A bug (or feature), the latest version of foxclone records the sector size of the drive in the backup*. Older versions of foxclone did not record the sector size.

'Restore' and 'Clone from file' share some procedures, one shared procedure is reading the backup file.

When the new foxclone reads the backup file and cannot find the sector size it looks at the drives in the system to see if it can find the drive and get the sector size direct. If it cannot find the drive it generates the error message you saw and the sector size defaults to 512 bytes.

When 'cloning from file' the original drive will not be in the system, and with an older backup no sector size, so the error message is generated. It is erroneous and can be ignored.

I am thinking about how best to suppress this error message on a clone because the checks are still required for a restore. I will post again when I have updated foxclone.

* the backup file, e.g. 20220107.backup, is a text file that records details of the drive and the partitions that are in the backup.

[Reddog1]

I've tried using Ventoy with intel-based macs and have failed miserably. Ventoy will load, I can choose the .iso from it's initial screen, but after that the macs just sit there. Either I'm doing something wrong, or Ventoy and macs is just a no-go. Seems strange, because the macs will direct boot from a linux live usb.

Thanks for Fpxclone. I just cloned an old macbook that was dual-boot OSX and Linux, just in case something went wrong, before I wiped the OSX and installed a brand new linux. It worked flawlessly.

[diabolicbg]

A bug (or feature), the latest version of foxclone records the sector size of the drive in the backup*. Older versions of foxclone did not record the sector size.

'Restore' and 'Clone from file' share some procedures, one shared procedure is reading the backup file.

When the new foxclone reads the backup file and cannot find the sector size it looks at the drives in the system to see if it can find the drive and get the sector size direct. If it cannot find the drive it generates the error message you saw and the sector size defaults to 512 bytes.

When 'cloning from file' the original drive will not be in the system, and with an older backup no sector size, so the error message is generated. It is erroneous and can be ignored.

I am thinking about how best to suppress this error message on a clone because the checks are still required for a restore. I will post again when I have updated foxclone.

* the backup file, e.g. 20220107.backup, is a text file that records details of the drive and the partitions that are in the backup.

Thanks for the clarification! I've done so many experiments that I don't remember the whole sequence of my actions. I'm assuming that when I wanted to check the image, the original SSD might have been off, which in this case is my mistake.

I have one more question. If I want to restore a finished image to a new HDD or SSD, is it necessary to pre-format the drive and if so, what is the recommended file system? Or put another way - can Foxclone work on unrecognized disk space?

I've tried using Ventoy with intel-based macs and have failed miserably. Ventoy will load, I can choose the .iso from it's initial screen, but after that the macs just sit there. Either I'm doing something wrong, or Ventoy and macs is just a no-go. Seems strange, because the macs will direct boot from a linux live usb.

Thanks for Fpxclone. I just cloned an old macbook that was dual-boot OSX and Linux, just in case something went wrong, before I wiped the OSX and installed a brand new linux. It worked flawlessly.

A new version of Ventoy was released yesterday. You can try it again - there are improvements. On the site are described in detail - https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases

[AndyMH]

I have one more question. If I want to restore a finished image to a new HDD or SSD, is it necessary to pre-format the drive and if so, what is the recommended file system? Or put another way - can Foxclone work on unrecognized disk space?

No need to do anything and anything you do will be wasted effort. Foxclone overwrites whatever is on the drive when it does a clone.

[diabolicbg]

I have one more question. If I want to restore a finished image to a new HDD or SSD, is it necessary to pre-format the drive and if so, what is the recommended file system? Or put another way - can Foxclone work on unrecognized disk space?

No need to do anything and anything you do will be wasted effort. Foxclone overwrites whatever is on the drive when it does a clone.

Thanks!

[Larry78723]

Foxclone.com is back up with the new foxclone50 iso available with either the 5.4 or 5.13 kernel.