Rescuezilla Problem? (Solved!)

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Please be patient; this will get a bit convoluted.

I've been using Rescuezilla to image the boot drive in my System 76 Clevo based laptop (aka LT1) for over a year without any problems. Recently, I started getting the following error message:

However, when I "restore" the images to an identical drive, then swap that drive out with the boot drive in LT1, it works just fine and dandy.

Early this year, I bought a used Boxx computer (now aka LT2) built on the same Clevo chassis. Around a month or so ago, I "restored" the then latest image to a drive, then swapped it out with the Boxx boot drive that had Win 10 on it and Mint booted up just fine.

I then added the uuids of the data drives in LT2, copies of the data drives in LT1 to the fstab file in in LT! and made a new image of the boot drive in LT1. I then "restored" that image to another spare drive and swapped it into LT2. Again, it booted just fine, my data drives mounted, and all my symlinks were working.

Today, I made an image of LT1's boot drive (I do this every Saturday), then "restored" to one of LT1's alternate boot drives, then swapped it out with the boot drive in LT1 (I do this every first Saturday of the month). As usual, it booted just fine.

I then "restored" the same image to an alternate LT2 boot drive and swapped it into LT2. Linux booted but my data drives didn't mount and and my symlinks weren't working. I tried mounting my data drives using Disks and got an error message.

I tired repeating all of the above that I did today and got the same results. I tried again using Rescuezilla on another Ventoy USB stick in case the first one went bad (I've had it happen before). Same results.

Since the error message asked if Clonezilla is installed, I reinstalled it on LT1 and tried everything again. Same results.

I'm totally stumped. I get the feeling the problem is related to that Rescuezilla error but I cannot figure it out for the life of me.

Code: Select all

jeannie@Laptop1:~$ inxi -Fxxxrz
System:    Host: Laptop1 Kernel: 5.4.0-122-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.5.0 Desktop: Cinnamon 4.4.8 
           wm: muffin 4.4.4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: System76 product: Serval v: serw11-b serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 
           serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: System76 model: Serval v: serw11-b serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 1.05.25-1 
           date: 07/10/2019 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 36.5 Wh condition: 76.9/79.9 Wh (96%) volts: 15.2/14.8 model: Notebook BAT 
           type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Unknown 
           Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M525 serial: <filter> charge: 100% 
           rechargeable: yes status: Discharging 
CPU:       Topology: 8-Core model: Intel Core i7-9700K bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Kaby Lake rev: D L2 cache: 12.0 MiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 57600 
           Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/4900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 801 7: 800 
           8: 800 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA vendor: CLEVO/KAPOK driver: nvidia v: 470.141.03 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1f51 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa 
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~144Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.141.03 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 200 Series PCH HD Audio vendor: CLEVO/KAPOK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:a2f0 
           Device-2: NVIDIA vendor: CLEVO/KAPOK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 chip ID: 10de:10f9 
           Device-3: N/A type: USB driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus ID: 1-5.1:6 chip ID: 21b4:0082 
           serial: <filter> 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-122-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: CLEVO/KAPOK driver: alx v: kernel 
           port: d000 bus ID: 6e:00.0 chip ID: 1969:e0b1 
           IF: enp110s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Intel Wireless-AC 9260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: d000 bus ID: 71:00.0 chip ID: 8086:2526 
           IF: wlp113s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 18.29 TiB used: 10.96 TiB (59.9%) 
           ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 model: SD8GB size: 7.42 GiB serial: <filter> scheme: MBR 
           ID-2: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 970 PRO 512GB size: 476.94 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 
           serial: <filter> rev: 1B2QEXP7 scheme: GPT 
           ID-3: /dev/nvme1n1 model: Sabrent Rocket Q size: 7.28 TiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> 
           rev: RKT30Q.2 scheme: GPT 
           ID-4: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 QVO 8TB size: 7.28 TiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> 
           rev: 2B6Q scheme: GPT 
           ID-5: /dev/sdb vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 PRO 4TB size: 3.73 TiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> 
           rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 452.24 GiB used: 37.98 GiB (8.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 15.91 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 43.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 45 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 1306 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list 
           1: deb http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot all main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
           1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com tricia main upstream import backport
           2: deb http://mirror.enzu.com/ubuntu bionic main restricted universe multiverse
           3: deb http://mirror.enzu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
           4: deb http://mirror.enzu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse
           5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-security main restricted universe multiverse
           6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ bionic partner
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oguzhaninan-stacer-bionic.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/system76-dev-stable-bionic.list 
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/system76-dev/stable/ubuntu bionic main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teejeetech-aptik.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/teejeetech-aptik-keyring.gpg] https://packages.teejeetech.com/aptik/0/S7tBVjLBzw/ubuntu/bionic/amd64 stable main
Info:      Processes: 291 Uptime: 14m Memory: 15.45 GiB used: 1.09 GiB (7.1%) Init: systemd v: 237 runlevel: 5 
           Compilers: gcc: 7.5.0 alt: 7 Shell: bash v: 4.4.20 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.32 
jeannie@Laptop1:~$ 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I also tried using a different external enclosure--no joy--and plugging it into a different port on the source computer--still no joy.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I just downloaded the latest version of Rescuezilla and "installed" it on its own USBstick. It had the same problem when making an image. This version has the ability to verify an image. Using it, the images verified. Now I'm really stumped. And pissed off.

[rescuezilla]

Hi Lady Fitzgerald,

Sorry to hear you can't access your data drives.

It sounds like each of your backup images restored correctly using Rescuezilla, but you can't access a separate set of data drives (or data partitions?) is this correct?

The "update-efi-nvram-boot-entry" error is actually an error in Rescuezilla. I coincidentally was investigating this in my testing leading up to Rescuezilla v2.4. You can ignore that error message.

The first step is to determine why your data drives don't mount. I suggest opening it up in GParted Partition Editor and examining the partitions. I recommend running a filesystem check on the partitions if possible too.

And maybe try mounting the drives using the command line using a command like "mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/temp_mount" and seeing if they produce and clear error messages.

Also it's worth running "blkid" and confirming the UUIDs are what you think there are, and confirming they match "/etc/fstab", but I'm sure you've done that already.

Please try the following out, and I'm happy to help debug this.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hi Lady Fitzgerald,

Sorry to hear you can't access your data drives.

It sounds like each of your backup images restored correctly using Rescuezilla, but you can't access a separate set of data drives (or data partitions?) is this correct?

The "update-efi-nvram-boot-entry" error is actually an error in Rescuezilla. I coincidentally was investigating this in my testing leading up to Rescuezilla v2.4. You can ignore that error message.

The first step is to determine why your data drives don't mount. I suggest opening it up in GParted Partition Editor and examining the partitions. I recommend running a filesystem check on the partitions if possible too.

And maybe try mounting the drives using the command line using a command like "mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/temp_mount" and seeing if they produce and clear error messages.

Also it's worth running "blkid" and confirming the UUIDs are what you think there are, and confirming they match "/etc/fstab", but I'm sure you've done that already.

Please try the following out, and I'm happy to help debug this.

Thanks for responding!

I've been ignoring the "update-efi-nvram-boot-entry" error on LT1 since I was able to restore from the images when I tested them but it was making me as nervous as a squirrel in a treeless dog park so it's nice to know the error is an error (if that made sense).

I currently have LT2, the computer I was trying to update with drives restored from LT1 images using LT1 to restore the images, running now after restoring an image I made from from LT2. The drives show up there so they've been there all along. Also, When the swaps were failing, I couldn't find fstab (I'm currently checking to see if I can figure out why). I put the UUIDs for both computers in LT1's fstab along with "nofail" so the computer will still boot and function normally even if a drive listed in fastab is missing.

I need to finish running an experiment I'm doing to see if updating the data drives in LT2 from the LT1 backup drives (I use FreeFileSync for all data only backups) will allow the drives to be recognized by LT2 after swapping in a boot drive that was restored using LT1. Should that fail, I'm going to try exporting the latest LT1 image to LT2 and restoring to a drive in an external USB drive enclosure directly from LT2, then do the swap.

All my boot drives are Samsung 512GB 970 Pros. I'm using Plugable external NVMe enclosures (I have three) for restoring drives externally

This will take a day or two for me to finish what I'm doing so please don't think I'm ignoring you. I'll post back here once I have something to report.

BTW, I love the addition of the ability to verify an image in the latest version of Rescuezilla! Again, thanks!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

It just keeps getting weirder. After updating the data drives in LT2, I restored the latest image of LT1 to a drive in an external USB enclosure, then swapped the restored drive into LT2. The problem was still there.

I then opened up fstab and compared the UUIDs in there to the UUIDs of the data drives. They matched but I notice there was a discrepancy with the boot drive entries. These are not wonderful pictures (a photographer I "ain't") but you can read the numbers by right clicking on each photo and opening in a new tab or window. These are the pictures I took of LT2's fstab file and the UUIDs of the boot drive I had swapped into LT2. Ignore the UUIDs for Data1-4; I have those same entries on the UUID in LT1 and it boots just fine and dandy.

The UUIDs of the boot drive in LT1 agree with the UUIDs in its fstab. Why do the UUIDs of the restored boot drive change when installed into LT2, especially since the first drive in LT2 was a drive restored from an LT1 image?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Adding insult to injury, here is what happens when I try to mount my data drives after swapping in a restored drive. First, I'm going to click on the mount button.

This is what I get after clicking on the mount button.

Even though the boot drive UUID fstab entries have have changed and the data drive UUID fstab entries have not, I can boot the darned thing but not mount the data drive?

[rescuezilla]

As best I can tell, Rescuezilla is operating correctly here: the base operating system that is contained in the image was correctly imaged to the target disk in a fully bootable state.

The partition UUID shouldn't change, because Rescuezilla simply uses partclone to both restore the image or clone the partitions, and doesn't use "tune2fs" to change the UUIDs. Rescuezilla does resize the final partition in some circumstances, but this shouldn't cause you any issues.

Your /etc/fstab file has two entries for Data2, Data3 and Data4. And three entries for Data1.

This may be causing you issues. I recommend removing all incorrect entries and confirming the UUID's for Data1-Data4.

Also is it possible to go through and manually mount each of your Data drives individual and confirm they are all present and can mount?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

As best I can tell, Rescuezilla is operating correctly here: the base operating system that is contained in the image was correctly imaged to the target disk in a fully bootable state.

The partition UUID shouldn't change, because Rescuezilla simply uses partclone to both restore the image or clone the partitions, and doesn't use "tune2fs" to change the UUIDs. Rescuezilla does resize the final partition in some circumstances, but this shouldn't cause you any issues.

Your /etc/fstab file has two entries for Data2, Data3 and Data4. And three entries for Data1.

This may be causing you issues. I recommend removing all incorrect entries and confirming the UUID's for Data1-Data4.

Also is it possible to go through and manually mount each of your Data drives individual and confirm they are all present and can mount?

The drives are mounting now with the older bootdrive. I just can't mount them

The reason for multiple UUID entries for Data1-4 is so, when I update LT2 by swapping in a drive that was restored from the latest LT1 image, it should be able to boot the data drives in in LT2 since the needed fstab entries will already be there. And it worked a time or two before the insanity ensued. This is a screenshot of the fstab file in LT1 which boots up and mounts the first four data drives just fine and dandy.

In the next day or two, I'll try removing all the data drive fstab entries in LT1's boot drive except the ones for the data drives in LT1. I'll then edit the fstab file in LT2 to correspond with the UUIDs of the data drives in LT2. I'll report back then how well that went.

If that works (and I don't see why not but then, what do I know?), based on some research I've been doing, I'm going to see if I can change the UUIDs of the data drives in LT2 to the same UUIDs in LT1 so I won't have to edit fstab in LT2 after every swap. If I do it from within LT2, there shouldn't be any conflict with the data drives in LT1 since the twain shall never meet (in theory). Also, in theory, the fstab entries from LT1 should also work when a drive restored from LT1 gets swapped into LT2.

I'm also considering, instead of physically swapping drives every month (with all the problems I've been having, I'm getting a wee bit tired of swapping drives), just copy the latest LT1 boot drive image to a USB flash drive, then, after imaging LT2's boot drive first, plug the flash drive into LT2 and use the image on it to restore LT2's boot drive. It will be slower than restoring from an image on an internal SSD due to the USB bottleneck but it beats all that physical swapping even though my laptops' boot drives are easy easy to get to (I can do a swap in a minute from the time I start to open it up to the time I button everything back down without rushing).

All my data backup drives have unique UUIDs (was that redundant? ) so connecting LT1's data backup drives to LT2 for updating LT2's backup drives with FreeFileSync.

Thanks for your help and patience!

[t42]

By the way, Rescuezilla v2.4 was just released, details in release notes:
https://github.com/rescuezilla/rescuezi ... es/tag/2.4

[Lady Fitzgerald]

By the way, Rescuezilla v2.4 was just released, details in release notes:
https://github.com/rescuezilla/rescuezi ... es/tag/2.4

Thank you!

[Marie SWE]

I sitting here with my second cup of coffee and I need three to wake up all brain cells But have you consider to identify the data disk by Label instead of UUID.. even if UUID change, the label is still there... Just a thought of my second cup of coffee.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I sitting here with my second cup of coffee and I need three to wake up all brain cells But have you consider to identify the data disk by Label instead of UUID.. even if UUID change, the label is still there... Just a thought of my second cup of coffee.

Thanks for the suggestion but using UUIDs for automatically mounting disks/partitions is recommended over using just a label (I'm not going to pretend to fully understand why ). I finally found a tutorial on line that was simple but complete (it's amazing how many half-arsed Linux tutorials are out there) and did a successful preliminary test a few minutes ago using a couple of retired 500GB SSDs and an external USB enclosure, changing the UUID of one to the UUID of the other one. I now have two 500GB SSDs with identical UUIDs.

I need to edit the fstab in LT1 to have only the entries for the data drives in LT1, then change the UUIDs of the data drives in LT2 to match those of LT1's data drives (and if you understood that, explain it to me ). I didn't get my nap out last night and need to catch a few ZZZZs before waddling errands later today. I'll work on this tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how wiped out I am after today, so I won't be distracted and be less like to bork a drive and lose its data (yes, they are backed up but that would be one heck of a lot of data to restore ).

You're lucky. I can't have caffeine plus it doesn't do anything for me anyway. So off to bed I go.

[Marie SWE]

Thanks for the suggestion but using UUIDs for automatically mounting disks/partitions is recommended over using just a label (I'm not going to pretend to fully understand why ). I finally found a tutorial on line that was simple but complete (it's amazing how many half-arsed Linux tutorials are out there) and did a successful preliminary test a few minutes ago using a couple of retired 500GB SSDs and an external USB enclosure, changing the UUID of one to the UUID of the other one. I now have two 500GB SSDs with identical UUIDs.

I need to edit the fstab in LT1 to have only the entries for the data drives in LT1, then change the UUIDs of the data drives in LT2 to match those of LT1's data drives (and if you understood that, explain it to me ). I didn't get my nap out last night and need to catch a few ZZZZs before waddling errands later today. I'll work on this tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how wiped out I am after today, so I won't be distracted and be less like to bork a drive and lose its data (yes, they are backed up but that would be one heck of a lot of data to restore ).

You're lucky. I can't have caffeine plus it doesn't do anything for me anyway. So off to bed I go.

it isn't so much the coffee, it is more the time before I start to wake up for real. it takes 2-3hours before I start to run on all cylinders. I get sharpest and most creative at night.. I guess I have a vampire gene

Recommended.. hmm... that was a strange word.... is that something you have for dinner.
Change UUID is a old thing i did in the past on ms-dos to get around copy protection on floppy disks.. then also later on windows system but it is called serial number.. same shit, different name.
I also use that trick when I swich out Swap partitions/disks, to not have to edit my system to be able to hibernate and things like that.
For internal drives/partitions in my desktops I do use ID by label to easy spot what is what without need to open disks or fstab... So far, I never had any issues with that solution.

as for answer the LT1 and LT2 thing.. i didn't figured out what printscreen was to what disk as all UUID seems to be identical. So i cant see where it has changed.
But generally if the UUID change of some reason it's not only Fstab that get effected but a few things more.. so you will get conflicts when one thing says one and the other thing is another.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thanks for the suggestion but using UUIDs for automatically mounting disks/partitions is recommended over using just a label (I'm not going to pretend to fully understand why ). I finally found a tutorial on line that was simple but complete (it's amazing how many half-arsed Linux tutorials are out there) and did a successful preliminary test a few minutes ago using a couple of retired 500GB SSDs and an external USB enclosure, changing the UUID of one to the UUID of the other one. I now have two 500GB SSDs with identical UUIDs.

I need to edit the fstab in LT1 to have only the entries for the data drives in LT1, then change the UUIDs of the data drives in LT2 to match those of LT1's data drives (and if you understood that, explain it to me ). I didn't get my nap out last night and need to catch a few ZZZZs before waddling errands later today. I'll work on this tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how wiped out I am after today, so I won't be distracted and be less like to bork a drive and lose its data (yes, they are backed up but that would be one heck of a lot of data to restore ).

You're lucky. I can't have caffeine plus it doesn't do anything for me anyway. So off to bed I go.

it isn't so much the coffee, it is more the time before I start to wake up for real. it takes 2-3hours before I start to run on all cylinders. I get sharpest and most creative at night.. I guess I have a vampire gene ...

Or ADHD or DSPD (Delayed, Sleep Phase Disorder) or both, like me (DSPD is common with people with ADHD). I also tend to be more creative and mid is usually sharper late at night. I just woke up from my nap (stupid geriatric bladder) and I'm still yawning my head off.

...But generally if the UUID change of some reason it's not only Fstab that get effected but a few things more.. so you will get conflicts when one thing says one and the other thing is another.

A shared UUID will appear only once on each computer so there should be no conflicts. This is an oversimplified example. LT1 will have four data drives:

Data1 UUID: 1111 (well, I said it was oversimplified)
Data2 UUID: 2222
Data3 UUID: 3333
Data4 UUID: 4444

No conflict so far.

Then you have LT2; It also has four data drives:

Data1 UUID: 1111
Data2 UUID: 2222
Data3 UUID: 3333
Data4 UUID: 4444

Since LT1 and LT2 will never connect to each other, I see no reason why the two laptops can't share the same UUID entries in each drives fstab, which is what would happen if LT2 ran a "clone" of LT1s boot drive, which is what essentially happen if I restored an image of LT1's boot drive onto LT2's boot drive (or, at least, that's the theory, anyway). LT1, LT2, and LT3, even though different brands, are built on the same Clevo chassis so they should be similar enough to let me get away with it.

[Marie SWE]

Or ADHD or DSPD (Delayed, Sleep Phase Disorder) or both, like me (DSPD is common with people with ADHD). I also tend to be more creative and mid is usually sharper late at night. I just woke up from my nap (stupid geriatric bladder) and I'm still yawning my head off.

I have absolutely nothing to blame.. I do have mild dyslexia and english is my second language.. I do can blame for reading wrong from times to times and bad writing language.. but for my night energy.. I has to make something up like... My soul is American so my biological clock is set for your timezone.... or, my heavy metal goth style makes me to a half vampire.

A shared UUID will appear only once on each computer so there should be no conflicts. This is an oversimplified example. LT1 will have four data drives:

Data1 UUID: 1111 (well, I said it was oversimplified)
Data2 UUID: 2222
Data3 UUID: 3333
Data4 UUID: 4444

No conflict so far.

Then you have LT2; It also has four data drives:

Data1 UUID: 1111
Data2 UUID: 2222
Data3 UUID: 3333
Data4 UUID: 4444

Since LT1 and LT2 will never connect to each other, I see no reason why the two laptops can't share the same UUID entries in each drives fstab, which is what would happen if LT2 ran a "clone" of LT1s boot drive, which is what essentially happen if I restored an image of LT1's boot drive onto LT2's boot drive (or, at least, that's the theory, anyway). LT1, LT2, and LT3, even though different brands, are built on the same Clevo chassis so they should be similar enough to let me get away with it.

Now did my mind connect it.. 20:53 local time, I just don't work daytime... LapTop1 and LapTop2
No then identical UUID dosen't matter.

what can have happen is that the other laptops hardware made new connection identifiers to your disk and therefor the UUID changed when you connected the external disks up on first boot after cloning procedure.
Even if linux base install includes all hardware drivers so you can move it from computer to computer... if the hardware is different then different drivers from the kernel will be loaded... and theoretically the hardware then reconfigure the OS so they become teamplayers.
Windows10 is also possible to move the disk from one computer to another and it will boot up and work.. it takes a little longer the first boot as windows rearrange the hardware drivers.

That is my theory of why your UUID changed.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Woo hoo! Success (doing flatulent geriatric happy shuffle)!

I edited LT1's fstab file last night before crashing for the night. This morning, I first made a new Rescuezilla image of LT1's boot drive and copied it to a USB thumb drive. Then, I changed Data1-4's UUIDs in LT2 to the corresponding UUIDs from LT1. Of course, the data drives in LT2 wouldn't automagically mount at boot anymore (duh!) but I was now able to mount them using Disks.

Afterwards, I used Rescuezilla on LT2 to "restore" its boot drive with the LT1 boot drive image that I had copied to the thumb drive (I just plugged the thumb drive into LT2 and worked directly from there instead of copying the image to LT2). When I booted LT2 back up, everything was working as far as I could tell. Then I made a Rescuezilla image of the boot drive

I also used Rescuezilla to clone LT2's now working boot drive to the two spare boot drives (cloning was faster since it avoided the USB bottleneck). Also, now that I know that Rescuezilla can verify images, I won't be needing to swap boot drives to test images nearly as often.

All I need to do now with LT2 is to connect it to LT1's peripherals (USB DAC, a mouse dongle mounted on the wall, my scanners, and the HDMI leading to my TV) to make sure they all will work and, assuming they do, I'll be a happy camper.

I still need to convert LT3 (another used laptop built on the same Clevo chassis as the first two) from Win 11 to Mint 19.3, pretty much the same as I have done with LT2 except I'm going to only have one data drive in it so I have a place to put LT3's Rescuezilla images and Timeshift snapshots. I've already changed the UUID on a retired 2TB Samsung 860 Evo and labeled it Data1 and installed the sled and pads onto the drive. I had considered using a retired 500GB Samsung 850 Evo but that might have been cutting it a bit close capacitywise. My retired drives just sit in a drawer looking pretty so why not use a larger one?

Assuming everything works out the way I hope it will, I can easily keep two backup computers fully updated with any changes I make to the daily driver, such as settings changes, programs added or removed, and any other updates by simply restoring Lt2's and LT3's bootdrives with the latest LT1 image.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, especially from Mr. Rescuezilla himself. I didn't even know he was a member here. His suggestions were very helpful for setting me on the right path to fixing my Rescuezilla problems (yes, the problems were mine, not Rescuezilla's). I've since discovered that Rescuezilla has its own user forum (useful to know for the future).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Update: I just tested Laptop 2 on Laptop 2's peripherals and everything worked fine with only a couple of minor hiccups.

Instead of mirroring the laptop's display with the TV, connected by HDMI, the displays were extended. It took only a few seconds to open Display and check Mirror. I'll probably have to do this after every time I update the boot drive with an Laptop 1 Rescuezilla image. I don't feel this is enough of an issue to worry about.

The other hiccup is weird. When I first plug in the power supply cord, then open up the laptop it is already starting up. Again, weird . After that, shutting down the computer, then opening the computer doesn't automagically start up the computer. After I shut the computer down and put it away, it dawned on me that the BIOS may have a Restart on Power Restore setting. I'm not particularly worried about it and can live with it since the only time I'll plug in the PSU cable is when I'm going to be starting up the computer but I'll check the BIOS the next time I dig it out for updates.

I start working on LT3 later.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Last night, shortly before making me the filling of a sheet sandwich, using Rescuezilla, I cloned LT1's boot drive to LT3's three boot drives (two are spares/backups). Cloning is a bit faster than restoring from an image.

This morning, I opened up LT3, removed the 1TB WD Blue NVMe boot drive (which had been installed in the wrong slot using the wrong kind of screw ) and the HDD a 1tb HGST (it was just plugged in without a mounting bracket and held in by imagination and wishful thinking ). I get the feeling the guy I bought this from on FleaBay gutted the good stuff and replaced with whatever "stuff" he had on hand. At least I paid far less for it than I did for LT2. That WD Blue (more like Blew), despite having twice the capacity of the 512GB Sammys, had less than half the chips. I suspect the WD didn't have any DRAM on it.

In their place, I installed one of the Samsung 512GB 970 Pro NVMe boot drives and a Samsung 2TB 860 Evo data drive, the one I had already changed the UUID on to match the UUID of the other two laptops data 1 drive. The only reason I bothered to install a data drive in this machine was so I would have a place to put the Timeshift snapshot and the Rescuezilla image folders.

The machine booted up as I expected. I didn't need to do any tweaking on it other than to reduce the brightness a bit. I was shocked to find out that the brightness slider that comes up when clicking on the battery icon actually works. Cool! Some things were broken--desktop shortcuts, the Menu icon was missing, wallpaper reverted to default Mint wallpapers--but I expected that since I didn't install any data drives in the machine, other than aforementioned one. The Data1 icon does appear onscreen, as expected. I didn't bother making data drives for this machine since it will be put into actual service if one of my other laptops goes belly up; then I could swap the deceased laptop's data drives into LT3 and go to town on it.

After fooling around with it to make sure things working as expected and updating the kernel (it came through shortly after I set the machine up so I now know updates works), I rebooted and made the first Timeshift snapshot. I shut down again, booted up Rescuezilla from a Ventoy disk, made an image of the boot drive and verified it, then shut down again.

After that, I cleaned up the machine--the keys had some oily fingerprints and the screen was a bit smeary--sticker bombed it, then put it away for probably the next three months when I'll fire it up to check it out and update the boot drives.

Rescuezilla continues to be a rock star!