Today I tried garuda black arch and I fell in love with it! I customized it the whole day to make it perfect for me but I am not a Linux "pro".
Somehow accidentally the top bar got broken and I don't know how to recover it. I tried to restore it with snapper but it does not work.
I played around with some settings because I trusted snapper that it can recover everything with just a few clicks.
Is it somehow possible to make snapshots with really all the settings so I can really trust the tool that a restore is enough to bring it back like it was?
Not to be rude, but Black Arch is an edition for advanced users and you appear to be a novice.
Snapshots do not contain the settings stored in the users home directory. Snapshots only restore the /root contents. You need to implement your own backup solution for your user directory.
Hello. I also like to know a way to back up settings. I came across this term command, copied it from garuda update output.
rsync -AHXal --ignore-existing
I could send it to another drive, to try it out. Im hoping it is safe.
I ask because there are like 50 plus options using --help lol
BackInTime is a good program for backing up your home directory. You can choose which file/directories you wish to include/exclude. This will save you a ton of wasted space as there are likely many GB's of files you have no need to backup such as browser cache, thumbnails etc, etc.
Occasionally I am not an advanced user, right. But I really love this OS and I just want to use it as a clean "Host OS", as I will install a Win10 VM for work and gaming apps.
When I'm not working or gaming, I want to advance my linux "skills" and I really like to play around with the settings because everything is customizable.
Sooner or later I will definitely broke something and I want to be able to restore the following with just a few mouse clicks:
All customized settings like panels, docks, widgets, gestures, hotkeys, networks, vpns....
All apps and logins like dropbox, keepass, firefox...
All files from /home
So I want to use this as my main OS for daily use but I also want to play around with new things without the fear of loosing all my settings and data.
I would really appreciate a short guide to what's the best tool to get this done and how to do it.
My advice, but possibly not the best, is to separate concerns between data files (your data that is) and so called dotfiles (the configuration).
I'd backup the data files with rsync or whatever you prefer, and put dotfiles in version control.
There's a nice wrapper around git and fzf called dotbare to help with this.
Generally, myself and many of other long time Linux users do not keep our data in our home partition. I always symlink my data into my home directory from another drive.
I use a VM or even a test computer for all of my learning/testing before doing anything to my main machine. I keep my learning to a system I fully intend to break.
Even more than a good backup, you may want just setup something to be destroyed. That way you never have to worry about being left without a machine.
That makes sense but when I "play around" and it works I want to keep it and use the new feature in my main OS. Also I have a Win10 on another SSD, it was my old main OS and now it is my backup OS. I am typing this words from this win10 now because I messed up the blackarch Geruda and now I am downloading the KDE Dragonized and will try this one
I will create a VM in the KDE Edition and install another KDE in it for testing sensitive cases - this brings another question: Is it somehow possible to deploy the state of the VM to the host? Like making a backintime-backup in the Vm and restore it in the host - should be possible or not?
Edit: Also I could deploy my current Host-state into the VM and if the new-tested things are working then backup vm and restore it in host - does something speak against this?
Should I open another topic for this case?
Only a full system image can 100% restore a computer to a very specific settings, regardless what OS you run. That is why I have image copies of my systems using Acronis True Image 2020. You can use any imaging program that supports the file system of the system you are using. That is why I'm running a Frankenstein Garuda on ext4, aside from being an old reliable, Acronis True Image USB supports it.
