Remastersys

[GrouchyGaijin]

Hi all,

I tried to make a backup of my system, including all my personal files, but I received an error message telling me that the file size was too large for an iso.

I'm not sure what could be taking up so much space since I have all my videos and music files on an external harddrive. It could be that I have KDE installed along with Gnome.

I guess my first question is how can I tell the program to exclude anything related to KDE?

I was able to make an iso for a Live DVD, excluding all of my personal files, by choosing the distributable option from the menu. (Choice # 2)



I chose to make a distributable copy including cdfs files.

Question # 2: What exactly are cdfs files and how do you use them? The option to make an iso only also says that cd file system must have been completed already.

Question # 3: What happens if you haven't already made the cd file system?

When everything finished I had a folder filled with files.



Question # 4: What do I do with the temp users' files? I'm not sure why there are so many. I am the only user on this laptop.

Question # 5: How do I use the md5 file? I think it is a checksum, but I don't know how to use it.

Question # 6: Do I need to do anything with dummy system or temp iso folders?

I'm confused as you can tell

[Wobblybob]

I've never used Remastersys so am of little us to you but from past experience backing up my home folder I found the waste bin to be a problem as it often has tons of large files in it and it sits in the /home/yourname/.local/share/Trash folder within your home. make sure you delete the waste bin before you backup.

Question # 4: What do I do with the temp users' files? I'm not sure why there are so many. I am the only user on this laptop.

They are probably created by the backup process, try right clicking them and opening them in a text editor to check them out, or check the date/time they where created if it was at the time of the backup just delete them. I think the same goes for Q6 as the backup has failed the prog has not removed all it's working folders.

Question # 5: How do I use the md5 file? I think it is a checksum, but I don't know how to use it.

try https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM for help on that subject.

sorry i can't be of further help, good luck

[GrouchyGaijin]

Thanks Bob,

When I look at /home/john/.local/share/Trash
I see three folders: expunged, files and info

All three are empty. I hit ctrl+H inside each of them to make sure there were no hidden files and still all three come up empty.

Thank you for the link about the checksum.

[Wobblybob]

no problem you could use the command line

$ df -h
in a Terminal to give you an idea of disk space used
and
$ du -sh *
for folders

good luck with the backups have you come across clonezilla [Google is you friend]

[GrouchyGaijin]

I ran those commands and this is what I got:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5              27G  9.9G   16G  40% /
none                  998M  296K  998M   1% /dev
none                 1006M  540K 1005M   1% /dev/shm
none                 1006M  324K 1006M   1% /var/run
none                 1006M     0 1006M   0% /var/lock
/dev/sdb1             932G  309G  623G  34% /media/Elements

Elements is an external hard drive.

and

1.9G

This is a dual boot system with Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows XP.

Basically, I just want to backup the Ubuntu stuff so I can wipe the drive and put Ubuntu back as a single boot without having to download and install everything again.

I was able to make a Live DVD with Remastersys that looks like it has everything except my personal files.

I downloaded Clonezilla Live and will play with that to see if it might be better for what I want to do. Ideally I'd have all my personal files (wallpaper, theme, documents, scripts etc.) in the image as well as the installed programs.