How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

[IgorBG]

Hi from new Linux convert. My projects are moving slowly from MS technologies to Linux and open-source community, so currently I am forced to use both.
I have laptop with Kubuntu and Windows Vista on it which needs to be formatted and reinstalled.
I would like to keep my Kubuntu installation (maybe to expand HD space little bit since I set only 10GB during installation). I have read about Remastersys tool, but I am not sure if it will keep my personal data, if it will create new install CD or take whole 10GB image etc.

I don't know much about ISO images, virtual environments etc. but I am willing to try.
When I reinstall Windows Vista (ups I wrote it again) I would like to put back my Kubuntu either as physical or virtual installation.

I would really like to experience virtual environment, and play around with it, but I don't want to start virtual machine from Vista (because of poor performance).
So what are my options, and what can you suggest me?
Thanks

[Troberg]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

If you know what programs you have installed, it's really simple.

* Install all pending updates.
* Copy home directory to USB stick (make sure you have the proper permissions to get it all).
* Reinstall.
* Install the programs you had in the previous install.
* Install all pending updates.
* Copy the home directory from the USB disk to get your files and settings.

That should take care of it.

There are a couple of cases where you may need to do more. For instance, if you mount network shares or has it configured as a Samba server, you may need to move a couple of files from the /etc dir.

[IgorBG]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Thanks. But my problem is that I have many programs and custom systems installed, some of them use SSH, and I am not sure if my account will still be valid (I think it should since my SSH folder will be copied)
Anyway I would still like to know how to create virtual environment from it

Igor

[bitzbox]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

I've not actually used Remastersys but I have used a very similar tool with PCLOS. If it works anything like that one does, it should create a LiveCD/DVD of your complete system which you should be able to boot from and then install your system just as it was before. Have a look here for further information - http://www.geekconnection.org/remast...ersystool.html

Hope this helps and best of luck

Regards .....

[IgorBG]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Thanks, I think I'll try that

[bitzbox]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Just to offer a bit of support, I've been playing about with remastersys this weekend and I can assure you that it works

• Remastered my running system
• Burnt the iso to a DVD
• Booted the LiveDVD in a virtual machine
• Installed the LiveDVD in a virtual machine

Voila! 8)

The only thing I haven't done is to install my remastered LiveDVD onto the HDD but if it works in a virtual machine then I'm confident it will work on the HDD.

Regards .....

[IgorBG]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Hey Bitzbox thanks for the answer.
One question?
You said it did work in virtual machine. So is this virtual machine running on some other OS?

Suppose I don't have Windows, only clean laptop with formatted drive, what should I install on it in order to run virtual Kubuntu?

Thanks in advance

[josefko]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

I would offer another approach. Copy the whole Kubuntu partition to external drive formatted with Ext2/Ext3 using this command

rsync -auR --stats --delete --exclude-from=kubuntu_exclude / /media/sdc2/kubuntu

/ ... the whole file system
/media/cdc2/... external drive
Content of kubuntu_exclude:

/proc
/lost+found
/mnt
/media
/sys
/var/log/auth.log
/var/log/messages
/var/log/syslog

and then from Live CD use similar command to copy it back.
I use it for backup of the whole system, but never used it to restore.

[bitzbox]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Hey Bitzbox thanks for the answer.
One question?
You said it did work in virtual machine. So is this virtual machine running on some other OS?

Nope, I'm running VirtualBox under Kubuntu

Suppose I don't have Windows, only clean laptop with formatted drive, what should I install on it in order to run virtual Kubuntu?

Thanks in advance

As VirtualBox is an application, you would need to install any OS which supports VirtualBox. To give you a better idea, pay a visit to http://www.virtualbox.org but most Linux distros include a VirtualBox package in their repos. But be careful because the packaged versions are normally OSE versions which don't support USB so if you need USB support you would need to d/load the PUEL version from the VirtualBox web site.

Hope this helps .....

[ukchucktown]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

I also like Clonezilla. Remastersys is probably easier to understand and use while Clonezilla is more advanced. You really can't go wrong with either one. You can also just use the dd command. One of my all time favorite unix commands. The power in that little command is incredible.

[IgorBG]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Thanks

[Telengard]

Re: How to keep my Kubuntu installation after I reinstall laptop?

Copying files to a Samba server or to an NTFS drive will lose permissions and ownership information.

To backup your home directory you should wrap it in a tar archive. It is the best way to make sure permissions and ownership are preserved. Just create the archive on an external (USB) hard disk.

$ tar -cvzf /media/ExternalHD/backup.tar.gz /home/UserName

To learn more about using tar:

Read the article https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem/TAR. Read the tar man page. Install and read the tar documentation as shown below.

$ sudo apt-get install tar-doc
$ info tar
$ man tar

If you want to backup your entire Kubuntu installation, system files and all, you should probably just use Clonezilla as others have said.

You can also backup your entire system with tar, although that is somewhat more complicated.

As already mentioned, you can backup using the dd command. The problem is that the resulting image must be restored to a hard disk with exactly the same geometry as the original. There is also some risk involved with the dd command because it can destroy a hard disk as easily as it can copy one.

You should definitely read the article BackupYourSystem in Community Ubuntu Documentation. It will give you a good overview of your options.