Backup whole OS

I have to format my entire disk and reinstall Ubuntu.

I have installed a lot of software on my current system. And I will have to reinstall all those updates, drivers and applications too.

Is there any way I can make an .iso image of my installed Ubuntu along with all the software, preferences, drivers etc in it ?

Is there any way I can back up my whole OS along with all its software, drives, updates and all ?

Solution 1:

What you can do is to backup your home directory and save a list of all packages that you have installed. To save the list of installed software use following command:

sudo dpkg --get-selections > package_list

This will create a file with a list of all pakcages/softwares that are installed on this system. You will need to backup this file to somewhere safe.

Then when you reinstall ubuntu on your machine you can use the following command to install all these software

sudo dpkg --set-selections < packages_list

This command WILL NOT install anything. It will just mark the packages for install. To install them, run the following command:

sudo apt-get -u dselect-upgrade

This will take time to complete as your system will download and install all the packages. After this command is complete replace your current home directory with the one you backedup previously.

Hope this helps

Solution 2:

I answered "How to customize live Ubuntu CD?" with a way of creating live CDs from current installations. This means that you will not need to download all the packages again. This guide may seem long and hard, but it is mostly "follow along" and "copy and paste". Here it is, copied out and edited a bit:

Creating a live CD from an existing/new installation

A good way would be making a live CD from a current installation. This can be done using a virtual machine (just don't install any VM tools inside the guest OS)

So, first we need a fresh install(if you can't install it for real, try using a virtual machine) with only things that you need (in your case thunderbird, samba and ssh). Then we tweak the system and record where the tweaks are (e.g. you change your desktop background, the settings are in ~/.gconf or you add firefox shortcuts, they are located in ~/Desktop). This is needed for step 4.

Set up some variables:
```
export WORK=~/temp
export CD=~/livecd
export FORMAT=squashfs
export FS_DIR=casper
```
Replace ~/temp with a path to a temporary directory in which we will work in. Replace ~/livecd with a path to the CD tree.
Make the folder structure. sudo mkdir -p ${CD}/{${FS_DIR},boot/grub} ${WORK}/rootfs

Now we will need to install some packages:

sudo apt-get install grub2 xorriso squashfs-tools

Now we will copy the current installation, modify the exclude flags to fit your needs:

sudo rsync -av --one-file-system --exclude=/proc/* --exclude=/dev/* \
--exclude=/sys/* --exclude=/tmp/* --exclude=/home/* --exclude=/lost+found \
--exclude=/var/tmp/* --exclude=/boot/grub/* --exclude=/root/* \
--exclude=/var/mail/* --exclude=/var/spool/* --exclude=${WORK}/rootfs \
--exclude=/etc/fstab --exclude=/etc/mtab --exclude=/etc/hosts \
--exclude=/etc/timezone --exclude=/etc/shadow* --exclude=/etc/gshadow* \
--exclude=/etc/X11/xorg.conf* --exclude=/etc/gdm/custom.conf \
/ ${WORK}/rootfs

If you have a separate boot partition, execute this: sudo cp -av /boot/* ${WORK}/rootfs/boot
If you want to copy your user configurations and files, modify this list as needed: CONFIG='.config .gconf Desktop someotherfolder andanotherfolder' And now we copy your configurations and files:

cd ~ && for i in $CONFIG
do
sudo cp -rpv --parents $i ${WORK}/rootfs/etc/skel
done

Now we chroot into the new system and modify it.

sudo mount  --bind /dev/ ${WORK}/rootfs/dev
sudo mount -t proc proc ${WORK}/rootfs/proc
sudo mount -t sysfs sysfs ${WORK}/rootfs/sys
sudo mount -t devpts devpts ${WORK}/rootfs/dev/pts
sudo chroot ${WORK}/rootfs /bin/bash

The next commands are done in chroot:

LANG=
apt-get update
apt-get install casper

Casper contains live scripts. Now the installer (gnome version) apt-get install ubiquity ubiquity-frontend-gtk Or if you want KDE:

apt-get install ubiquity ubiquity-frontend-kde

Update modules.dep and initramfs:

depmod -a $(uname -r)
update-initramfs -u -k $(uname -r)

Remove non-system users - do not worry, we have copied the settings and data into the "skeleton" of users. That means all new users will have them.

for i in `cat /etc/passwd | awk -F":" '{print $1}'`
do
    uid=`cat /etc/passwd | grep "^${i}:" | awk -F":" '{print $3}'`
    [ "$uid" -gt "999" -a  "$uid" -ne "65534"  ] && userdel --force ${i} 2>/dev/null
done

Clean up:

apt-get clean
find /var/log -regex '.*?[0-9].*?' -exec rm -v {} \;
find /var/log -type f | while read file
do
    cat /dev/null | tee $file
done
rm /etc/resolv.conf /etc/hostname

Exit chroot. exit

Now, we copy the kernel:

export kversion=`cd ${WORK}/rootfs/boot && ls -1 vmlinuz-* | tail -1 | sed 's@vmlinuz-@@'`
sudo cp -vp ${WORK}/rootfs/boot/vmlinuz-${kversion} ${CD}/boot/vmlinuz
sudo cp -vp ${WORK}/rootfs/boot/initrd.img-${kversion} ${CD}/boot/initrd.img
sudo cp -vp ${WORK}/rootfs/boot/memtest86+.bin ${CD}/boot

So that the installer doesn't install things like casper:

sudo chroot ${WORK}/rootfs dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package} ${Version}\n' | sudo tee ${CD}/${FS_DIR}/filesystem.manifest
sudo cp -v ${CD}/${FS_DIR}/filesystem.manifest{,-desktop}
REMOVE='ubiquity casper user-setup os-prober libdebian-installer4'
for i in $REMOVE 
do
    sudo sed -i "/${i}/d" ${CD}/${FS_DIR}/filesystem.manifest-desktop
done

Unmount what we have mounted:

sudo umount ${WORK}/rootfs/proc
sudo umount ${WORK}/rootfs/sys
sudo umount ${WORK}/rootfs/dev/pts
sudo umount ${WORK}/rootfs/dev

Convert to squashfs:

sudo mksquashfs ${WORK}/rootfs ${CD}/${FS_DIR}/filesystem.${FORMAT}

Make filesystem.size: echo -n $(sudo du -s --block-size=1 ${WORK}/rootfs | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}') | sudo tee ${CD}/casper/filesystem.size
And md5: find ${CD} -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sed "s@${CD}@.@" | grep -v md5sum.txt |sudo tee ${CD}/md5sum.txt

Now grub.cfg:

sudo nano ${CD}/boot/grub/grub.cfg

(replace nano with your fav text editor, it doesn't matter) Paste this and save:

set default="0"
set timeout=10

menuentry "Ubuntu GUI" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz boot=casper quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}


menuentry "Ubuntu in safe mode" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz boot=casper xforcevesa quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}


menuentry "Ubuntu CLI" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz boot=casper textonly quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}


menuentry "Ubuntu GUI persistent mode" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz boot=casper boot=casper persistent quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}


menuentry "Ubuntu GUI from RAM" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz boot=casper nopersistent toram quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}

menuentry "Check Disk for Defects" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz boot=casper integrity-check quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}


menuentry "Memory Test" {
linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin
}


menuentry "Boot from the first hard disk" {
set root=(hd0)
chainloader +1
}

Make the CD/DVD! sudo grub-mkrescue -o ~/live-cd.iso ${CD}
Test it using a virtual machine!

All credit goes to capink, because the guide is from here.

Solution 3:

there are various ways to do that. The simplest one is using remastersys

sudo remastersys dist

You should install ubiquity package before working with remastersys

or you can use fsarchiver, redo-backup (A live cd)

How to backup your operating system

Solution 4:

In China, some friends use ucloner in Ubuntu to backup the OS.

https://code.google.com/p/ucloner/

UCloner is a backup/restore/clone tool designed for Ubuntu Linux. In some way it's just like Norton Ghost for Windows.

With UCloner you can backup your Ubuntu system to a squashfs image file. Directly from this image file you can boot up a PC into a so-called "Live Ubuntu" environment (need "casper" package).

An active ubuntu system can clone itself into a/some target partition(s) with the help of UCloner. Remember Agent Smith in Matrix ? yeah, that's it.

It has both command line and graphical interface. It's more flexible when running in command line interface.

UCloner is free software, distributed under GPL v2.

enter image description here

Solution 5:

If you have Ubuntu installed on a single harddisk and you have another harddisk of equal or larger storage capacity, then cloning the disk is really simple:

sudo dd if=/<from disk> of=<to disk>

So, for example, if you want to clone sda to sdb, then you would do sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb. That would retain all partitions, boot manager, etc.

Be careful to use the correct if (input file) and of (output file). The input file is the disk you want to copy. If you switch order, then you will clone the empty disk onto the full one, which will leave you with two blank disks. :)

Also make sure that the new disk has sufficient space to clone the first disk. Otherwise it'll just be chopped off at the end. There will be no warnings.

If you want to create an image, then simply replace of=/dev/sdb with of=/some_place/disk-image.raw. Store it on another disk.