Solved To do at the beginning

[Skybear]

After reinstalling Linux Mint 22.3 / Cinnamon 64-bit, I’d like to ask for some ideas on what I should add to my new system?

i’ve turned-on the UFW and updated the system (sudo apt update).

What else should I do or install?

 

[Condobloke]

You will find : Timeshift : already in the menu. right click on it and select 'add to panel'
(so it is easy to access)

then:
Grab an external drive. Open Timeshift, ...click on Settings....rsync is the snapshot type....Set the Location for your snapshots to be that external drive. Schedule:..keep at least 2 daily and 1 weekly. Timeshift will delete snapshots as necessary to maintain those numbers.(you can keep as many as you like....just be aware they can consume a hell of a lot of space)

Users:If you dont tick/mark any of the little circles you get basic.....Tick/mark Include Only hidden Files....and the end one...Include all Files gives you your home folder etc etc (takes more space...if your external is a good size, it becomes of not consequence)

Be aware, Timeshift ONLY restores system files....not pics or music etc etc....STRICTLY system files...no games etc

If your external drive is new, partition off a piece of approx 150GB and format as ext4
If it is a used external drive, carve off a piece of that size and again format that piece to ext4

Ext4 is quite versatile :
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-t...em-for-your-needs-and-why-ext4-is-so-popular/

When you have set it up (yes, it as straightforward as I have made it appear) open Timeshift and at the top of its window, you will see : CREATE
Single click on that....and timeshift will start producing its first snapshot, and saving it to your nominated external drive.
It will take a while.... the first one always does. Do Not interrupt it. !! This applies to anything Timeshift is doing....It KNOWS what it is doing...Do Not interrupt.
if you are doing a Restore (after screwing something up) don't change any of the places etc that timeshift is restoring to. You, have already told it where the snapshots are stored, and it knows the name of your main drive. Trust it. It is an astonishingly clever app.

Edit to Add:
External drive:...stores your snapshots off your main drive. The mindset is that your main drive is the one most likely to break down....so If that happens you want your snapshots stored on an External so you can replace the broken main drive and restore from the External. Life gets to be a sigh of relief.
Ext4 format; Safe & Reliable. it works, regardless of the file size. Trustworthy.

Question: ?
My external is 2TB. Timeshift takes up around 140GB+....varies from user to user naturally. if I had the time (and money) over I would buy a 4TB, not because of timeshift, but because I have since figured out how to download and store every tv show etc etc on the planet.
On Timeshift, I keep :

 

[Condobloke]

The above is enough to keep me out of strife....just.
I also use 'rescuezilla' for full image backups, once per month

I am a tinkerer. If it can be broken, I will break it.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Then after that, and only after that, you might want to finalise getting that grub menu to your liking, in terms of order, and font size.

After that, you can be a kid in a candy store, lol.

BTW - with the drive you set up for Timeshift, you might also want to carve off a portion formatted to NTFS, to safeguard what from Windows is valuable to you.

Cheers

Wiz

 

[bob466]

I do a clean install every 3 years and I do it on my spare SSD.

Once Mint is installed to the whole Drive...I'll change a few things in Themes...enable the firewall...install all updates...run the Driver Manager.

Copy and paste all my notes and folders etc from my main SSD and printer/scanner Drivers...install my 4 Browsers...add-ons and install my web sites saved as a HTML file.

Install all my software...install my printer/scanner and my VPN...import my VM. I'll then change my Desktop background from my wallpaper folder...change the login screen...change the Cinnamon starting sound.
I'll optimise my SSD on this clean install...very important.

Once all of this is done and I'm happy...I'll then create an image with both Foxclone and Rescuezilla as I don't use Tinmeshift.
The image will now be placed on my main SSD.

 

[Skybear]

Sorry for creating a new thread on the same question. I forgot about this one. My bad.

 

[deb_user]

Timeshift will restore whatever is in a backup by default. It does not back up /home by default. But it can be configured to do so if desired. Users who have backed up /home in a backup should be aware of what will be restored, which might not be what was desired in some cases. I go along with timeshift and do separate backups of system files and /home, but that's a choice. If one does include /home, or other non-system files in backups, then some care may be needed if a restore is contemplated, just so newer files don't get over-written unexpectedly.

 

[Smilax]

I also use 'rescuezilla' for full image backups, once per month

This is really nice, thank you. Clonezilla sure but I'd never heard of this. I just copied it onto my Ventoy drive and booted an old HP All-In-One (Ryzen 3) first try. Wifi worked with no fiddling. Interface looks good, sharp. This should give me something to do for a while.

 

[Condobloke]

The only drawback I have ever encountered with Rescuezilla, was when I took an image of my 256GB drive and set out to restore that image to a 250GB drive.
It does not work on smaller drives

It WILL work on a larger drive

The smaller drive was in the same tower as the larger, original drive. A question to thier support promptly told me that was not going to be a success.

So, now I know. In the unlikely event of my drive going south, I simply replace it with same size drive or bigger.
I have had occasion to use a backup. I had screwed up the install something shocking !

So, I accessed R'zilla on its usb stick, clicked on Restore, etc etc etc

It worked ! Perfectly !

Only then could I stop holding my breath. WHy?....because the true test of a backup comes when you have to rely on it to Restore.
Up until that point it is just window dressing....a largish file on an external drive....UNTESTED.

I actually tested it again a few months later.....deliberately. It was unnecessary at the time. I just needed to know that it would respond as it is supposed to.
And.....It did. Perfectly again.

When you take the backup and it finishes, go back to the main screen, and you will see it give the opportunity to Verify that update. Take the time to do that.
When the verification finishes it will show ' sf table is present' ....(.I believe that is correct....I will come back and edit it if it is incorrect.)....If that is present the backup is good.

Its Features are well worth reading/remembering. It is quite versatile.

 

[Smilax]

I've already run two backup and verify sets on my daily driver. I happened to have one of those aluminum OWC dual drive enclosures. Loaded a pair of retired Seagate 1TB data center drives and initialized the set "raid 0" (striped set) connected USB 3.0 and raced that against a third stand alone Seagate 1TB from the same lot (I've got a box of these) off the same USB bus. All ext4 target volumes. Wound up getting ~5.5gbps overall to the single drive, and ~12.0 to the OWC pair. The single drive started out around 12 but wouldn't sustain it, while the OWC mule just kept chugging. This thing is the Mercury Elite Pro Dual for anyone interested. I picked mine up on eBay for about 50 bucks, looked like something fun to tinker with. Seems to work great for this.

Oh, I selected No Compression on the backups. I'm sure there are use cases for it, but as long as I'm not forced to use tape it doesn't help me. And not even then.

I tried the Image Explorer (beta) tool and was not overly surprised or disappointed when I ran into the attached problem. This will be cool when it works. I'll keep poking at it tomorrow as well as trying some restores.

 

[Smilax]

The only drawback I have ever encountered with Rescuezilla, was when I took an image of my 256GB drive and set out to restore that image to a 250GB drive.
It does not work on smaller drives

It WILL work on a larger drive

The smaller drive was in the same tower as the larger, original drive. A question to thier support promptly told me that was not going to be a success.

So, now I know. In the unlikely event of my drive going south, I simply replace it with same size drive or bigger.
I have had occasion to use a backup. I had screwed up the install something shocking !

So, I accessed R'zilla on its usb stick, clicked on Restore, etc etc etc

It worked ! Perfectly !

Only then could I stop holding my breath. WHy?....because the true test of a backup comes when you have to rely on it to Restore.
Up until that point it is just window dressing....a largish file on an external drive....UNTESTED.

I actually tested it again a few months later.....deliberately. It was unnecessary at the time. I just needed to know that it would respond as it is supposed to.
And.....It did. Perfectly again.

When you take the backup and it finishes, go back to the main screen, and you will see it give the opportunity to Verify that update. Take the time to do that.
When the verification finishes it will show ' sf table is present' ....(.I believe that is correct....I will come back and edit it if it is incorrect.)....If that is present the backup is good.

Its Features are well worth reading/remembering. It is quite versatile.

I thought you might appreciate this. I backed up my workstation’s nvme, Rescuezilla found three partitions. I selected all three and no compression and backed up to an external drive via USB 3.0. The backup folder is ~72gb. I then copied the entire backup folder to another sata disk with a usb/sata cable to take it to the workbench.

I then took an old HP Stream pseudo proto laptop (2gb ram, 32gb sd card for a hard drive, it came with Windows Live or some such) and booted Rescuezilla with a thumb drive, connected the sata drive with the backup folder to the second USB port, and an unformatted 500gb sata drive to the last port. If it works on this it should work anywhere, right?

Selected my source drive (it found the backup set), selected my target drive, confirmed all the warnings and then went and watched an episode of Gunsmoke. Bonus: Did you know Ken Curtis, the actor who played Festus Haggen, was formerly a lead vocalist with The Sons of the Pioneers along with Roy Rogers? Fabulous voice, check it out.

Long story short(ened) the restore eventually completed without issue. I started to shut it all down and take the target back to my office for examination but then I thought, can this toy boot from this?

F9, select the drive I just restored to, and wait. I got to watch a lot of messages scroll for a while and the screen go through some contortions, but it never stopped and I never touched a key. Eventually, I was looking at my buggered up login screen. So login I did, and after a while I’m looking at my desktop, again no stoppages or errors.

This thing now thinks it’s an Optiplex. Hey Mom, you’re getting’ a Dell!

 

[KGIII]

I selected all three and no compression and backed up to an external drive via USB 3.0.

You can safely use compression if you want. Certain material can be compressed quite a bit. Other material, not so much.

(The math behind compression is fascinating, by the way.)

Things like text files (which you have a lot of) compress very well. Images can be compressed to some extent, as can videos. They just can't be compressed as much as something like a text file.

If you're bored, find a large text file and compress it. Find a video file of the same size and compress that. The former will be a much smaller file than the latter.

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZMA

 

[Smilax]

You can safely use compression if you want. Certain material can be compressed quite a bit. Other material, not so much.

(The math behind compression is fascinating, by the way.)

Things like text files (which you have a lot of) compress very well. Images can be compressed to some extent, as can videos. They just can't be compressed as much as something like a text file.

If you're bored, find a large text file and compress it. Find a video file of the same size and compress that. The former will be a much smaller file than the latter.

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZMA

Understood. That will come in handy if I ever need to create a backup set >800GB or so. I mainly don't use compression because I don't need it and am adverse to unnecessary complications (can't help it, traumatized by tape drives). Part of my last job before retirement was decommissioning a data center. I would up with all I wanted of 1TB 3.5" SATA enterprise drives that aren't much use for anything else. 5400 and 7200 rpm. They require extra power. I got a 12v > 5v step down transformer and can run them with a car battery.

 

[Condobloke]

FWIW.
When I first used Rescuezilla, I worked my way through the various steps, and eventually came to the page where it indicates that compression will take place.....and that the compression shown is just fine...if you are unsure, leave it as is.

So, I left it alone. And all has been well since then. The Restores finish as intended, so the decompression also causes no issues.

works for me.

 

[Smilax]

FWIW.
When I first used Rescuezilla, I worked my way through the various steps, and eventually came to the page where it indicates that compression will take place.....and that the compression shown is just fine...if you are unsure, leave it as is.

So, I left it alone. And all has been well since then. The Restores finish as intended, so the decompression also causes no issues.

works for me.

I'll give it a try, thanks. Do you think it might make a difference with Image Viewer once that's supposed to be up?

 

[KGIII]

(can't help it, traumatized by tape drives)

As an aside, there are businesses still using tape storage. It's great for long-term stuff, especially when stuffed into a secure area with climate controls.

And, well, don't forget the old adage. There's no bandwidth like a station wagon full of tapes barreling down the highway at 70 MPH.

If you'll allow some fun off-topic...

Though these days, we have some sweet bandwidth. But that adage still holds true. Instead of picturing tapes, picture microSD cards.

The average space in a current SUV is 20³ ft. You can fit roughly 3.5 million microSD cards into that space. The largest microSD card can hold 2 TB.

That's roughly 6.5 Exabytes of data.

As we can more accurately relate (in our heads) what a TB is, that's 6,544 Terabytes,

Or that's 6,544,000 GB, if that helps.

That will hold more than a billion average-sized high-res photos. It'd hold more than 3 million 1080p movies.

However... Those cards are $400 each (though I'm sure you'd get a bulk discount). It'd be around $1.3 billion to buy that many.

Using 1 TB microSD cards would be well under $500 million, and might be the most economical way to do this.

Also, I'm not sure that they can produce 3.5 million microSD cards in any reasonable amount of time.

But, still, imagine 6.5 Exabytes barreling down the highway at 70 MPH. I suspect that'd be the fastest throughput the world has ever seen.

Actually, we can do that math. Driving slowly across the country (from NYC to LA) will take about 41 hours. So, that works out to a bandwidth of 45.39 GB/sec. Note the capital B. (It is roughly 363.12 Gb/sec.)

However, the Cannonball record is 25 hours and 39 minutes. However, our enterprising driver will not be breaking the law.

They estimate that Google has up to 15 Exabytes of data, if you're curious about the scale.

(Some numbers drawn from Google and only sanity checked. The numbers make sense.)

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.