clonezilla - restoring

[LE_746F6D617A7A69]

(...)

Do You mean that taking a snapshot of a running system requires to f.e. remount the root File System as read-only? Or to stop all the services / programs?

Stopping all services is not enough to prevent any write, and obviously you cannot stop all programs as some programs are needed to take the image. E.g. the bash shell writes each command in the history log. Remounting all filesystems (not only /) on the source device read-only prevent many services and programs from running properly, so I can hardly call this a "running system".

Thanks for clarifying this aspect. Of course the way to make images of a running system depends on the system configuration - usually it means taking a snapshot of a /root and/or home partition. On servers, the critical services (should) use dedicated storage systems, so they can keep running during creating a backup of the base system partition(s).

In case of typical desktop PC, remounting the /root as read-only allows to backup the drive without rebooting, using standard tools - IMO that is far more convenient, especially that in many cases it's possible to continue normal work, without having to wait until the backup is finished (and again, without rebooting). Then, You can remount the /root again as read-write (restoring the standard system behaviour).

[milomak]

what do You mean by "(...) may result in an inconsistent image"?

I'll take an example. While dd is running and has copied the first half of the device, the system writes new data in the first half (already copied by dd) and in the second half (not yet copied by dd). The resulting image will contain the old data in the first half and the new data in the second half, making it inconsistent. This is like screen tearing when the framebuffer reads and writes are not synchronized.

Do You mean that taking a snapshot of a running system requires to f.e. remount the root File System as read-only? Or to stop all the services / programs?

Stopping all services is not enough to prevent any write, and obviously you cannot stop all programs as some programs are needed to take the image. E.g. the bash shell writes each command in the history log. Remounting all filesystems (not only /) on the source device read-only prevent many services and programs from running properly, so I can hardly call this a "running system".

so is that to say that if i am using rsync on a running system, that it will be as close to the system when rsync stops

so from playing around with clonezilla, i probably want to backup partitions. rsync has this option and also to compress the backup as a bz2 file.

would there be any difference between the two when restoring?

[eor2004]

i apologise if i have chosen the wrong forum

i have a clonezilla iso. will burn to usb. boot it.

what should i note to actually be able to make a working restore point?

Hi Milomak, you can also use timeshift to do system snapshots, yes I know it's rsync with a graphical user interface but it's really very easy to use, I've been using it in opensuse and on debian and it works really good to restore my system, if you do decide to go with clonezilla make sure that hard disk that you are transfering or cloning your system image to, is bigger in size than the one you want to back up, also it would be better if you use USB-3 for the backup device, hope this helps, cheers!

P.S. Here's a link to a document with the instructions that you can download on how to clone a disk with clonezilla: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D7QmKg ... sp=sharing