<Solved> So How Much Is Too Much

[Ray2047]

I don't know why but I just can't seem to make a Remater except by blind luck and this install blind luck isn't working.

On the root partition I.m using 5.1GB out of 45 GB total. On the home partition I'm using 8.6 GB of 78 total GB. I'm excluding 5 directories for a total of 9690MiB. I am using the command:

mylivecd --nodir=^/home/roj/Videos,^/home/roj/WMP1,^/home/roj/WMP2,^/home/roj/WMP3,^/home/roj/WMP4

What I end up with is:

==================================================[100.00% 00:00:00/00:00:00]
                                                          
Restoring Services on the installed system

ls: cannot access livecd.iso: No such file or directory
Argument "" isn't numeric in division (/) at /usr/sbin/mylivecd line 244.

Created 'livecd.iso' (0,000 bytes) in 01:49:47

Is this just the old problem of too large?

 

[Just18]

Is that your complete command?

[Ray2047]

Is that your complete command?

Yes. Is it wrong?

[Just18]

Is that your complete command?

Yes. Is it wrong?

It doesn't specify the name of the ISO to be created.

I have never tried to run the command without that information, so am guessing that without it things might go awry.

regards.

[Ray2047]

Thanks. Will try that.

[bicol_willem]

Is that your complete command?

Yes. Is it wrong?

It doesn't specify the name of the ISO to be created.

I have never tried to run the command without that information, so am guessing that without it things might go awry.

regards.

Nope Just19, a name is just a option. Should work fine without.

[bicol_willem]

I don't know why but I just can't seem to make a Remater except by blind luck and this install blind luck isn't working.

On the root partition I.m using 5.1GB out of 45 GB total. On the home partition I'm using 8.6 GB of 78 total GB. I'm excluding 5 directories for a total of 9690MiB. I am using the command:

mylivecd --nodir=^/home/roj/Videos,^/home/roj/WMP1,^/home/roj/WMP2,^/home/roj/WMP3,^/home/roj/WMP4

What I end up with is:

==================================================[100.00% 00:00:00/00:00:00]
                                                          
Restoring Services on the installed system

ls: cannot access livecd.iso: No such file or directory
Argument "" isn't numeric in division (/) at /usr/sbin/mylivecd line 244.

Created 'livecd.iso' (0,000 bytes) in 01:49:47

Is this just the old problem of too large?

 

Since this is all rather small (although why on earth a 45 Gb root partition?), did you try to remaster with mylivecd --nodir=^/home option? You can easily leave out /home during a new install from your product anyway while anything of your interest in /home you can (and should) backup separately. That way the whole /home issue becomes irrelevant. You see, a remaster (OS) is not a clone and, as far as I know, not intent to keep data as well (possible but size matters!) which is more the task of a clone......(OS plus files)

[Ray2047]

Guess I'll give up because I don't have a clue how to backup Home except by remastering. Don't really care about root. My whole purpose is to save Home in a way I can reuse it. I know my root is too large but others complained about my previous partition table and that is the best I could do with out loosing Home the only thing I really cared about saving.
Thanks though for trying.

[Old-Polack]

Guess I'll give up because I don't have a clue how to backup Home except by remastering. Don't really care about root. My whole purpose is to save Home in a way I can reuse it. I know my root is too large but others complained about my previous partition table and that is the best I could do with out loosing Home the only thing I really cared about saving.
Thanks though for trying.

Do you have an external drive, or a USB stick large enough to hold the contents of your /home/ray directory? If you have a place to temporarily hold your data, rsync can copy everything in the directory and keep all the correct permissions.

[Ray2047]

Do you have an external drive, or a USB stick large enough to hold the contents of your /home/ray directory? If you have a place to temporarily hold your data, rsync can copy everything in the directory and keep all the correct permissions.

Thank you. I will try that. Can it be done to an internal HD also? Would I then just copy the old home  to the new Home after install? Just overwrite any duplicate files?

Synaptic shows it installed in Networking but I don't have that on the Ap menu. Is it command line?

[djohnston]

Ray,

rsync is a command line tool. However, you can install a GUI front end for it from Synaptic by finding and marking the unison package. It will synchronize two local directories. The program will show up in the Internet portion of the main menu.

[Old-Polack]

Do you have an external drive, or a USB stick large enough to hold the contents of your /home/ray directory? If you have a place to temporarily hold your data, rsync can copy everything in the directory and keep all the correct permissions.

Thank you. I will try that. Can it be done to an internal HD also? Would I then just copy the old home  to the new Home after install? Just overwrite any duplicate files?

Synaptic shows it installed in Networking but I don't have that on the Ap menu. Is it command line?

You would want to do the copying from either a root login, or from the liveCD, logged in as root. I recommend the latter. If you have a separate /home partition, you need to know beforehand which partition that is, and also the partition on which you wish to store the copied directory. It is always best to have the backup partition formatted with an ext3 or ext4 filesystem (whichever is the same as the /home partition) so that permissions for all the files and directories are properly preserved.

Example:

Assuming the /home partition to be /dev/sda5 and the backup partition to be /dev/sdb1, if done from a liveCD, the first things you would need are mount point directories. I like /here and /there as they are short, and only exist in memory as part of the liveCD directory tree anyway. We use the mkdir command for this. (make directory)

[root@localhost ~]# mkdir /here /there                <Enter>

Now we mount the /home partition on /here and the backup partition on /there.

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/sda5 /here             <Enter>

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/sdb1 /there             <Enter>

To check the mounts;

[root@localhost ~]# ls -l /here             <Enter>

[root@localhost ~]# ls -l /there             <Enter>

The first command should show your ray directory, and the second command whatever is already on the backup partition, if anything.

To copy the entire ray directory as well as all its contents;

[root@localhost ~]# rsync -av /here/ray /there             <Enter>

You will see a lot of text lines describing what is being copied, as it happens. When the process is complete you will be returned to the root prompt.

To check the copy;

[root@localhost ~]# ls -la /there/ray             <Enter>

You could also navigate to the /there/ray directory with Dolphin, or whatever file manager is on the liveCD, and look around to see if everything looks normal and complete. If all looks good, you have your backup.

[bicol_willem]

Guess I'll give up because I don't have a clue how to backup Home except by remastering. Don't really care about root. My whole purpose is to save Home in a way I can reuse it. I know my root is too large but others complained about my previous partition table and that is the best I could do with out loosing Home the only thing I really cared about saving.
Thanks though for trying.

Yes understood and old-polack gave you a valid option. However some rather try to avoid the command line (especially newbe's, coming from Windows) and so you could simply copy your /home to a external drive (by opening 2 file-manager windows, one is /home and the other is external drive, and drag and drop the content. Do so as user. Now you have a full backup. Simple.
When ever you have a new install created by your remaster (now without home) and created the same user account again you can copy it all back. Again as the same user. Choose "write into  existing folder" if asked. In the unlikely event you run in a permission problem that way, you can correct that easy.

Last, as I hint earlier on. Maybe what you are looking for is a "clone" and if so you might have a look at i.e. clonezilla. That will create a exact copy of your install with all there is in, either compressed or direct to a other hard drive. There are more options to do so even.
Anyway, backing up things isn't a biggy as you see. Good luck!

[Just18]

Is that your complete command?

Yes. Is it wrong?

It doesn't specify the name of the ISO to be created.

I have never tried to run the command without that information, so am guessing that without it things might go awry.

regards.

Nope Just19, a name is just a option. Should work fine without.

Thanks 

[Ray2047]

Thanks all for the the detailed and easy to follow answers. Im marking this silved.