I back up my home
, which includes a list of installed softwares and PPA, on an external hard drive using back in time. I plan to do a fresh install of ubuntu. Will I then be able to install back in time
on the fresh machine, then restore everything from there?
From what I have read on the internet, there are certain pitfalls, e.g. the two Ubuntu installs must be configured exactly the same, back in time
settings must be the same, and I can only restore one folder at a time (!)
Best Answer
EDIT: There are two more detailed articles on BackInTime FAQ on how to backup and restore package selections.
Yes. This will work. Make sure you have included everything that is important to you in your last snapshot. Run this commands to backup your PPA's and package selection:
Just to make sure there are no corrupt files in snapshot you should run one last snapshot with
Use checksum to detect changes
enabled in Options on your old machine. (starting from 1.0.28 there is a command-line option--checksum
for this, too. So you don't need to enable and than disable it again anymore).Setup your new machine, install backintime again and copy
config
from your last snapshot folder/path/to/backintime/HOST/USER/1/SNAPSHOT_ID
to~/.config/backintime/
.If Backintime doesn't find your old snapshots directly, go to
Settings
disableAuto Host - User - Profile
and change Host and User entry so they match your old machine. Now restore your home directory (and all other folders which are important to you).Recreate your
/etc/apt/sources.list
if you had set something special in there. If your Ubuntu version changed don't just copy them from~/.apt-backup/sources.list
Restore apt-keys for your PPA's with
sudo apt-key add ~/.apt-backup/Repo.keys
Make some "housecleaning" in
~/.apt-backup/package.list
. For example you don't want to install the old kernel again. So runsed -e '/^linux-\(image\|headers\)/d' -i ~/.apt-backup/package.list
Finally install all your old packages again with: