Restoring from manual backup

[AndreiMiculita]

How would I restore from a manual backup (i.e. just a home dir that's been copied to another device?)

ecryptfs got (quite spontaneously) borked on my device, and long story short, I managed to copy the (unencrypted) home directory to an external hard drive.

I've given up on trying to fix my current install of Mint, and will just reinstall and restore everything.

But the backup I have is 1) not a .tar but just an actual directory 2) missing .meta.mint

These are the differences I've spotted so far.

As far as I can tell, running sudo tar -c -f -v backup.tar backeduphomedir/ followed by tar -tf backup.tar | wc -l and just creating a .meta.mint text file (with num_files: [the number from the previous command]), should recreate the backup creation process exactly. Is this right?

[xenopeek]

If you already have copied your files to external hard disk, why don't you simply copy them back from there to your home directory after reinstalling Linux Mint? You don't need mintbackup for that.

[AndreiMiculita]

@xenopeek Well, that's what I'll probably do. I was just worried that replacing the entire /home/ dir while logged in would break things (and assumed mintbackup did something more under the hood to prevent that from happening).

[mexsudo]

I suggest just copy your Personal files, not everything (not the settings/hidden files).

do you have Two usb ports? if so boot with a Live OS (installer USB would work) to do your file management After the fresh install.

On 2/1/22 13:10, Andrei Miculita wrote:

Well, that's what I'll probably do. Was just worried that replacing the entire /home/ dir while logged in would break things.

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[AndreiMiculita]

@mexsudo I do have two USB ports, thanks for the tip. I want to keep a bunch of hidden files (.bashrc, Firefox profiles, themes, Cinnamon config etc) so I'd prefer to copy those too. I assume it should be relatively safe if I do it from the live USB (and use the same version for all software)? The tradeoff in risk/time saved seems worth it to me.

[mexsudo]

On 2/2/22 06:49, Andrei Miculita wrote:

@mexsudo https://github.com/mexsudo I do have two USB ports, thanks for the tip. I want to keep a bunch of hidden files (.bashrc, Firefox profiles, themes, Cinnamon config etc) so I'd prefer to copy those too. I assume it should be relatively safe if I do it from the live USB (and use the same version for all software)?

you will "probably" be OK.

I typically copy the .mozilla folder, and my conky files in the .config folder.

If it breaks, start over and be more selective.

best if luck!

The tradeoff in risk/time saved seems worth it to me

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