Easily replicate/clone your Linux install

by mrsareen • 6 years ago

39 20 6 years ago

mrsareen3• 6 years ago

Came across this fantastic utility that is completely FOSS. Intent was to upgrade my smaller SSD to 1TB. Stumbled upon foxclone.com

Experts from the site :

"FoxClone is a Linux based image backup, restore and clone tool using a simple point and click interface. Booted from its' own linux system, it takes images of the partitions on your hard disk (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) and stores them for later restoration. Image files can optionally be compressed to save space."

The software worked blazingly fast as SSD's were employed at both ends that too without a single error! I booted from the new SSD and was blown away with the ease of overall process.

The creator of the software has declined my request to reimburse in any way possible. Hence I'm sharing it with HN for all Linux users.

Ahch1eep• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing.

It's unclear from reading the site : does it offer anything more than `dd` would allow, or is the added value primarily to be a ready to use interface for those less used to unix tools?

m463• 6 years ago

I mostly used dd in the past, but more recently I found learning e2image can save you a bunch of time copying specific linux partitions.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Disk_cloning

mrsareen3• 6 years ago

You're most welcome, this is laid out as a simple point & click GUI tool that anyone can burn and boot from. The author's main intent is to alleviate users from somewhat unfriendly UI of Clonezilla. I used this for ubuntu based pop-os

compsciphd• 6 years ago

when I want to clone my debian based system installations, i generally just used dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections.

qalmakka• 6 years ago

I haven't reinstalled Linux in years; usually, if I want to migrate my install somewhere else I use one of the following approaches:

- `rsync -qaHAXS src dest` - `btrfs/zfs send/recv`

Lately I standardized around ZFS, so I've moved several times my install using send and receive (even using SSH) and it's beautiful.

idclip• 6 years ago

Can you write up a tutorial please?

stratosgear• 6 years ago

Interested to hear more, too...

davidcollantes• 6 years ago

This sounds worthy of a gist, or blog entry. Share, please!

brian_herman• 6 years ago

Yes, please post a tutorial!

xook• 6 years ago

I fifth the tutorial request as well!

keyb0ardninja• 6 years ago

I use btrfs send and receive. Works wonderfully! There's a tool called snap-sync for Arch Linux which makes it seamless.

mrsareen3• 6 years ago

Here is a link for the documentation - http://foxclone.com/download/foxcloneV12.pdf

zeepzeep• 6 years ago

nix anyone?

kreetx• 6 years ago

Works very well for me :)

codethief2• 6 years ago

I'm not sure I'd ever want to replicate or clone my Linux install, including all hardware-related settings and all those applications that I installed at some point via apt and used only once or twice.

What I do need to replicate from time to time (whenever I deal with multiple machines) are 1) my data and 2) my settings / dotfiles. For the former, I use Syncthing (and of, course, backups because syncing can easily go wrong). As for the latter, I've been curating my dotfiles for ten years now and over time added various install scripts, which not only put the dotfiles in the right place but also install and set up the software they are for. One install script e.g. installs zsh, sets it as my default shell and creates a symlink from `~/.zshrc` to my zsh config. Basically, whenever I set up a new machine, I just need to run those scripts and I'm good to go within a few minutes.

BrandoElFollito• 6 years ago

An example where such a clone is useful : I run Ubuntu 18.04 and wild like to switch to 20.04.

Since the 18.04 has a history of experiments more or less successful, I want to start from scratch.

I want to be able to rollback in case something goes wrong, but I have only one M2 drive for my system.

So cloning to an external drive, making sure I can boot from it and then delete the existing system gives me peace of mind.

codethief2• 6 years ago

I would counter that by suggesting that you create a second root partition (on which you then install Ubuntu 20.04) and remove the first partition (containing Ubuntu 18.04) when you're done. This is similar to how A/B upgrades work in recent Android versions. (Of course you'd have to have /home on a separate partition. Personally, I've been doing that for years, anyway, because I want to be able to reinstall quickly without overriding /home when a software upgrade happens to mess up my system.)

shoulderfake• 6 years ago

dont make any effort to make a basic website pvt.pyle

andrewmackrodt• 6 years ago

Anyone have experience with how this compares to clonezilla?

Easily replicate/clone your Linux install

Related Stories