How do I create an ISO of a system backup?

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You cannot create an ISO from a system backup. If you want something which can be restored in case of emergency - you should use Clonezilla. Clonezilla is the defacto tool for creating a cold copy of your system.

Do not use Clonezilla to create a copy of your system to another internal disk. You will get mount issues due to duplicated partition UUIDs.

But as you specify the option to install the ISO to another partition or disk even a different computer then you need a different approach.

That is possible and the first thing to do is to know what changes you have made to the applications installed.

You will benefit a lot from going over this wiki article Build Manjaro ISOs with buildiso - Manjaro as you will use it to create your own iso. You can even watch a video made by Philip Mûller Manjaro Tools: How to create your own Manjaro Spin - YouTube showcasing the process.

The following will assume you have only added packages from the official repo.

The tasks are

  • Install the tools.
  • Clone the iso profiles repo.
  • Create a list of packages added to the system
  • Create a copy of the dotfiles and dotfolders from your $USER’s home.
  • Clean up the copy to only include the settings you actually changed.
  • Copy these files - the your selected profile
    • place them inside $PROFILE/desktop-overlay/etc/skel
  • Edit the file $PROFILE/Packages-Desktop
    • add your list of packages and save the file
  • Run buildiso -p $PROFILE -b $BRANCH -k $LINUX -f -t ~/iso-build
    • run buildiso -h to see all switches

When the build is done navigate the folder ~/iso-build to find the resulting ISO.

If you have been adding packages using PKGBUILDS e.g. from AUR you have extra work to do.

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