Need some help with Timeshift configuration

Support Software & Applications
1

sorry to post a question that has already been discussed here.
but since I’m new to Linux, i still can’t wrap my head around the way the directories are placed and their meaning.
what i would like to achieve is to be able to restore the OS to a previous state in case of need and have my programs settings restored too.
I’ve read the manual in Timeshift – TeejeeTech and many more threads on other forums but couldn’t get a clear answer.
in the “settings/users” i understand that i need to check “include hidden items” next to /home/username,
but what about /root?in the developer’s screen shot he included every thing:

timeshift
timeshift704×529 19.8 KB

and then this is how his next screen shot looks like:
ts2
ts2704×529 17.8 KB

so I’m not sure what to do since that doesn’t seem to correspond to other explanations I’ve seen online like the fact that i need to leave the settings on default(apart from the “hidden items” under /home/username).

2

Full /root and hidden from /home/$USER/.** is a good setting, I use exactly the same since more than a year and it worked when needed perfectly fine for me.

2 Likes
3

Well I had a big issue recently when I stuffed a new SSD in the machine, formatted the old one and cleaned up one old hard drive… after restoring one ‘full’ Timeshift backup it complained about a restore hook - basically the boot was messed up. Also I want my system cleaner… so in the end I went with a 6 minute install, and a manual copy back from the Timeshift backup.

Today I had a strange issue, restored the timeshift and everything was superb…

So I go with Rsync, saved to sdc1, 3 dailies 3 weeklies and 1 monthly, plus 3 boots…

Now the problem is that, as it stands, Timeshift works well excluding root and including /home stuff.

  1. If you include your /home, then you can’t do a restore unless you first back up any work you’ve been doing (or you save your work somewhere outside the backup system) - so you should only use it for hidden /home stuff, then maybe dejadup for catching file backups.
  2. if you include your /root, then switch disks around, then after restoring you’ve work to do getting it to boot.

So you’re stuffed if you do, stuffed if you don’t. As you can’t edit the ‘restore’ file very well, you don’t get the option to tick off stuff to miss out when restoring.

Currently I catch ALL of root, and only hidden stuff in /home. My Documents and another ‘Admin’ folder I use for scripts and stuff are saved to Dropbox, any sensitive projects/pictures I now have the option to use my second SSD Docs folder which isn’t touched (when I get more disk space I’ll do a separate backup of that drive).

My trouble isn’t losing stuff - it’s getting dupes. I spent the last 3 days finding duplicates of images - 2018-03-15 14:32.jpg then 2018-03-15 14:32-001.jpg then 2018-03-15 14:32.JPG and maybe a 2018-03-15 14:32-001.JPG with up to 6 versions of many images.

So cleaning up is a big issue too - using dupeguru, and ‘Amok Exif Sorter’ with their quirks (The Exif sorter, if you drop a folder, takes the images - but you have to open the folder and select videos as they aren’t accepted recursively). As far as the ‘resume’ hook was concerned, I simply had to do blkid and copy the UUID of my new swap and edit 2 files to clean up the boot.

It’s a very simple copy job to backup anything else. To quickly throw everything from your /home to a backup, you can open a terminal and run:

Summary

rsync -avh --progress ~/ /mnt/T3/Timeshift and it’ll update only files that have changed.

1 Like
4

so the same as what is shown in the developer’s screenshots?
@Ben
i don’t really store stuff on my PC and the important files are placed on a USB key.
if i got to a point where i needed to replace a SSD i’d probably reinstall the OS.
i just need a simple system backup in case i mess something up, or it happening after an update.

5

Yes, except for “teejee” obviously… :grin:

1 Like
6

Sure. I find the most important things to be stuff like .zhrc/.bashrc config (which includes your history), my easystroke config - tons of shortcuts there, also it means qbittorrent can just continue seeding after a fresh install.

My cursors are going off-grid now, so I keep a copy of Chameleon master zip in my backup/Resources folder along with a few fonts and a list (ligconsolata works well with ZSH and p10k theme in terminal).

I really should give clonezilla a go, but I’m just too damn lazy. I’ll try it next time - hopefully this new 860 EVO will outlast the processor (I’m still on my 2013 i3 4130/GA-HD87M build, kind of itching to upgrade but without spending money I think not a huge improvement really).

1 Like
7

Thank You both.
i didn’t expect the snapshot to be around 13GB,but it’s fine i guess since i disabled scheduled snapshots and intend on doing ones manually before a major change while still keeping the one i just made which is after a fresh OS install+a few software.

1 Like
8

Try Rescuezilla instead, it’s immensely more user friendly.

9

It’s the massive effort of rebooting from a USB… not the complexity. It would need to be done regularly to be relevant, so I think timeshift is as far as I’ll go.

Nice tip though, I’ll certainly grab a rescuezilla next time I start doing disc shenanegans.

10

I hear you. One of the few things I’m really missing from Windows is the ability to make an image of a running system without any hassle.

11

i was wondering if there was a way like in windows to create a simple restore point,that wouldn’t be a 13GB snapshot?