this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Just moved to Linux: a follow up (lemm.ee)
submitted 10 months ago by Corr@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I recently made a post discussing my move to Linux on Fedora, and it's been going great. But today I think I have now become truly part of this community. I ran a command that borked my bootloader and had to do a fresh install. Learned my lesson with modifying the bootloader without first doing thorough investigation lol.
Fortunately I kept my /home on its own partition, so this shouldn't be too bad to get back up and running as desired.

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Friendo, I think once you understand exactly what an OS is, you'll have fewer problems. An OS is just a layer on top of hardware with a lot of scripts and tools that enable that hardware to do things like move files, show graphics, and send audio in a desktop environment. Never issue a root or sudo command unless you understand exactly what it's doing. Following this one simple rule will save you a lot of trouble, same as any Windows machine.

[–] Corr@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

This is reasonably valid. I think Windows makes it a bit harder to do real damage to your system, so I'm used to that. I also have borked installs in VMs before, but that's never mattered because spinning up a new one takes no time. Definitely a valuable lesson to do more research before running commands, especially as sudo

[–] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And a lot of configuration, or so I thought? I'm investing heavily but I'm scared for my investments :-)

Another Linux noob here, after a couple of Linux servers (Tenfingers, Lemmy) switched over (finally) my main PC, or well kids got the gaming machine and I'm on a Mint ThinkPad now :-) and a backup think centre tiny if the Lemmy server bails out.

I have this little windows box to print stuff (I didn't know I hated printers) and every time I use it I'm so happy I don't need windows in my personal life anymore...

Cheers and welcome OP!

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This comment isn't making any sense to me, but good on ya?

[–] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 10 months ago

Except that I'm jumping ship to Linux fully, I'm thinking a lot about hardware failure, not the data but say the mobo, so maybe that's curious. Seemed you were knowledgeable about those things, or I'm explaining very badly.

Cheers

[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also, once your install is in a state you like, create a backup with CloneZilla.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah. This is old school thought. Use an immutable distro if this is your concern, and keep all your files on a NAS, or something else that can replay your files. Local images of your entire filesystem isn't needed anymore.

[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Neither an immutable distro nor a NAS is a replacement for backups.
Some people are lucky enough to never learn that backups are vital. Good luck to you in the future!

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They are two different things.

A Clone of an OS install is not needed anymore, for a jillion reasons.

Personal files do not relate to that.

Perhaps you don't understand how these are intended to work?

[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

A Clone of an OS install is not needed anymore, for a jillion reasons.

If my SSD decides to suddenly quit, I can get back all my personal files and configs, plus all the software I had installed with all configurations, configured repositories, user rights and group memberships, GUI customizations, system-wide fonts, .desktop-files, root .bashrc, self-compiled software, etc. etc. by popping in a new SSD and dding my full disk image backup to it with one terminal command.

I fail to see how that is not a nice thing to have even today, or how I would get back to the previous state just as fast without it.

[–] deepdive@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Heyha ! Read about dd on makeuseof after reading your post, to see how it works.

Restoring from an image seems exactly what I was looking for as a full backup restore.

However this kind of 1 command backup isn't going to work on databases (mariadb, mysql...). How should I procede with my home directory where all my containers live and most of them having running databases?

Does it work with logical volumes? Is it possible to copy evrything except /home of the logical volumes?

[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For special use cases like that, dd isn't the right tool.

[–] deepdive@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Okay, thank you :)) too bad it looked liked a simple and elegant way...