Stuff that has not yet gone into the official build.
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ukbrian

- ukbrian
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## Re: why not just download and extract

Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:51 am

Is this what Anthony has done on SalineOS with his backup program http://salinelinux.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=testing&action=display&thread=566 it is very quick to back up but I think he hit problems using it on fedora but I find it very useful on debian OS's
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: why not just download and extract

Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:45 pm

Yes, it looks like he's just squashing the filesystem. To restore/install, filesystem.squashfs (or whatever filename is used for $BackupImage) gets loop mounted and copied with rsync rather than unsquashed.
https://github.com/SalineOS/SalineOS/bl ... eos-backup
I tried refractasnapshot with fedora once, and it failed because some of the system commands had different names.
ukbrian

- ukbrian
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## Re: why not just download and extract

Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:09 am

> Yes, it looks like he's just squashing the filesystem. To restore/install, filesystem.squashfs (or whatever filename is used for $BackupImage) gets loop mounted and copied with rsync rather than unsquashed.
> https://github.com/SalineOS/SalineOS/bl ... eos-backup

I'm an end used, I can follow instructions and value any information you give me but it's way over my head
I'm 69 so i don't think i'll have time unless i stop sleeping.
I've created a backup file with his salineos-backup script on one amd 3core with onboard ATI and installed it on a AMD quad with different AMD graphics but I only use the stock drivers, I think removing proprietary graphics helps things out.

> I tried refractasnapshot with fedora once, and it failed because some of the system commands had different names.

I ran Refracta snapshot on an early solusos version and did the restore with solusos's installer.
If you want have a break have a look at my posts on http://forums.solusos.com/
It might give you an insight into me the person.
I very strongly urge you have a quick look at his forum, Ikey is a bit special I think

> 2. It is based on Debian stable and therefore is very stable, but Ikey himself backports software to it so they have firefox and thunderbird 10.0.2, Libre Office 5, VLC 2.0, etc. Recently, non LTS (for both Ubuntu and Mint) releases have been sort of less-stable - 11.04 brought unity and 11 was a tiny bit buggy because 11.04 was buggy, and 11.10 was less buggy, although unity still wasn't great, and 12 was buggy because of gnome 3. Mint could do a similar thing to the LTS releases that Ikey is doing to debian stable. It could even make an LMDE based on Debian stable which does this.

http://community.linuxmint.com/idea/view/2426
I'm beginning to sound like a salesman doing a hard sell, sorry, bit tired.
If the pics annoy just delete them and I apologize
ukbrian

- ukbrian
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- Location: Cheltenham, UK

## Re: why not just download and extract

Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:12 am

I forgot to mention that Solus the os has got a problem with samba I think, all my other OS's see my NAS drive even gigolo don't see the network
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: why not just download and extract

Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:57 pm

I'm pretty sure it's not way over your head - you just don't know the terms.
A squashfs is just a filesystem that's compressed into a single file. In this case, the filesystem is a whole linux installation, and the live media is arranged so that it will boot up and mount that filesystem.
unsquash vs. loop mount - The unsquash command unpacks the compressed filesystem and copies it to your chosen location - the files are then present on some other filesystem, whereas if you just mount the squashfs, the files aren't copied to your current filesystem, but they are accessible until you unmount the squashfs. Any practical difference between the two methods might have to do with hard disk space or memory usage or speed of copying, but I don't know any details about that. FYI, you can mount iso files the same way, in case you want to look at some of the files they contain.
The rsync command is a fancy way to copy files from one place to another.
ukbrian

- ukbrian
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- Location: Cheltenham, UK

## Re: why not just download and extract

Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:06 am

> I'm pretty sure it's not way over your head - you just don't know the terms.

I have an unusually wide all round view computers and the use they can be put to , I was taught by a friend to design screen forms etc for a relational database written in Sculptor in the dos days and then partly rewritten in VB 4 but I would never want to rely business wise on code I have written
I'd spend all week writing a block of code to do something in a way I wanted it to work or look and then on a sunday I would visit the guy who was putting together my bespoke office app.
He would look at it, we'd have a smoke and then in short time normally he would write it in to the live app in a couple of paragraphs where I had needed 2 pages.
Trust me when I state my limitations or inabilities.
No one is good at everything, you guys are some of the best in your field and you gel well as a group which is why i've been following your this one and the other forum for the last 12 months.
You build up a good picture of where a guys at if you read a lot of posts responding to different events by a guy, that's the trouble/danger with data mining.
I'm a skype user and I can remember the first time that 20,000 users were on line now it's going to hit 40,000,000 very shortly so I guess it's fair to say I spot disruptive technology at an earlier point than most.
I have not made many posts as I had no feedback to give you until you asked for refracta to be tested on other OS's.
I think saline-backup or refracta will work on fedora etc you just need to put a condition or case statement in so fedora and others go to a different routine, so I think you might need a bit of help.
Maybe the pclos dev(Tex) he's written a snapshot/installer for it.
I'd like it to also work with M$ which I think Clonezilla does,
I just realised instead of saline-backup what is needed is a gui for Clonezilla, a cross platform one hopefully the RAD http://kivy.org/#home
I strongly advise you to use SolusOS as your base or get involved with it, his next goal after he's got every a gnome up and running is to do a LXDE version for this thing http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
Can't be bad value for £25.00 and the schools are taking it up and I think Ikey is capable of porting Debian to it, Debian on mobiles is needed in africa and india.
The guy behind it designed Elite with a partner the first game i got into, all on a 51/4 floppy.
My database guru, I have only got a violent reaction off him once and that was when I asked him to put into my database screen something I had seen in a game, Dune I think it was but he said no it can't be done.
So my reply was

> They can do it in a game why not in top end commercial software

To which he replied in a heated manner that game designers are right at the top of the tree with programming.
I'd like to work with a guy like that, more things become possible.
I need to get some forum software installed on my server at campfire.lin.me.uk because I need to start doing a very unusual forum i can't explain it I need to rough out a prototype so folks can see what i;m aiming at.
I'm waiting to get word back from someone i've asked but if he can't can/would you be kind enough to PM me any recommendations you might have.
Your very welcome to have a sub domain at http://refracta.lin.me.uk where you can host your files etc
My server man friend(Peter) who hosts my site recently put another server in the data centre so he could upgrade PHP on it and it would handle the forum software I want to use.It's been up and running for a month now so there shouldn't be any problems.
If nadir or any of your group want a sub domain your very welcome, just pm me the url you want, Peter has given me permissions in directadmin so i can create sub domains, on the old server under plesk i could only create email addresses.
You can't use a sub domain for an email address
You can also have a sub forum if you want it you'd be very welcome but I wouldn't be happy until a backup script was writ so you could easily transfer your forum on to other software and not be trapped there
That's where I'm at but there's a lot more as well
The rest is up to you, the balls in your court but I'd like to have your software working on Solus, Refracta is a very important tool, a must have.Clonezilla
sorry for any errors I'm a bit drained from all that thinking.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: why not just download and extract

Mon Mar 26, 2012 1:52 pm

I think the best tool for backing up a Windows installation is Clonezilla. Refractasnapshot is designed to copy a running debian or debian-derivative system from within. Those are two completely different beasts. I suppose someone could try to manually rsync and squash a non-running Windows installation, but I don't have one of those to play with.
Adding a condition statement to use a different set of instructions for Fedora or Suse or other is the easy part. The different set of instructions would require some work. I might get to it eventually. Have to install and then try doing it manually (with the system commands that are in the script) and see where it breaks.
A bit off-topic here, but let me address this. SolusOS looks like a great OS, but I can come up with several reasons why it won't get used as the base for Refracta:
- Won't fit on CD.
- Uses more than 100mb ram for the desktop. (ps_mem.py showed ~160mb after login)
- Bunch of command-line programs in Refracta are missing in Solus. (e.g. lots of diagnostic and recovery software and some network apps.)
- Bunch of extra stuff in Solus that isn't in Refracta. (e.g. all the recommended packages)
- Wrong desktop environment. We're using xfce now. There might be a gnome version at some point, but if there is, it'll be a much leaner desktop than what Solus has.
dzz

- dzz
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- Location: Devon, England

## Re: why not just download and extract

Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:59 pm

> SolusOS looks like a great OS, but I can come up with several reasons why it won't get used as the base for Refracta:
> - Won't fit on CD.
> - Uses more than 100mb ram for the desktop. (ps_mem.py showed ~160mb after login)
> - Bunch of command-line programs in Refracta are missing in Solus. (e.g. lots of diagnostic and recovery software and some network apps.)
> - Bunch of extra stuff in Solus that isn't in Refracta. (e.g. all the recommended packages)
> - Wrong desktop environment. We're using xfce now. There might be a gnome version at some point, but if there is, it'll be a much leaner desktop than what Solus has.

5 good reasons; for me one more : Refracta uses only a pure Debian base.
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: why not just download and extract

Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:33 pm

> ukbrian wrote:....do a LXDE version for this thing http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

> I think Ikey is capable of porting Debian to it

The download area has a debian LXDE version available. Just sayin...
meandean

- meandean
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- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 5:16 am

## Re: why not just download and extract

Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:31 pm

> ukbrian wrote:Is this what Anthony has done on SalineOS with his backup program ....

I think we concluded that the current tools provide everything a geeky user needs to experiment in that regrad and that clueless users probably have no business messing around with stuff like that anyway.
But for this thread I was just talking about actually installing the OS. I was befuzzled as to why I bother burning a cd or other install media when all I really need is to extract a squashed filesystem to a partition and adjust a couple things. Bada Boom done. I thought maybe offering a squashed fileysystem as a download choice would be cool. But if someone wanted to do this they could just as easily download the ISO and extract the squashfs file from it.
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