Free Macrium for Linux Imaging and restoring (Not cloning but imaging)

Hi folks
The standalone version of Free Macrium will backup and restore Linux systems -- but with a slight proviso you will probably have to re-generate the bootloader / grub on the first boot of the restored system. I'm specifying IMAGING the systems and not cloning them as I want system backup images to be easily available on my archive backup sets for restores -- not whole HDD clones.

However you can still boot your Linux system on EFI even when you get what the system looks like a No No -- Message No boot device !!!!!




Go into the bios and you'll usually find an option - Boot from the EFI file -- hit about 2 or 3 times until you see the boot file of your Linux machine and select and enter -- then the system boots perfectly --you don't even need to use a Live distro to recover the boot. Once booted simply rerun the grub configuration program and next boot you will be able to boot normally.

Creating the image takes a bit longer than restore -- around 42 mins for 238GB Linux system and 19 mins on restore on my test Linux HP laptop -- SSD for the internal HDD and external USB3 portable device (NTFS formatted) for the image file. (the image file was 128 GB so still a decent amount of compression.

Note the two caveats -- you can't restore to a smaller HDD this way and if you want to clone your system then DD is much faster.

I'm using XFS file systems -- you might with ext4 be able to shrink the partitions but XFS you can only make them bigger.

It's still viable as you can also keep Linux images too on your backup device(s).

So Macrium well done -- you can take system images of your Linux system (on version 7.2 of Macrium), but do it in the stand alone version ---i.e not under Windows and remember to re-generate GRUB after restore.

baring in mind that one doesn't need to take Linux system images all that often -- these systems are usually pretty stable once you've installed all the bits and pieces you want.

sda 8:0 0 238.5G 0 disk
|-sda1 8:1 0 16M 0 part
|-sda2 8:2 0 300M 0 part
|-sda3 8:3 0 31.7G 0 part /
|-sda4 8:4 0 198.6G 0 part /home
`-sda5 8:5 0 7.9G 0 part [SWAP]
[hrafn@hestur ~]$ su
Password:
[root@hestur hrafn]# mount /boot/efi -t auto -o rw /mnt
mount: /mnt: /boot/efi is not a block device.
[root@hestur hrafn]# mount /dev/sda2 /boot/efi
[root@hestur hrafn]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=ARCHLINUX --efi-directory=/boot/efi --recheck
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
[root@hestur hrafn]# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot: initramfs-linux-fallback.img
done
[root@hestur hrafn]#

Now re-boot and all's well

"Seemples" I'm happy Macrium works to make system images - far better than clonezilla or whatever and it actually works !!! -- just remember the boot loader bit and you are in business. !!!

I think I can speed this up no end by just saving image just copying the root (/), /boot/efi and the efi reserved partition -- data on /home directories can be saved as data and restored easily enough I do that regularly anyway -- this should cut the system backup down to around 10 mins or so -- but you'll still have to re-generate the grub bootloader.

Cheers
jimbo