Clonezilla – When backup matters

Ever wished you had kept a copy of some important data or carefully copied those vacation pictures over to some safe place but only realized that things are too late and the damage is done! Accidental deletes, folder overrides, malfunctioned hard drives, fresh os install are few of several reasons where you end up with lost data and kept wondering how you would ever get it back. Losing data is horrifying. Only you know the true value of it and so its really up to you to keep it safe.

There are several data back up softwares like Deja Dup, which aim to sync some folder on your hard drive and do incremental backups of changes. This makes its easy to retrieve a singe file or bunch of folders when you need them.

But when it comes to backing up of your existing system installation or making an exact replica of your setup on another machine, Clonezilla proves helpful beyond imagination. I keep it handy in case anything goes wrong and I have to restore a previously working state of my OS. My recent debacle with Deepin proves its worthiness.

There are so many tutorials to using Clonezilla and trying to run by them a couple of times will make you a semi-pro at it. This article isn’t for the ‘how’ of clonezilla but for the ‘why’ of using it.

A fresh OS install pretty much robs you of all the additional software you ever installed to get by your daily computing needs. Any problem with the OS and you could see yourself starting from scratch. The best way to avoid this pitfall is to do a system backup as soon as your shiny new installation is ready for use. That would be the base milestone which you can restore back to. Much better than having a fresh install with no softwares of your use. Then as and when you keep adding new things to your setup you keep making new backup copies. A simple strategy of taking backups once a month or once every two months will let you fall back to the most recent working state. The frequency of backup is really a factor of how frequently you are making system changes/upgrades/adding new softwares to your system. Taking a backup just before trying out a new distro is also a good idea. Clonezilla allows to mount a folder on external HDD as the destination for backup. So all the images will be available on external disk for later restoration.

As and when you keep taking back ups you could let go of older copies. So keeping last three backups makes sense. Anything older isn’t the right candidate to restore.

Now for some hard facts about Clonezilla. It allows for backup of entire disk as well as parts. So if the installation has different mounted drives for root (/) /home etc, you could plan to make backups of respective parts as per your need. Ideally a separate /home is not really affected by system changes, installs etc so the data is intact anyway, but good to have a complete data back up once a while. For backups of files folders that you work on daily basis and do not want any data loss use of Deja Dup will be more helpful.

Clonezilla does not allow restoring of a backup to drive of a smaller size. This means you should be aware of the partition size, it’s used and free space available when making/restoring images. For e.g. say you have a 10GB partition of which 3GB is used. You take a back up of this, which is really just the 3GB worth of data/system files. But clonezilla will not allow you to restore this to a new partition of say 5GB. This is currently a limitation on how clonezilla works. It however allows restoration to partition sizes which are larger than original. So the same image will be easily restored to a new partition of say 15GB.

There is a work around for this. The commonly accepted solution on several forums for this is to use Gparted to resize the partition to be restored and do away with all of the unused space. Then create a backup image of the new resized partition, which is essentially only the data/files you want to back up. Now it is possible to restore is to any size partition which is greater than the actual backup size. To illustrate, resize the 10GB partition from above example to 3GB (or 3.2GB to keep some buffer) and backup the resized partition. The new image can now be safely cloned to disk sizes greater than 3.2GB. So cloning it onto 5GB is possible. And then use Gparted again to increase the size of the partition to include the free space back in to it.

Clonezilla provides two modes of operations. Beginner mode caters to most needs perfectly. Using Clonezilla in its advanced mode take some amount of practice and understanding of whats being done. I stick to its beginner mode for most of my needs, but it would help to explore and learn more about different options to effectively use this awesome software.

Hope I have discussed important details and insight into using Clonezilla. Few takeaways from this would be

• Use Clonezilla for contingencies. You should have a recent backup when it matters the most.
• Plan frequency of backups and stick to the schedule. Label them by OS name, hostname and date to make restoration easier and confusion free. Older backups aren’t of much use. Delete them to recover precious space.
• If restoration is planned on the same machine with same partition sizes, do not bother with resizing partitions everytime you take a backup.
• If restoring to new machine whose destination partition size is not known, it makes sense to take that extra step of resizing partition.
• Restoring image is just a matter of selecting the source backup and destination partition on drive. Rest is taken care by Clonezilla.

Its fast and easy, just needs some amount of practice.

Decoding the Desktop Environments

Not long ago, Gnome2 was really like the king of desktop environments for Linux. It was a popular desktop environment and ruled the DE scene, unaware that its end was coming near. Gnome3 was in development and the idea for Unity hadn’t dawned on Canonical yet. Soon Gnome3 was out and it made users depart from the usual way they interacted with their Linux systems. Gnome3 was beautiful and functional, but Gnome2 users weren’t receptive of this yet. There was already a rift being generated among the users, where the ones faithful to Gnome2 refused to budge and accept Gnome3. Around the same time Canonical, which had been sporting Gnome2 as its DE in its previous releases, decided to come up with Unity. Boy that invited so much flak from the community. Unity with its lenses didn’t seem to interest users and the once faithful Ubuntu users started looking around for something better. Among Unity and Gnome3, Gnome3 was a better choice, but there was a void which needed to be filled. Users weren’t really happy with the options available with them.

Linux Mint seized this opportunity to retain Gnome2 for there distro. Only that it had forked into Mate now. People who liked Gnome2 immediately took to liking the Mate DE. This also helped Mint gather new fan following and people loathing Unity quickly made the jump. Mint was also working on Cinnamon which is a gnome 3.x fork and is a very popular desktop environment.

While Gnome, Unity, Mate and Cinnamon were in the works, Enlightenment had also been around for almost 10 years. Bodhi Linux brought it to the limelight. Enlightenment is more of a windows manager rather than a full blown DE. It brings with it varied levels of customization, beautiful themes and is very light on resources. Another small distro MacPup also sports Enlightenment.

When it comes to more lean systems, light on resources and generally aimed at older hardware XFCE and LXDE are most noteworthy. Xfce is eye-pleasing and very easy to use. Xfce based distros like Xubuntu, Mint Xfce version, Voyager have great eye candy while being easy on the resources.

LXDE is another lightweight desktop environment aimed for machines with lower specs. It has the lowest memory utilization while still aiming to be fully functional. The distros Lubuntu and LXLE aim to provide fantastic LXDE experience.

Then there is Openbox. It isn’t a full fledged DE per se. It is really a windows manager. It is highly configurable and gives complete control to you user who can tweak it infinitely and find new ways to work with it. Openbox is very light and can be used with existing DEs to leverage their functionality. There is no doubt that Crunchbang rocks when it comes to Openbox. Other cool Openbox options would be Semplice and Manjaro.

With so many players on the desktop environment scene, you’d think this is enough but theres more. With its recently gained popularity Elementary OS sports the Pantheon Desktop which offers a clean interface with some nice eye candy. Pantheon is also light on resources.

This list isn’t exhaustive by any measure. Wikipedia lists more than twenty examples of desktop environments just for Linux. But what this post tries to cover is basic familiarity with whats available out there and choose what suits somebody based on system requirements, eye candy, ease of use etc. Lets weigh them based on some such parameters.

Desktop environments at a glance.

Desktop Environment	Distro using it
Gnome2	Most likely not. check forked versions like Mate
Gnome3	Fedora, OpenSuse
Unity	Ubuntu
Mate / Cinnamon	Linux Mint
Enlightenment	Bodhi Linux, Macpup
Xfce	Xubuntu, Voyager, Linux Mint
Lxde	Lubuntu, LXLE
Openbox	Crunchbang, Manjaro
Pantheon	Elementary OS

Choices to make based on system resources.

Resource Availability	The right DE for you
High end relatively recent hardware specs with more RAM	Unity, Gnome3, Cinnamon
Decent Specs moderate RAM available	Mate, XFCE, Openbox, Pantheon, Enlightenment
Aging machine, really old hardware	Openbox, LXDE

Choosing the DE based on eye candy.

Degree of eye candy awesomeness	These could be your choices
Sure, more the bling the better!	Gnome3, Panthoen, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, Unity
Not so keen but some eye candy would be good!	Mate, Openbox, XFCE
Meh! Can do without!!	LXDE, Openbox

So is it difficult to use?

Ease of Use	These could be your choices
Novice	Pantheon, Gnome3, Mate
Intermediate User	Cinnamon, Unity, LXDE, XFCE
Advanced Tweakers	Openbox, Enlightenment

Sure, I may be speculating purely based on my usage and preferences, but should give you a fair idea of how different desktop environments stack up against each other, so when it comes to choosing the right distro with the right DE, you can narrow down your choices and choose what suits you best.

Oh Deepin! I had such high hopes!!

This has to be the first time in my rendezvous with Linux that an OS installation has gone rogue. And that too with a distro like Deepin. I had such high hopes when I grabbed the iso and booted into the live cd. This OS inspires awe from the very time you boot into it. The splash screen has some pretty cool animation, the desktop is minimalistic, the control center that rests on the right hand side panel works great.

All in all, just minutes after booting, I was very impressed with what I saw. The new desktop environment which the Deepin team has developed is something refreshing and definitely original. Thrown in along with that is a suite of application with the deepin branding! Deepin Movie, Deepin Music cater to all the multimedia needs. Set of application installed by default is great and aims to make the computer usable from the moment you get going.

I was itching to install this thing on my machine, hit the “install” button and that’s when things went downhill. I am not sure what the issue was, but the installer seemed to kill itself sometime down the line and the installation process was left half-baked. Repeated attempts met the same fate. It’s a shame this thing isn’t working on my laptop. I am trying to install from the dvd which I wrote the huge 1.5 GB iso onto. I guess I have made myself a brand new coaster!! I can still save the day by trying to install from a USB but I doubt things would be any different. Meanwhile I did manage to grab some screenshots which I am putting up here.

 

The installation tanked soon after and wiped my root file system along with it. The next time I started my laptop, I was greeted with a black screen staring back at me with “grub file missing”. I realized that in the process of installing over the existing setup, I was left with nothing.

That’s when I turned to Clonezilla. I have been trying to put up a clonezilla post for long, explaining how to take regular backups for partitions. Seems the details of restoration have made their way to the blog first!

I had a recent clonezilla backup of Elementary OS. And the idea was to boot up with the CloneZilla live cd and try to restore it. I was doing this for the first time though and so had my doubts. Sure Clonezilla did what it said and in a few simple steps I was back on my Elementary setup.

Clonezilla let me

• Quickly select an image for restoration
• Select the destination partition for restoration. This was the /dev/sda1 which was my root files. /dev/sda6 which is my /home partition was untouched and completely accessible afterwards
• Restore the grub settings as well and in a few minutes of copying the data from the backup on the to hard disk I was up and ready to go!

Post restoration, it is business as usual. Clonezilla definitely saved the day after Deepin caused unexpected trouble. I had such high hopes, but maybe I will revisit this some time later. Deepin by no means is a bad distro, just that the small installation glitch has left me with a bad taste.

And a thumbs up for Clonezilla. The ace in my linux arsenal helped me get through this debacle with ease.

EDIT : A successful Deepin installation continues to elude me. I thought maybe the iso I downloaded had issues, so when I saw that a newer version of Deepin i.e 2014.1 was out, I decided to download that and give it a try. I still had hopes from it. It took my another 30 minutes to realize that I was wrong after all. The latest installation also tanked, and I reached out for that clonezilla live cd.

Somehow it didn’t make sense. How would a distro having such good reviews from the community not even install properly on my machine. I even decided to do a clean install. Copied over all the data onto external drive, formatted both root and home partitions and then install Deepin. It was a perfect time to test Clonezilla’s ability to clone disk partitions of larger sizes, I was attempting to clone a /home partition of 60 GB and almost full to its capacity. But it didn’t get through. Clonezilla was not able to make that back up as promised. I was kind of relieved that I had manually copied the data first. Else I was seriously running the risk of loosing it all!

So now when it was time to install Deepin again on a freshly formatted machine with separate root and home partition, it was deja vu all over again. Only this time I have no system files and no data files. The laptop is a dud for now. Deepin managed to disappoint me one more time. I am beginning to wonder if the issue lies with my hardware but I may not have the patience to try it out again on another machine. Once bitten twice shy, I guess. Signing off!

Things on the Cloud

Linux has numerous native apps to cater to a range of things that users want to do. For office productivity, Image editing, Video editing and so on, Linux has several options and alternatives to make daily computing easy and free. But there are times when you are not around your computer or just want to get things done without beginning to install the software first and then get on with your activity. This is where Software as a Service(SaaS) steps in. Saas is nothing but a suite of applications available on the internet and can be utilized as pay per use or pay per month policy. Several services are available for free or for some nominal subscription amount. These application become ubiquitous since they are on the cloud and accessible from just about anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. The idea is to just get online and get started with your work.

Here is a list of things on the cloud I found to do a few day to day activities. Be sure to bookmark them.

1) https://cloudconvert.org/ – This is a simple online format conversion tool which converts almost anything to anything. The sheer list of formats that they support makes it truly unique. I was struggling with few .odt and .ods files since these were native to LibreOffice and not supported by Kingsoft which I am currently using. The solution really was to convert all these files to doc/xls and CloudConvert was just the tool for this. It has a very simple interface and does the job effortlessly. Another use I found for this is to convert pdf files into epub for reading on tablets and phones. For pdf files, it also has password protection options which is handy to protect important information.

2) http://foxyutils.com/ – If you ever wanted to exclusively work with pdf files, split them, merge them, lock/unlock them… this is the place to go. A very simple interface to help with the tasks. I found password unlocking particularly useful, so that I do not have to deal with entering the password everytime I work with the file and after I am done I simply delete it. The original pdf with password protection is still safe in my archives.

3) http://pixlr.com/ – Provides free image editing for quickly touching up some photos that you want to upload to your social messaging platform. Quick fix options are good and help you crop, rotate, resize, decorate images to your liking. http://www.befunky.com/ is another worthy option.

4) https://www.watermark.ws/ – Sometimes you need to protect images that you post online. Maybe add a copyright note or some specific watermark to help identify your images and protect your work from people wanting to call it their own. This site helps you do that. It will watermark your images in a range of ways by use of templates, different font types, alignment options, opacity etc. Watermark your work before you post it online. Its simple and effective. I am using this for putting up images on this blog. You will find the watermarked images have “leisurelinux.wordpress.com” splashed across them. The images are screen shots taken from my computer and the watermark makes sure nobody else uses these images anywhere else.

Thats a small list I put together for things that I use fairly regularly. Sure there are many sites and options out there for online storage, word and spreadsheet processing, file sharing etc. Explore them and find what suits you best. There are many useful things on the cloud. Googling up a bit will go a long way and lets you discover things that are easy to use, fully functional and surprisingly free of cost. Of course if you want more of these services consider subscriptions.