Ubuntu
deja-dup package

deja dup restore fills root ( / ) directory then prevents reboot

Asked by dan

My main hard drive started failing around 6-8-2013. Bought new drive and tried so many ways to recover to new hard drive. Clonezilla, gparted copy and paste (which worked til the drive died completely), finally used http://www.matthartley.com/how-to-backup-your-ubuntu-software/ .... in conjunction with deja-dup restore of /home. NONE worked completely.

NOW: I have repartitioned new drive exactly (sda1....etc...sda13) as failed drive.
           1- Installed ubuntu 12.04.2 to sda12 and /home to sda9 (same as failed drive)
           2- boot to new install and update manager runs 256 updates.
           3- Restore /home/username to sda9 using deja dup. Using date 6/26 which is after failure and with corrupt config ???
           4- Tried full restore using date 5/30 which should be latest good configuration. Deja dup appears to recopy /home again??
           5- Restore fails with "" ?filesystem root only has xxmb left"" examine or ignore.

This leaves root / full!!! and I cannot determine what to delete, so I reinstall ubuntu and try again, for the millionenth time!!!

backup== /home/username, /etc, /var, /usr, /bin, /lib/plymouth/themes, /media/email-data, media/vbox-hds

I have 3 bug reports on file all probably related to this hard drive failure and recovery attempts....

All suggestions welcomed.....dan

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N1ck 7h0m4d4k15 (nicktux) said : 		#1

I always made a backup of my personal and important data on external HDD or some cloud service. Then the only thing I had to do to restore is to use a single command in terminal and copy the backup over the new /home.

    rsync -Avsur /path/to/backup /path/to/newhome

I never did a full system backup that includes /root directory and all sub directories. The procedure you describe in begging seems like a clonezilla requirement to restore a full cloned DISK to another DISK. But then you mention deja dup that has nothing to do with clonezilla. I'm bit confused. Sorry.

There is no need to backup the full system. Only the /home folder and not all of it. Only your data - personal and important.
All the other (programs - libraries..etc) you can install them again in a new Ubuntu installation. In case you have SO Many programs that you don't even remember them, you can create a list of them in a file in your personal /home folder and then you can install them in one command line. (such as sudo apt-get install $(cat programs-list)

If your backups are in deja dup form, you must use deja dup again to restore the backup. No need to create the same partitions as you had in dead disk.

Fire up deja dup and click the restore option in a NEW folder (you have created) inside your existing /home folder. Then you have to do a Job. Separate the files and place them to the right position.

Regards
 NikTh

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dan (dsfemail) said : 		#2

@nikth--Read the question carefully. I used at least 3 techniques to restore.
   1-clonezilla---year old image, some corruption of images, could not get full restore.
    2-gparted---- copy and paste partitions. Worked great until the old drive failed completely, with the new drive in a windows only configuration.
   3-The Matt Hartley solution appears to be best for my use, but corrupted the 'update manager'.

 Final fall back to restore from weekly backups using deja dup which does not work as advertised...

Thanks for trying....dan

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Why are you backing up /usr ? those are binaries which you installed when you updated the packages and installed the packages you need....? Seems obscure

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N1ck 7h0m4d4k15 (nicktux) said : 		#4

Yes you have used 3 techniques to restore, but what is matter here is what technique you used to backup. (all three of them? )

And why Deja Dup didn't work as expected ? What is the error you received.

Regards
 NikTh

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