MX-snapshot as ultimate disaster recovery and backup/migration solution.

At first - why?

Because I need fast and working way to get restorable system of any size and functionality. I see how many backup systems are just copy the files to some place and in case of disaster you anyway need some working OS to get your data back to the place. Duplicity, timemachine, even RARE use some strategies to restore your system from such archives. About RARE - it's cool and working solution before you get so big archive so it's overgrow the ISO_FILE_SIZE_LIMIT and you going to need some place to store your shit and crutch your filesystem with RSYNC or Duplicati or other way but not a single ISO with simple installation of your own system, so... MX-snapshot is a bless here - save god people who make it possible and available fo FREE. You just make backup of any size and in case of shit happens - just restore from ISO. Put (flash)drive into USB and install all your working and set up system as it was couple of hours ago. All you need is a some free space on media you use to store ISO.

How to make it work?

So, lets begin. If you use MX-linux - all things are set up for you already, just launch mx-snapshot and be safe for backup and restore, you have all instruments to even migrate your system to different hardware.
Some difficulties may occur if you beyond MX or AntiX world. In my case it's simple naked Debian without any desktop environment, login and window managers. We need to teach our system to show not only command-line interfaces, so mx-snapshot and installer better works from GUI - I just can't get working system after installation from CLI, like cli-installer give me a read-only system. Not sure what's problem is, snapshot or installer part, anyway we need GUI for those apps to work properly.

Ok then, we don't want something big like KDE, GNOME or even XFCE on our server, we need as minimal as for just view some window and not want to start this shit automatically, only by hand and when needed.

If you use GUI'ed system at home, you don't need xorg, it's already installed - just fix repositories, install mx-snapshot and mx-installer and you good to go, skip installing Awesome.

"Awesome" seems like awesome choice for my task, but at least one thing its needed to work - xorg - system to show graphics on display. I think, i3 or any other small WM do the trick.

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Let's go.

Add repository.

Also to get mx- software from it's repositories we need to add one line to /etc/apt/sources.list or what file you store in list of repos.

deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ bookworm main non-free

Then update apt lists with option to trust some untrusted sources. Assume that you are ROOT or use SUDO to run APT.

apt update --allow-insecure-repositories

Now - the installation

apt install xorg awesome mx-snapshot mx-installer

After that we can load our window manager.
If you run this on remote - use VNC to view results, ssh terminalling to your server will not show you windows and GUI. Login to the system. And launch display.

startx

Now we can see Awesome and interfaces. Launch our software with terminal or just select mx-snapshot in the main menu. And we need to be not-root user this time, but use sudo 🙃

sudo mx-snapshot

After process finished boot from given ISO (write it to disc if needed). Now we need to launch installer. It's not so obvious, typing mx-installer will not work:

sudo minstaller

You get GUI installer and can setup your system. Heavy chances that GUI will be dark and not all elements will be seen good, use TAB to find options you need. Then just reboot without live-media and voila - your system is ready for a new disaster.

This is the way I see good for almost any cases, burning data-center, brocken hdd, any other malfunction, migration to new devices. You even can setup your own distribution with blank user info and give installable system to your friends or clients. AMAZING!
Why all distributives don't use the same -  BIG FUCKING question.

:П:п