On Monday 16 April 2018 07:49:12 Kate Draven wrote: Yeah, this guy was a true O.G. (Original Geek), ex-MIT, etc. He still compiles everything from source, and can remember when hackers hacked abandoned buildings instead of computers. That is more or less how I do it, except that root and swap are switched. Do you think a smaller swap is better and faster? And I have never overwritten a home partition since 2006, when I abandoned the rotten Apple and Windoze for good, and moved to Linux. Since then, I have only copied my home partition to an external backup, then recopied it back to new hard drives when I create new systems. I have been using essentially the same home partition and desktop appearance (with improvements, of course) ever since. I discovered KDE3 when using PCLinux, then changed to Kubuntu, and now at last run TDE with Debian Jessie, and it always looks basically the same. This is useful, because I know where to find everything (meaning, my shortcuts, and paths to various places). I don't like having to reinvent the wheel every time I get or build a new computer. I don't have a test machine at the moment. I have, let's say, a laptop for backup, and for working remotely; and for whenever I mess up something on my desktop, but need to do something right now. My interest here is to create a system that I can just clone, and keep cloning, and backup to a flash drive. I also have a working version of my system, partitioned more or less as described above, which I installed to a 64 gb flash drive; I can boot any compatible computer, and just use the hardware, but work from my own system. My aim is to have my complete system fit into my pocket, and to be able to carry external hard drives in a bag. Then if I ever get stuck somewhere without even a laptop, I can (with permission) use another computer, and boot into my own system. Where I live, in SF, there is always the vague fear of some disaster, like a fire, or earthquake or tsunami, or my desktop/laptop may get stolen. So this is my backup plan; not just for emergencies or disasters, but also to make system restores quick and easy. This is why my original question (at the top of this thread, if you've read all the way to this point) about how to partition my system in order to achieve this goal. At present I backup /etc and parts of /opt, so that I can just copy them from an external drive, rather than having to reconfigure my settings and preferences. (I do some kinky stuff like customizing my hosts file, disabling ipv6, etc.) I can restore my settings from a backup file, but all of this takes time. There used to be a program for backing up an entire working system and creating an installation DVD from it. (I think it was called mondo, but I can't find it any more.) Does anybody know if there is a similar program, or what might be a good plan? Maybe rolling upgrades, and backing up my system to that flash drive? Thanks for your time and suggestions. Bill

On Monday 16 April 2018 12:55:33 deloptes wrote: Yes, this was more or less my plan. It was yourself or another who suggested the logical volumes inside sda2, and yes, I was also planning to encrypt, although I wasn't sure of the method. (I've previously used truecrypt, easycrypt, and variants, but I needed something to encrypt everything from scratch.) I will look into luks. I ought to say, too, that I intend to backup the contents of my flash drive somewhere secure (say, online ...?), but I haven't quite decided that. My O.G. friend has some kind of secure storage on a server that he has been using since about 1970 or so; I was thinking of some kind of server with an onion address, so that I can go to the library, etc., and download my system to a flash drive. I believe I have the basic idea for how to partition my hard drives according to my needs from what was said earlier about creating logical volumes inside sda2. The rest is just working out what I want to backup from /opt, /etc, and so on. Bill