Looking for Ghosting software/WDS alternative for Linux and Windows

[Jeremyy44]

Hi,

So what I am looking for is a WDS alternative that could run on my linux server (Ubuntu server 20.04) that would allow me to bassicly boot over network to clone a ISO to the computer im booting with and that would work for any type of iso's. I dont need anything too deep I would simply use this as a way of having a backup of my base install of my laptop and/or desktop install so that if anything happens I can restore a base image that has all of my basic configs done and everything that I dont want already turned off. 

I would like the software to be able to run alongside everything on my server so either in a docker container or in a vm idc.

Thanks in advance for any proposition. 

[leadeater]

You could simply host a Windows Backup & Recovery image on an SMB share hosted on your Linux server, then just boot the Windows installer and choose the option to restore from backup. It's under the repair option bottom left once you are in the Windows installer. Can also take regular/semi-regular backups and store or replace the image on the server. I would keep a clean nothing installed backup and then one fully configured backup personally.

[jde3]

I don't know what the windows backup is called anymore but I'd stick to Leadeater's advice here.

 

I tend not to backup windows because it's not a real computer and I don't really ever put data on there that is important, I don't trust it and treat it like xbox. But.. if you are looking for file level only I've used Duplicati before.

 

If you want a full image because you for some reason want a bit for bit copy of the disk you'll have to use something that boots it own OS and reads the disk like Clonezilla. This is usually not an efficient approach because it will copy all the zero sectors and any undeleted files as well as the data. (tho you can mitigate that)

[Jeremyy44]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You could simply host a Windows Backup & Recovery image on an SMB share hosted on your Linux server, then just boot the Windows installer and choose the option to restore from backup. It's under the repair option bottom left once you are in the Windows installer. Can also take regular/semi-regular backups and store or replace the image on the server. I would keep a clean nothing installed backup and then one fully configured backup personally.

So that would work for windows but what about my linux install? Could the same be done that way? 

[Jeremyy44]

10 minutes ago, jde3 said:

I don't know what the windows backup is called anymore but I'd stick to Leadeater's advice here.

 

I tend not to backup windows because it's not a real computer and I don't really ever put data on there that is important, I don't trust it and treat it like xbox. But.. if you are looking for file level only I've used Duplicati before.

 

If you want a full image because you for some reason want a bit for bit copy of the disk you'll have to use something that boots it own OS and reads the disk like Clonezilla.

Yeah to backup the disk itself thats what I was intending to use clonezilla or dd over ssh for my linux install on my laptop but yeah it was rly for restoring it that I was looking for something over network. And yeah im probably gonna endup following his advice since I didnt know it could be done that simply

[jde3]

For Linux ordinarily you only need to keep your home directory. That said if you have a lot of custom configurations or server data you'll need that as well. Having a copy of the /etc directory never hurts. You may also want to include a list of packages you installed in a text file in your home directory so you can more easily get back to the same state (on ubuntu this is done with "dpkg --get-selections > ~/packages.txt" ) You can usually move your home directory from distro to distro with minimal changes. (perhaps you'll have to adjust some paths in the shell or file links but it mostly works) - Binaries and software you generally don't need to keep on Linux tho because it can always be replaced. (of course there are exceptions.)

 

DejaDup is a pretty good file level backup for Linux. (Included in Gnome) Or.. you can just tar or rsync the directory.. and there are ways to exclude directories from the backup like Steam games. Something like..
 

 rsync -avAX /home/* user@server:/path/to/backup --exclude={*lost+found,/home/*/.gvfs,/home/*/.steam/steamapps/common}

 

Clonezilla works over a network.. It will allow you to select an image to restore and gives you several file access methods like SSH or CIFS.

TimeMachine for MacOS really has this nailed tho. They have the best backup implementation I've seen. Good news! Ubuntu is working on a similar one with ZFS here.. Someday maybe. Fun Fact: TimeMachine was originally designed to leverage ZFS but Apple chose to create APFS instead.

[Jeremyy44]

25 minutes ago, jde3 said:

For Linux ordinarily you only need to keep your home directory. That said if you have a lot of custom configurations or server data you'll need that as well.

You may also want to include a list of packages you installed in a text file in your home directory so you can more easily get back to the same state. You can usually move your home directory from distro to distro with minimal changes. (perhaps you'll have to adjust some paths in the shell or links but it mostly works)

 

DejaDup is a pretty good file level backup for Linux. (Included in Gnome) Or.. you can just tar or rsync the directory.

 

Clonezilla works over a network.. It will allow you to select an image to restore and gives you several file access methods like SSH or CIFS.

Im gonna be honest I am kind of lazy to backup everything separately mostly because I dont rly change distros that often so thats why im lazy and looking for just a iso. But I did not know I could restore over network with clonezilla! That would actually work great for linus and leadeater solution for windows. That both together would actually be perfect for what im looking to acomplish!

[jde3]

Go with DejaDup, it's dead simple and reliable and runs in the background. It's basically a GUI to duplicity that I've used in enterprise before. It's good software.

Clonezilla you have to reboot the OS to backup.