Can someone direct me to HOWTO so that I might capture my running system -- a Linux Mint laptop -- to a bootable "live media" ISO?

My objective is to create a "recovery disk" set of ISO files and associated DVD, BluRay® or similar media. That contains the whole box. A cold metal restore using the kit would put everything back the way it was when the "recovery set" got created without the need to load distribution media or install and configure packages.

I want to run some utility that will grab all of the partition and file system parameters, settings and configuration, and partition contents into an ISO folder tree. That done, I want whatever else is required to make that folder tree into a bootable "live media" ISO.

If there is no existing tool or package, is there HOWTO such that I might create my own utility?

One motive for this lies with the gnarly bog of issues surrounding package evolution between the time that one creates the "recovery set" and the time of use. If I create a "recovery set" today, I don't want to worry about changes to any of the software should I try to install that set months or even years from now.

I've seen "Make your own Distro" articles.

I've not found a "Make bootable live media" HOWTO that is not a royal pain in the anatomy to implement -- might be fine for not-me.

I understand file system "backup" using any of several methods.

I'm not a Linux of sys-admin wizard, but I've used Linux for many years -- mostly *buntu variants. I was a developer for years but moved into "management" during the 90's so my coding skills have dust and rust -- I did write some code this past summer.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Look for a package called Systemback (I know it has a PPA). It does what you want and runs on Buntu based systems. Linux Lite includes it in their latest release.

I use a modified version of remastersys on mine but it's no longer in development.

One note, there is a 4GB size limit for the resulting ISO so if you have lots of data - you'd want to back that up seperately.

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The Ubuntu version of remastersys did pretty much what you want. Created a bootable iso with an installer which worked for the major Ubuntu releases including Mint which I used it for. It is no longer being developed so it probably won't work.

Just saw the post by NGIB.

PCLinuxOS has a utility called mylivecd which I believe does what you want but like a lot of this software, it is very specific and only works on PCLinux. Best bet I guess is to try SystemBack.

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Here's the info on Systemback. I've used it and it works, I just prefer remastersys as it still runs fine on my 14.04 LTS system. These utilities are very family tree oriented as making the ISO is just one issue - you then need an installer to put it back and therein lies much of the issue. MX-14 and antiX has the capability as well and it's integrated into the system and the installer.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ng-systemback/

It also may be possible to squash the filesystem and use it like a live cd/dvb/usb does. However, if your system is quite large, no program will allow you to recover it easily. A simple usb hard drive may be a good choice. An image could be made.

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Will you explain what you modified in remastersys and why you wanted those mods?
Decades ago I was product manager for a mainframe high-speed-backup utility using 9-track tapes. I remain interested in how people think about "backup" versus long-term capture of live rotating data. Personally, I use the terms "failsafe" and "archive" as a reminder that one purpose is recovery from failure versus long term storage and retrieval.

I understand the 4.7 GB limit of DVD media. (I wish that 25 GB Blu-Ray was a bootable media.)
That will be fine to capture the details of a configured and running workstation.

Follow-up:
I found a comment elsewhere on the web. For various reasons, they suggested using a bootable live-media USB stick instead of optical media. I thought about this and decided to pursue this route.

• It removes the 4.7 GB limit of DVD media.
• It is much more {trans}portable and easier to store.
• Modern GRUB2 will boot directly from a properly configured ISO file if there are hardware boot restrictions or troubles.
• There are a few machines that will not boot from USB-connected drives, but they are rare in late 2015.

I use rsync and an external drive to capture my working data and related data archives. I find file-by-file more useful than the various tools that clone a file system. It is much slower, but more useful.

Then I use tar + bzip2 to make an offline copy of the external. These are easier to store than a drive.

During recovery, I expect to use the live media to restore a configured and running system.
(It is so nice that Linux does not care about the physical drive where bootstrap finds /boot and /root -- unlike that other OS.) I would then reverse the capture tasks to recover my working and archive data.

So I fetched and tried SystemBack v1.7.100_10.10.2015_Qt5.2.1_GCC4.8.4_amd64 as reported by the installed package "--version" command line option.

There are two commands:

• systemback -- launch a graphical interface based on Qt.
• systemback-cli -- run the application from the command line

systemback -- launch a graphical interface based on Qt.
I was not able to use this variant due to run-time errors involving Qt and X-Windows things.
Visit the systemback pages at Launchpad for all of the details.

systemback-cli -- run the application from the command line
This variant ran as expected. It created a folder tree at /home/Systemback using the current time and date as the folder name. The folder contents are a file-by-file copy of the required system components.

There is minimal documentation at this time. The man-pages are slightly useful but minimal.

Looks like a useful program. Hope it works out.

I'm playing with systemback. It is still early days for the utility and my knowledge and use of same. Sadly, there is almost no documentation. Even the man-pages are minimal.

The utility seems to have good bones and I believe that it will mature into something extremely useful. Yes, I have offered to help with this project and hope to hear from the project team about that involvement.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Let us know how it works out.

It seems your talking about the initrd.img files that are a compressed file system used during system bootstrap. Do I understand correctly?
Recovery is a process.

• restore the hardware (if there was a failure).
• restore the OS and its parts and configuration
• restore applications and their configuration
• restore end-user data files
• resolve any troubles that exist

Hardware recovery is mechanical and physical.
OS recovery and application recovery are where this post's dialog is aimed
data recovery relies on traditional backup and archive techniques.

That's my tuppence,
~~~ 0;-Dan

No, I meant that you compress the entire virtual filesystem into a single file using some tool like squashfs.