Duplicate Linux Mint from my Laptop to a Bootable USB
 

Greetings,

I am a new user of Linux mint. I installed Linux Mint 17.2 on an HP laptop. the laptop has Windows 8.1 also. Since the installation, I've been using Linux almost all the time.

Now, I am replacing this old laptop with an Asus Zenbook UX305 (Core M) which has Windows 10 on an SSD. I want to copy/duplicate my Linux installation (with all the customization and additionall programs) from the old laptop onto a USB. I want to be able to boot my Linux Mint from this USB on other computers and run while saving my sessions on this USB. I also want to be able to install Linux Mint from this USB onto the new latop ans possibly other computers.

1. Are there any programs/tools that I can use to duplicate my system onto a USB?
2. Is there a "How to" guide to achieve this task?
3. What sort of homework do I need to do/read before I attempt this task?

I hope this is the right forum for this question/request. If not, please advise me of which form is the appropriate one.

I appreciate any help offered here.

it might be possible to simply copy the whole partition with dd.

so, let's say your mint installation is on /dev/sdX2, and your usb stick is /dev/sdY1, you'd do:

- first you have to re-format your usb stick to ext4 (i usually use gparted).

then:
be very, very careful with dd, never just copy-paste commands and make 300 sure you got the drive letters+numbers right.
you might want to understand what a partition is, first.

you have to replace 'X' and 'Y' with the appropriate letters, usually a,b,c.

this might work, or it might not, but it's worth a try.

be prepared to run into driver problems (most commonly graphics).
you might have to adapt your installation to use some sort of fallback graphic driver (used to be vesa), if you're planning to use the usb on multiple devices.

I think using dd will lead to an unbootable USB stick. The is a script called remastersys that can create a bootable image of an existing system. It's old, and I'm not sure if it's still maintained, but it used to work on Debian-based systems including Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

Look here:

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

Sadly remastersys has been abandoned for quite some time. A very few distros still use it though, wattOS being one...

You might consider using clonezilla or redobackup if the usb is equal to or larger. If for example you have a 1Tb internal drive and a 500g usb then you would have to shrink the 1Tb partitions down to equal or below the 500G then clone it.

Same goes for gparted or partimage then you'd have to install a boot loader like grub.

There may be some issues cloning too. A dd command is kind of dangerous for a newbie. It also copies specific files that may need to be generic.

Thanks everyone. I will work on it this weekend and report back.

Hello again,
I was not able to create the duplicate. I couldn't get Remastersys to complete the task successfully. I tried to boot the new laptop from the original copy I have, the laptop did not boot. It may be because the bios configuration. I will try to figure that out and report here.

Regards,

I don't think you can copy and install Mint...

The only linux distribution that I know of that can make an installation medium that is a duplicate of an existing installation for further installation(not just cloning) is openSUSE, using Studio.

Studio uses KIWI to make an installable image file based on the installation file packages used in an existing openSUSE installation. This becomes a custom openSUSE package set to install elsewhere. This would seem to exclude data files in the existing /home directory.

https://susestudio.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE_Studio
https://doc.opensuse.org/projects/kiwi/doc/

If you want to know why you can't make an image of your installed Mint, put it on a USB and boot it, Google "initrd".

PCLinuxOS has had MyLiveCD for years, description below:

If I remember the Remastersys options, the one which included the /home directory was more of a backup without an installer. Another option included the installer. If you find a way to create an iso of your system, you will need to install the installer software first as installed systems don't have an installer, obviously.

Remastersys was/is integrated with the Ubuntu installer Ubiquity and as such won't work on every distro even if it's Buntu based.

I recommended Systemback because it does not have this limitation and is more "generic" although I believe it's limited to Buntu based distros as well.

There were actually two versions, one for Debian and one for Ubuntu and derivatives. Never used the Debian myself but the Ubuntu verson worked on a number of the major derivatives; Mint, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Peppermint and some others. Probably didn't work on all of them though.

You're correct but I never got the Debian version to work reliably myself. The only 100 reliable system I've seen in Debian is Snapshot which is in MX-14/antiX and it works perfectly as the native installer is designed for this feature. The last "official" version of remastersys was for Buntu 12.04 I believe. Some authors have tweaked and patched it so it works on later versions though...