Déjà Dup

Use with My Odd Win-XP / Ubuntu "Gemini" Configuration

Asked by Jeffrey S. Wilson

I have this odd Win-XP Pro x64 and Ubuntu 11.04 x64 dual-boot system that I would like to back up. I refer to it as a "Gemini configuration." I built it to facilitate looking with various browser versions and default font sets at Web pages I've created.

Windows is not fond of dual-booting with rival operating systems. So I installed Ubuntu on its own drive (rather than add a partition to the drive that Windows has been using) and rely upon the grub boot loader to select which OS to boot. Since Ubuntu is capable of mounting NTFS drives, I can read and write everything on the Windows system from Ubuntu, and Windows doesn't know the difference.

I installed Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird on both systems. On the Ubuntu side, these applications' profile.ini files point to user files located on the Windows side. I have done the same with Apache's XAMPP stack. Thus I can boot into either OS and use all of my e-mail, bookmarks, browsing history, Web projects etc. Synchronization is unnecessary because there is only one database.

This affords a nice level of integration, yet allows me to pull apart the "twins" when I want.

Microsoft will soon drop support for Windows XP. That means I must save a complete system image for future use, since I will no longer be able to install it from CD and roll forward through updates via the Web.

Sorry for the long explanation, but the motivation for my Déjà Dup questions is thus clear. Assume that the Ubuntu "twin" is running, so that both Déjà Dup and the NTFS Windows system disk are available to me.

1) I back up to an Ext3 NAS filesystem. I see that Déjà Dup works fine with it for Ubuntu (Ext4) backup and restore. If I back up Windows files, will I lose their permissions upon restore? Would it make any difference if I were instead to backup to an NTFS filesystem on the NAS?

2) I beleive that I must use some standalone tool other than Déjà Dup in order to back up the bootable Win XP system image. Is that correct?

3) I am investigating backup generally for my larger network. Intending no disrespect, how do I completely remove a Déjà Dup Ubuntu installation, including duplicity, entries in the GNOME configuration file and archive files on the NAS?

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Michael Terry (mterry) said : 		#1

1) No, the target filesystem won't make a difference in terms of what permissions are kept because DD keeps all data inside a tarball, which can keep track of preferences. However, DD will only back up whatever POSIX permissions Ubuntu can see on the mounted drive. I'm not sure off hand whether that is sufficient to restore them with the full set of Windows permissions it had before. Obviously it will work for the simple r/w case, but I haven't tested backing up files with Windows ACLs or some such.

2) I'm not sure what you mean by "bootable Win XP system image". If it's just a file, it should be fine. If you mean, the entire drive, then see my caveat below. If you mean something else, I'm not sure.

3) To remove DD, just uninstall it... I must be missing something about this question. Are you asking about other backup solutions?

I do have one caveat for what you're trying to do. If you just want a one-time, frozen-in-amber backup of your XP disc, just copy all the files to your NAS directly. No reason to get a backup program involved. DD comes in handy when you want rolling incremental backups and to be able to restore to different times in the past.

Also, note that DD can only backup what your user has read permissions for.

Revision history for this message
Jeffrey S. Wilson (halfnium) said : 		#2

Hello, Michael,

Thank you for the quick response!

You answer Q1 as I would expect. Since I'm the sole user of my "Gemini"
system, permissions don't matter much to me, but I thought I'd ask & learn.

I (unwisely) asked Q2, an unrelated question, in the same e-mail. I
didn't really suppose that I'd be able to sit on the Linux side of
"Gemini" and create a bootable Windows system image with DD, but I
thought there was no harm in asking. By "bootable image," I mean a
collection of bytes such that it could be written over a virgin hard
drive and then the OS booted from that drive as the system disk. I must
work out a way to do that because Microsoft will shortly cease online
support for Windows XP. Norton Ghost is the canonical example of
software that can create a bootable Windows image.

Q3 is about uninstalling without leaving a trace. I am indeed trying &
evaluating backup software, and I want to avoid one product's leaving
behind artifacts that disrupt installation or function of another
product. In the case of DD, that means expunging any gconf entries,
removing duplicity, deleting the files in the archive test set I've been
using and removing DD itself. Have I left anything out? To accomplish
that goal, need I do more than (1) uninstall DD via the Ubuntu Software
Center and (2) delete the archive files?

Thank you for your patience with newbies. I don't know how you can get
any work done.

Regards,
Jeff Wilson

On 07/13/2011 02:06 PM, Michael Terry wrote:
> Your question #164693 on Déjà Dup changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+question/164693
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Michael Terry proposed the following answer:
> 1) No, the target filesystem won't make a difference in terms of what
> permissions are kept because DD keeps all data inside a tarball, which
> can keep track of preferences. However, DD will only back up whatever
> POSIX permissions Ubuntu can see on the mounted drive. I'm not sure off
> hand whether that is sufficient to restore them with the full set of
> Windows permissions it had before. Obviously it will work for the
> simple r/w case, but I haven't tested backing up files with Windows ACLs
> or some such.
>
> 2) I'm not sure what you mean by "bootable Win XP system image". If
> it's just a file, it should be fine. If you mean, the entire drive,
> then see my caveat below. If you mean something else, I'm not sure.
>
> 3) To remove DD, just uninstall it... I must be missing something about
> this question. Are you asking about other backup solutions?
>
>
> I do have one caveat for what you're trying to do. If you just want a one-time, frozen-in-amber backup of your XP disc, just copy all the files to your NAS directly. No reason to get a backup program involved. DD comes in handy when you want rolling incremental backups and to be able to restore to different times in the past.
>
> Also, note that DD can only backup what your user has read permissions
> for.
 --
Jeffrey S. Wilson
24 Throne Hill Road
Groton, MA 01450

Home: 978-448-6449
Mobile: 978-877-8169

Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) said : 		#3

Q2: Yeah, to be clear, that's not DD's thing. I don't know enough about doing that to point you at a resource either. :-/

Q3: That's actually a little harder than you might think. Here's what you want to do:

gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.DejaDup
sudo apt-get purge deja-dup
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge
rm /path/to/backup/files/*

The first one wipes your user settings, which are normally left around after an uninstall.
The second one removes deja-dup and its configuration files (config files are normally left around unless you use this special command purge).
The third one should purge any packages that no longer have a reason to be on the system (i.e. any dependencies of deja-dup that were installed as a side-effect)
The last one deletes your backed up archive files.

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