Arch Linux

TheMacDads

Member

Registered: 2020-05-11

Posts: 9

[SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

I just had a power cut which killed my desktop and now the system won't boot. I just get a blinking underscore on a black screen (no actual prompt). The good news is today I backed up my system with timeshift. I'm struggling with how to use that backup to restore the system though.

I've had a look at other posts but can't find something which addresses the installation and restore of timeshift from a live boot. Problem is that Timeshift is an AUR package, so I tried installing yay first, cloned the git repo, and then learned that makepkg can't be run as root since "it can cause permanent, catastrophic damage to your system". I suppose there's no need to use yay and I could build it from source, but I imagine that would run into the same issue?

** Extra info **

Earlier today I did a system-wide update (backed up with timeshift first) and my nvidia utils were updated, causing a loss of CUDA support (I think nvidia-modprobe was the command suggested to fix during the update but that didn't help). That was a pain since I may need to use some GPU Machine Learning stuff during the day so I put "nvidia*" in the pacman conf as holds, so that it they wouldn't be updated. Then I reran the update and no complaints apart from some warnings that these packages would be skipped. I imagine this is what is causing my system not to boot now though, can't think of anything else unless it broke somehow when unexpectedly powered off.

Last edited by TheMacDads (2020-06-18 09:53:53)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,076

Re: [SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

If it wasn't a btrfs snapshot (in which case I don't know what you'd have to use... and you'd probably be able to recover without a live system, but I don't use btrfs yet so I don't know what I'm talking about) it should ultimately just be an rsync backup that can be restored with rsync just the same:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rs … tem_backup

If you still want or need to go through with timeshift itself and you want to use makepkg for this (and you don't want to create your own user and...) see http://allanmcrae.com/2015/01/replacing-makepkg-asroot/

Last edited by V1del (2020-06-17 16:13:42)

zpg443

Member

Registered: 2016-12-03

Posts: 315

Re: [SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

To use timeshift, you have to be able to chroot into your system and mount /home, or otherwise use a backup image in grub to boot. Otherwise rsync is your only option.

TheMacDads

Member

Registered: 2020-05-11

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

Thank you both for your responses. I had a read of the chroot arch wiki page, am able to mount the main /dev/sda1 drive (in /mnt/sda1) and used arch-chroot as recommended to chroot into that drive, which can now see the timeshift binary it seems. So I'm thinking of navigating to /timeshift directory and calling the restore command on one of these subdirectories in there (snapshots-ondemand/<most recent>) (will read up about this command first) and hoping it will be okay with that restore. Am I write in thinking that timeshift will now treat this "apparent root" directory as the root to backup files to?

zpg443

Member

Registered: 2016-12-03

Posts: 315

Re: [SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

Since you can Chroot into sda1, login as user then,

 timeshift --restore

It will then provide a list of backups available to choose from. It will restore to the correct partitions.

TheMacDads

Member

Registered: 2020-05-11

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

worked like a charm, thanks a lot

zpg443

Member

Registered: 2016-12-03

Posts: 315

Re: [SOLVED] How to Restore from Timeshift Backup in a Live Boot?

Please remember to mark as solved.