Earlier I had a big issue that made me connect to live USB. I tried installing Hyprland but I guess the script I used was broken (it was based for Fedora 41), because I couldn’t login at all (even if I settled up the good keyboard layout and stuff). And broken for every kernel option in Grub, believe me I tried.
So, I used the USB in hope I could restore my previous save (before I launched that script). I could access Timeshift and my saved Timeshifts on my disk, but I had an error that prevented me continuing, I think it was about the EFI partition ? It told me that it could only be restored for Ubuntu systems or something.
Hence, I couldn’t apply the restoration of the system. Since I had nothing to lose, I just did a fresh install all over again.
But in case it happens again, I’d love understanding:
why it didn’t work
what are the proper steps to recover a previous saved state and log back to it from live USB.
Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me, this was very weird.
The Anaconda installer is not designed to “repair” existing installations, AFAIK. But I guess that wasn’t what you were expecting from the Live ISO.
Timeshift is indeed specific to Ubuntu IIRC, and can have undesired effects on Fedora. For Fedora, you can manage BTRFS snapshots either form CLI (somewhat tedious), or by using BTRFS Assistant as a GUI app.
Okay then, and what is the GUI app enabling me to do ? Can it possibly used to restore the system in case I encounter a similar problem that locks me out and I can only use the live USB ?
Thanks for the Ubuntu specifics mention, it isn’t indicated anywhere so I wouldn’t have guessed since I came from Mint initially and well… It worked ofc lol
Fedora still lacks an OOTB method of restoring snapshots from Live ISO.
So, in the situation a recovery/restore is needed, from a Live ISO you could either go via the CLI route (see this article for details), or install BTRFS Assistant in the live session (should be possile IIRC) and perform the restore of the affected BTRFS subvolumes.
Louise, pay attention to these lines in the above article:
One may be tempted to think: If I take a series of Btrfs snapshots locally on my PC, I have a solid backup strategy. This is not the case. If the underlying data, which is shared by Btrfs subvolumes, is accidentally damaged (by something outside of Btrfs’ influence, e.g. cosmic rays), all the subvolumes pointing to this data contain the same error.
To turn the snapshots into real backups you should store them on a different Btrfs filesystem, such as on an external drive.
Personally I use a simpler method, I backup my personal files (documents, email, etc) with Deja Dup and once in a while manually on an external drive, then I reinstall Fedora from scratch when needed. Of course that is possibile because I do not have a complex system configuration that is worth saving, like, I don’t know, some software development environment.
Feels relatable ! I guess I already do something close to you, with probably even less documents directly on my laptop I’m noting the software you mentioned, I’ll investigate
Maybe it is worth this clarification: there are two kinds of “backup”.
One is the backup of your files, basically it is like copying the files from “home” to somewhere else. You can do that manually or via some utility like Deja Dup, whose advantage is automation, encryption (in case you use a cloud service like GDrive) and incremental copies (only changes are saved). It is not the safest option but you can use a simpe USB key.
The other kind of backup is basically about “cloning” the whole system. It means you save all the system files, the software and the general and local configuration, plus all the “home”. That is what the BTRFS snapshots are about and the reason those are an “overkill” if your system configuration is basic and you don’t lose much with reinstalling from scratch.
