Tag Archives: Wine (Windows Emulator)

Backup and Restore your Ubuntu Linux Workstations

This is a mechanism I invented and I’ve been using for decades, to migrate or clone my Linux Desktops to other physical servers.

This script is focused on doing the job for Ubuntu but I was doing this already 30 years ago, for X Window as I was responsible of the Linux platform of a ISP (Internet Service Provider). So, it is compatible with any Linux Desktop or Server.

It has the advantage that is a very lightweight backup. You don’t need to backup /etc or /var as long as you install a new OS and restore the folders that you did backup. You can backup and restore Wine (Windows Emulator) programs completely and to/from VMs and Instances as well.

It’s based on user/s rather than machine.

And it does backup using the Timestamp, so you keep all the different version, modified over time. You can fusion the backups in the same folder if you prefer avoiding time versions and keep only the latest backup. If that’s your case, then replace s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW=”${s_PATH_BACKUP}${s_DATETIME}/” by s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW=”${s_PATH_BACKUP}” for instance. You can also add a folder for machine if you prefer it, for example if you use the same userid across several Desktops/Servers.

I offer you a much simplified version of my scripts, but they can highly serve your needs.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Author: Carles Mateo
# Last Update: 2022-10-23 10:48 Irish Time

# User we want to backup data for
s_USER="carles"
# Target PATH for the Backups
s_PATH_BACKUP="/home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Bck/"

s_DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
s_DATETIME=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S")

s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW="${s_PATH_BACKUP}${s_DATETIME}/"

echo "Creating path $s_PATH_BACKUP and $s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW"
mkdir $s_PATH_BACKUP
mkdir $s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW

s_PATH_KEY="/home/${s_USER}/Desktop/keys/2007-01-07-cloud23.pem"
s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_EXPORT=${s_DATE}-jenkins-base.tar
s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_BLUEOCEAN2_EXPORT=${s_DATE}-jenkins-blueocean2.tar
s_PGP_FILE=${s_DATETIME}-pgp.zip

# Version the PGP files
echo "Compressing the PGP files as ${s_PGP_FILE}"
zip -r ${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}${s_PGP_FILE} /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/PGP/*

# Copy to BCK folder, or ZFS or to an external drive Locally as defined in: s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW
echo "Copying Data to ${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}/Data"
rsync -a --exclude={} --acls --xattrs --owner --group --times --stats --human-readable --progress -z "/home/${s_USER}/Desktop/data/" "${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}data/"
rsync -a --exclude={'Desktop','Downloads','.local/share/Trash/','.local/lib/python2.7/','.local/lib/python3.6/','.local/lib/python3.8/','.local/lib/python3.10/','.cache/JetBrains/'} --acls --xattrs --owner --group --times --stats --human-readable --progress -z "/home/${s_USER}/" "${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}home/${s_USER}/"
rsync -a --exclude={} --acls --xattrs --owner --group --times --stats --human-readable --progress -z "/home/${s_USER}/Desktop/code/" "${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}code/"


echo "Showing backup dir ${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}"
ls -hal ${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}

df -h /

See how I exclude certain folders like the Desktop or Downloads with –exclude.

It relies on the very useful rsync program. It also relies on zip to compress entire folders (PGP Keys on the example).

If you use the second part, to compress Docker Images (Jenkins in this example), you will run it as sudo and you will need also gzip.

# continuation... sudo running required.

# Save Docker Images
echo "Saving Docker Jenkins /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_EXPORT}"
sudo docker save jenkins:base --output /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_EXPORT}
echo "Saving Docker Jenkins /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_BLUEOCEAN2_EXPORT}"
sudo docker save jenkins:base --output /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_BLUEOCEAN2_EXPORT}
echo "Setting permissions"
sudo chown ${s_USER}.${s_USER} /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_EXPORT}
sudo chown ${s_USER}.${s_USER} /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_BLUEOCEAN2_EXPORT}
echo "Compressing /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_EXPORT}"
gzip /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_EXPORT}
gzip /home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/${s_DOCKER_IMG_JENKINS_BLUEOCEAN2_EXPORT}

rsync -a --exclude={} --acls --xattrs --owner --group --times --stats --human-readable --progress -z "/home/${s_USER}/Desktop/Docker_Images/" "${s_PATH_BACKUP_NOW}Docker_Images/"

There is a final part, if you want to backup to a remote Server/s using ssh:

# continuation... to copy to a remote Server.

s_PATH_REMOTE="bck7@cloubbck11.carlesmateo.com:/Bck/Desktop/${s_USER}/data/"

# Copy to the other Server
rsync -e "ssh -i $s_PATH_KEY" -a --exclude={} --acls --xattrs --owner --group --times --stats --human-readable --progress -z "/home/${s_USER}/Desktop/data/" ${s_PATH_REMOTE}

I recommend you to use the same methodology in all your Desktops, like for example, having a data/ folder in the Desktop for each user.

You can use Erasure Code to split the Backups in blocks and store a piece in different Cloud Providers.

Also you can store your Backups long-term, with services like Amazon Glacier.

Other ideas are storing certain files in git and in Hadoop HDFS.

If you want you can CRC your files before copying to another device or server.

You will use tools like: sha512sum or md5sum.

Cloning a Windows Application running in Wine

I’ve some very old Windows Applications running in Wine in my Linux workstations.

It’s Software I bought years ago and that is not available anymore.

Keeping and migrating or cloning to another Linux Workstation or Virtual machine is really easy.

I share the steps with you.

You just have to copy the contents from your /home/username/.wine folder.

Then, in the new workstation install wine. For Ubuntu this is:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install wine

Run winecfg so basic links and structures are created.

Then simply copy the .wine folder backup to your new machine /home/username/

Your programs will be in /home/username/.wine/drive_c_/Program Files/ or /home/username/.wine/drive_c_/Program Files (x86)/

If you want you can just copy your programs folder.

Remember that to cd to a directory with spaces you have to use “

For example:

$ pwd
/home/carles/.wine/drive_c
$ cd "Program Files"
$ pwd
/home/carles/.wine/drive_c/Program Files

You can also use \ (slash space) to escape space.

Then start your favorite program with:

wine yourprogram.exe

If that fails is very probably that creating a new configuration, for a new user, will make things right.

Update 2022-01-05: Take in count that you will be copying the Windows registry when doing this. I use this trick to clone applications that are no longer downloadable from the Internet. I clone wine to dedicated Virtual Machines. You may need different Virtual Machines for different programs if windows registry is different for them.