IS it possible to make backup of CF settigns when i can't boot to linux?

[maciekwpl]

I have some problem. My whole partition table got screwed up. I fixed this, but now GRUB stopped to work and I'm unable to install it once again from LiveCD. This is not a big problem, because in few weeks' time I'm building a new computer and I'm going to format everything :D (I'm taking HDD from the older one). And one more thing: XP works, it just boots straight to ntldr.

Now, i installed some sort of ext3 filesystem driver on WinXP and can access the files my Ubuntu installed from WinXP in My Computer.

And the question is : am i able to make backup of all CF settings ? (like the one you do in ccsm) without access to linux (i mean i'm unable to boot it)

I thought that maybe i could mount my linux filesystem on LiveCD and then copy some files, save them, and after format just overwrite them? However, I'm using git version and that may be a problem.

Can it be done? Please answer.

[Fyda]

Hmm. As far as your first question about settings goes: were you using the Flat File configuration backend? (I know, it's not really convenient/possible to check this, in your situation. :( But maybe you remember?) On the chance that you were, your settings would have been saved in ~/.config/compiz/compizconfig (usually just a file named Default.ini, but if you saved any other custom profiles, they would be there as well). You could save a backup of that, and it should work when copied into the same directory on a fresh install.

But, settings aside: which "git version" are you using, and more importantly, how did you install it? I suspect that even if you did compile it manually and install it to /usr/local, just backing those files up wouldn't work, as it would have dependencies not satisfied by a default Gutsy installation. So, with regards to the installed app, I'm not sure how much could be saved. Maybe it would be better to just reinstall it cleanly; someone else here might know more about this.

In most cases, apps can simply be reinstalled (although this is time-consuming); it's the files in /home that matter.

[d_garbage]

Hi maciekwpl,
For GRUB/boot problems I find Super Grub Disk (SGD) very handy. It's a bit obscure usage wise, and you should always be careful with that kind of stuff, but it might allow you to boot/restore your old grub.
Anyway check it out - just be carefull though, don't want to be blamed for hosing your computer! :)
Cheers,
David
PS. Opensuse cd has an option to "Boot from installed system" which can sometimes be used to find and boot os's on the harddrive by-passing the hd grub. Does Ubuntu have an option hidden away anywhere to do this?

[delfick]

hello

is this driver thing you're using, this here http://www.fs-driver.org/

I use that, it seems to have no negative effects :D

[maciekwpl]

@ deflick:

Yes, it's the one, but it is not the driver which caused the problem. Before that, i used it without any problems.But once GRUB just did not start
and it booted straight to WinXP! I am not 100% sure if it is about partition table. Someone on Ubuntuforums suggested running LiveCD, installing testdisk from Internet and running it. But since i can't get my Internet connection running on LiveCD, I downloaded System Rescue CD and run 'testdisk' .After several answers i got something, but still didn't try to fix it. (see image attached, it was taken by mobile phone so don't care about quality :P)

I did not try to fix it because i am not absolutely sure about the safety of data installed on partitions. I thought : "whatever! I'm going to make backup from Windows, format it everything and reinstall Linux :P"

But now i thought about how much effort it took me to personalize CF, andwant to do something about it :)

PS.: I don't know exactly what git version it was. I just always used a script which git-pulled every component of CF. I did use only the default profile.

PS2.: If you really want to know the problem more, see those threads : (made by me, of course :))


http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3889686#post3889686
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=631586

[Forlong]

Did you follow Fyda's first suggestion?

If you compiled from git there's a pretty good possibility you were using the flat-file backend.

You should be able to access the file(s) from XP.
Just go to home\<your name>\.config\compiz\compizconfig in the respective drive the fs-driver has mounted to windows for you and backup anything in there.

[maciekwpl]

Ok. And if the settings reffered to e.g. some plugins i compiled from git by myself, and i won't have them in future, will they be omitted, or will it cause errors?

[Forlong]

They will be omitted but you can remove those sections from the .ini file, if you like. Just have a look at it, it's pretty self-explanatory.