Recover from total system failure
Michael Terry

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 Unported License

Hertatijanto Hartono
https://launchpad.net/~dvertx

# Full System Restore

# Setup

Get your system to a fresh state. For example, a fresh install or a new account on an old computer. Don’t worry about getting comfortable and customizing settings yet. Wait until after you restore your previous settings to change anything, as any customizations you make now may get overridden once you restore.

Next, you need to install Déjà Dup. Your distribution vendor may package it for you. Otherwise, install it from flathub or the snap store.

# Restore

Open Backups.

Click on the Restore From a Previous Backup button on the Overview page.

A Restore dialog will appear asking where your backup files are stored (your Backup location).

Click Forward and wait for Déjà Dup to scan the backup location.

Choose the date you want to restore from. Usually you can just leave this alone, as the default is the most recent backup.

Click Forward.

Choose where to restore. Since this is a full system backup, leave it as the default (which restores over your current install).

Click Forward.

Review your selections and click Restore.

Wait. It may take a long time to finish restoring.

Finally, reinstall any programs that you enjoyed in your previous install.

If for whatever reason you have a problem after trying to restore with the Restore files to original locations option, try restoring instead to a temporary directory and moving your files to where they belong.

If that still doesn’t work, there are more drastic things you can try.