Hi everyone, has anyone installed and had success with Penguins Eggs in Mabox? I’m trying to create my own bootable and installable backup ISO with no appreciable results.
Hi @luigiP and welcome to the forum.
I gave it a try some time ago and… failed miserably 
There is a manual explaining the process but I personally find it cumbersome. Penguins Eggs seemed easier but I got a lot of errors. Arch distros need a good tool able to generate a custom ISO from your system, transparently, for the final user, something like MX Linux’s MX Snapshot.
If the others guys know a better approach/App I’m all ears. 
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I did some tests and Eggs works great on Arch, Manjaro, ArcoLinux. My frustration that I can’t get a working ISO only Mabox with I find beautiful and very neat.
If you don’t mind some false appearance of Arch try this:
yay -S penguins-eggs
modify /etc/lsb-release (for the time of ‘egg-laying’ at least)
DISTRIB_ID="Arch"
DISTRIB_RELEASE="rolling"
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Arch Linux"
yay -S mkinitcpio-archiso
this will give a false Arch identity to Mabox Linux but be strong it still remains Mabox.
sudo eggs dad -d
if you select N to calamares in the next step it will not be a live system
sudo eggs produce --clone
The iso file will be found in /home/eggs/.mnt . Change arch to mabox in its name.
It worth further refining / testing and ‘to hammer on’.
Good luck.
EDIT 1:
It’s a bit bizarre: If you ask Calamares to be included then having booted the new ISO
and before you are trying to install it to a disk it seems that an extra copy is needed:
su
cp /run/archiso/copytoram/airootfs.sfs /run/archiso/bootmnt/arch/x86_64/
calamares
or an ln is needed otherwise airootfs.sfs is not found by calamares.
New user cann’t be created during Calamares only the existing one(s) will be transferred.
Further tests are needed.
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Thanks, I’ll try this and see what happens. 
@zolw :Great! I followed the procedure you indicated and I finally got the installable ISO! Thank you very much! 
If this works you are gonna make me very, very happy. 
Some thoughts on this theme:
The speed is not so good.
Rescuezilla is still a strong player.
The fastest backup for me (although not satisfy all) is timeshift-gtk
The timeshift backups are restored not from the target system.
Update: Penguins Eggs is working now. My dream to use Mabox as portable toolbox is almost ready. 
What I did (following the basic instructions at Piero’s page):
-
Created a VM in Virtualbox, did a regular install and updates using the latest ISO.
- Make sure you have no less than 15 GB of available space.
-
Installed several applications as POC.
-
Open the console and run the following for the first time only:
git clonehttps://github.com/pieroproietti/fresh-eggs
cd fresh-eggs/
This is the best part. Mabox is now recognized and the script automatically installs for you all the relevant packages so no need to “disguise it“ as Arch like before:
sudo ./fresh-eggs.sh
Prepare the basics:
sudo eggs dad --default
sudo eggs tools clean
Optional, if you want to install (graphically) the new ISO later:
sudo eggs calamares --install
Generate a new ISO containing your programs/packages and without personal data. From now on, run only this command every time you update Mabox:
sudo eggs produce --pendrive
I tried the --max parameter and took significantly longer with about 300 MB less vs the default. The --pendrive should be intermediate in terms of speed vs size.
You can copy/distribute the final, shiny Mabox ISO residing in: /home/eggs. I booted the VM with this ISO and so far seems good.
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