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I am running Ubuntu 12.04 TLS. Is there a way to produce an ISO installable image of my current system so as I could burn the image on a flash drive and be able to install it on an other PC ? Please provide details. thanks

SHAUKAT ALI KHAN
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I'd love to provide you with this answer, and particularly with details. You see, there are two popular and equally correct answers, and I'm prepared to offer both to you, with the understanding that the one which sounds easier is much much more dangerous to your data, while the one which sounds slightly more complicated is immensely safer, while also being easier. Given the choice I'm a big fan of both fast and easy. Neither method is significantly slower than the other.

Also please see my bio and take my word for it that the program I use for cloning is in fact the slightly more complicated sounding solution. So lets get started.

The solution I wish to recommend to you is CLONEZILLA Clonezilla is a program which comes to you as a downloadable ISO which you burn to a cd and boot your computer to in order to operate it. After several text menus, it gives you the stupid easy choice to back up your drive (or just partitions) to an image file on external usb media (in most cases) or directly to another drive entirely. I recommend the image transition, if only because I'm fond of backups. Using an intermediary takes longer, but I think it is worth it.

The other solution uses a utility built into Ubuntu called dd. I have heard that dd official stands for data description, although it is commonly referred to as "drive duplicator" but that it's ambiguities which causes people to copy blank drives over full drivers resulting in Data Destruction.

gyropyge
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  • I find this site so confusing. I don't understand how my answer somehow scored me MINUS FIFTEEN. – gyropyge Dec 24 '14 at 06:33
  • I am having similar task. I have a dual boot(Ubuntu 14.04 within Windows 10) , ubuntu is being installed on windows 10, I mean their is no seperate partition for ubuntu. Now, I would like make bootable backup on USB with only ubuntu. I have looked at clonezilla but it may clone both windows and ubuntu both.
    Can you help me.     – aashish Nov 13 '16 at 08:23
  • @gyropyge the first two paragraphs are basically "blah blah", that might be why. – Javi Dec 12 '17 at 15:16
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You can easily move any Linux installation by just moving its folder, as long as you don't alter the files or their rights. So it is 'tar caf /ubuntufolder archieve.xz' but there are difficulties:

  1. You MUST do the archieving while booted from LiveCD or another Linux installation OR exclude pseudofolders like '/proc' '/tmp' and whatever else.
  2. After unpacking, you will have to reinstall bootloader and check '/etc/fstab'.
Barafu Albino
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  • Dear Barafu Albino. please explain it in a little more details. – SHAUKAT ALI KHAN Dec 23 '14 at 10:56
  • Those are basics. I am afraid explaining them will take pages of text. For example here is some info on how to boot LiveCD. Search Internet for relevant instructions. May be follow different advice. This one is the simplest as in "requires no special software". – Barafu Albino Dec 23 '14 at 11:02
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You need a program that can produce an iso file, and this is Remastersys.

This set of instructions helped me install and run successfully remastersys on Ubuntu 14.04.1 32bit and also successfully make a bootable flash drive with the custom iso I made.

  1. Open the Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and run 

    sudo apt-get install plymouth-x11

  2. Go to this link and download remastersys version for 32bit or 64bit system

    IMPORTANT: I downloaded version 3.0.4-1 i386 and it WORKS I checked 3.0.2- version and it doesn't work.

  3. Open 'Software & Updates' (search in Dash or in the System's parameters)

  4. In 'Software & Updates', go to "Other Software" tab and press "Add..." button

  5. Copy/paste this 

    deb http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu precise main

    and press OK

  6. Now look for two lines with "www.remastersys.com/" in the list you can find on the Other tab and make sure you check both boxes. Enter a password if you are asked to.

  7. Switch back to Terminal and run 

    sudo apt-get install remastersys-gui

  8. To open remastersys-gui, you always need root privileges. So do it in the Terminal

    gksu remastersys-gui
Stasia Trubitsyna
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  • As a note: remastersys was abandoned and remastersys.com is just some random link collection website now, there is a fork available called Linux Respin available under remastersys.org – ChrisWue Feb 12 '18 at 04:52