github rescuezilla/rescuezilla 1.0.5
v1.0.5 (2019-11-08)

latest releases: rolling-release.2023-11-26, 2.4.2, 2.4.1...
4 years ago

This release is old. Always use the latest release.

After 7 years without a release, the abandoned Redo Backup and Recovery application has been brought back from the dead by a new maintainer and is now called 'Rescuezilla'.

Simply use balenaEtcher to flash the image to a USB drive, reboot your PC and boot from USB.

If you would like to see the project continue, please consider supporting the project on Patreon.

Version 1.0.5 (2019-11-08)

  • Upgraded base to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic) from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise)
  • Renamed project Rescuezilla but keeping ‘Redo’ for v1.0.5 (See ‘Project Announcements’ below)
  • Switched to Hardware Enablement kernel for best support of new hardware (thanks OAM775!)
  • Ensured official image bootable as both USB drive and CD (v1.0.4 was only bootable as a CD)
  • Added SliM (Simple Login Manager) to fix boot sometimes failing to start graphical environment
  • Switched to running the graphical session as unpriviliged user, for improved security
  • Removed deprecated gksu (graphical frontend to su/sudo), which was never necessary
  • Added PolicyKit policies to provide root privileges to certain applications (via pkexec)
  • Removed deprecated system-config-lvm (graphical LVM editor)
  • Replaced deprecated adeskbar (start menu) with lxpanel
  • Configured lxpanel to closely match adeskbar’s look-and-feel
  • Added yad dialog application and a custom graphical shutdown menu
  • Removed drivereset from start menu as Rescuezilla maintainer does not have a test environment
  • Replaced ‘maximus’ with openbox's builtin maximize settings, toggleable per-app
  • Switched to ‘pigz’ multithreaded gzip based on OAM775’s old releases (thanks!)
  • Fixed SMB/FTP passwords not working with special characters (thanks Dave Kipfer!)
  • Imported patches from Michal Suchanek’s git repo from 2012 and 2015, as practical (see next)
  • Added ability to restore partition to a drive smaller than the original (thanks Michal!)
  • Added ability to configure default share name via /etc/rescuezilla/share (thanks Michal!)
  • Added log file for each partition’s partclone operation (thanks Michal!)
  • Stopped printing of SMB credentials when mounting drives (thanks Michal!)
  • Stopped printing of FTP credentials when mounting drives
  • Removed deprecated sfdisk ‘-x’ argument used to save extended partition information
  • Replaced deprecated ‘sfdisk -R’ call with ‘blockdev –rereadpt’, to force reload partition info
  • Writes Rescuezilla version in the backup directory to help backwards compatibility
  • Writes partition information during backup so Ubuntu 18.04 partclone can correctly restore
  • Moved script from /sbin/redobackup to /usr/local/sbin/rescuezilla as per File Hierarchy Standard
  • Added filesystem-aware backup/restore of btrfs, exfat, f2fs filesystems
  • Fixed backup/restore of ufs, vmfs, jfs, hfs, reiserfs filesystems
  • Add filesystem utilities so GParted can modify btrfs, hfs+, ufs, xfs filesystems
  • Added GNU ddrescue command-line data recovery tool
  • Added to right-click menu a ‘change screen resolution’ function
  • Added to right-click menu an ‘open terminal here’ function
  • Improved HiDPI display support by setting DPI to 125, not 96
  • Improved HiDPI display support by increasing size of openbox titlebars
  • Added release timestamp and version information to boot menu
  • Added release timestamp to the status bar of the Redo Backup perl app
  • Replaced buggy lxrandr (resolution changer), with arandr (graphical screen resolution/layout)
  • Removed ‘nitrogen’ wallpaper manager application
  • Configured PCManFM file manger for desktop management and wallpaper display
  • Added desktop icons for important applications, mounted media
  • Writes all of redobackup/drivereset output to a file in a desktop directory, for easier bug reporting
  • Fixed pcmanfm Tools menu “Open Current Folder in Terminal” functionality
  • Removed unnecessary theme configuration: lxappearance, gtk-theme-switcher2, obconf
  • Added maketext localization framework to Redo Backup script, for easier translations
  • Added French/Français translation adapted from louvetch’s old release (merci!)
  • Added German/Deutsch translation adapted from chcatzsf’s old release (dankeschön!)
  • Appended translations to boot menu (future release will make this scalable to more languages)
  • ISO image grown to ~620MB mostly due to bloated Ubuntu, Chromium and language packs

You can find the single-page changelog for all of Rescuezilla here.

Development updates

  • Created GitHub organization to manage development
  • Added automated build scripts (adapting the tedious build instructions from the Sourceforge Wiki)
  • Added Dockerfile to optionally construct the optimal build environment for any git commit
  • Integrated Travis-CI.org continious integration build bot, for increased release rigor
  • Added script to display differences between any two Redo Backup and Recovery ISO images
  • Imported source of the older versions (v0.9.8-v1.0.4) from the snapshot release tarballs
  • Reconstructed v0.9.8-v1.0.4 build scripts based on CHANGELOGs, official ISO images
  • Enhanced build scripts with deb package caching, to minimize network usage of a typical build
  • Unified the unofficial releases (OAM775’s pigz/HWE changes, louvetch’s French translation, and chcatzsf’s German translation, Michal Suchanek’s v1.0.3 patches) into a git repository on GitHub
  • Added Project Roadmap, Translation HOWTO to GitHub Wiki
  • Reconstructed the official Redo Backup and Recovery webpage using the Wayback Machine
  • Uploaded reconstructed website to rescuezilla.com
  • Created Patreon account to help fund continued development

Backwards compatibility

Rescuezilla v1.0.5 can restore backups made with the previous version released in 2012, Redo Backup v1.0.4. However, the opposite is not true: Redo Backup v1.0.4 cannot restore backups made with Rescuezilla v1.0.5.

Rescuezilla v1.0.5 cannot restore backups made with Sourceforge user louvetch's old unofficial third-party Redo Backup Ubuntu 16.04 update from several years ago, which incorrectly shows its version as v1.0.4. See bug report table. Rescuezilla v1.0.5.1 added support for restoring backups that were made using the unofficial third-party releases.

Discussion

Discuss this release in the Redo Backup and Recovery Sourceforge forum's official discussion thread

Checksums

sha256sum:
b67900f94b0cd2886b1cc3b56ee71cbe33dc6ccda55d8248a257faa245cd7e87 redobackup-livecd-1.0.5.iso

sha1sum: 8a403ad78ab258a76207525c17fd2002a746aec1 redobackup-livecd-1.0.5.iso

md5sum: 30dc2b177ff10a3c619c6d9a389e81b1 redobackup-livecd-1.0.5.iso

Limitations

Rescuezilla v1.0.5 only officially supports backing up and restoring entire disks. Backing up and restoring individual partitions is not recommended because there is not yet the ability to select individual partitions to restore (it's restore everything which was backed up or nothing). This will be fixed in #4

Please note: While Rescuezilla can backup and restore EFI drives without issue, if you machine's firmware only supports booting from EFI drives and does not have a legacy boot option (eg, a Mac), you will need to follow the instructions in #1 to be able to boot Rescuezilla using rEFInd installed on a second USB drive. Support for booting on EFI-machines will be added in v1.0.6.

Bug advisories

Rescuezilla is thoroughly tested using Windows, Linux, and Mac environments, but the following bugs have been discovered in v1.0.5. Please regularly consult the following table in case new bugs are discovered.

Severity Tracking # Description Fixed in release
High #36 During a restore, if the drive ordering has changed in a certain way (drives inserted/removed) the restore may appear to succeed without errors, but all partitions will appear corrupted. This bug is present in every single previous version including the original June 2010 release, and is due to a longstanding bug in the restore logic. A quick workaround is to first copy the backup files to third drive (such as a newly inserted USB stick) and try to restore again, but this time using this third drive as the source. The bug has been fixed in v1.0.5.1 so no workarounds are required to successfully restore a backup using that release. v1.0.5.1
High #16 If Rescuezilla cannot unmount a drive (eg, due to it being open in a terminal working directory), a cryptic 'error exit' message dialog is displayed and the backup being created may be corrupted. This issue was present on v1.0.4 but is easier to reproduce on v1.0.5 due to tweaks to usability. With release v1.0.5.1, the user gets notified of this situation so the backup can proceed safely. v1.0.5.1
High #50 Two users have reported GRUB failing to restore correctly on certain Ubuntu-derivatives such as 'Linux Mint', 'MXLinux' and 'Peppermint Linux', so on these environments a GRUB repair is needed to properly boot. It appears the cause is a larger than typical GRUB region on legacy MBR disks. See #64 for full details. Rescuezilla v1.0.6 [has resolved]](https://github.com/rescuezilla/rescuezilla/releases/latest) this bug. This bug affects all prior versions. v1.0.6
Medium #32 When restoring a backup made with Sourceforge user louvetch's old unofficial third-party Redo Backup Ubuntu 16.04 update from several years ago, it gets stuck at 0% and makes no progress at all. This has been fixed in Rescuezilla v1.0.5.1. See this wiki page if you have been using those old unofficial Ubuntu 16.04 Redo Backup updates. v1.0.5.1*
Medium #27 Does not detect NVMe drives and so cannot backup or restore these. Support for NVMe drives was added in v1.0.5.1. While Rescuezilla v1.0.5 can restore an NVMe backups made with v1.0.5.1 to a non-NVMe drive, it is still highly recommended for all users to upgrade to v1.0.5.1 v1.0.5.1
Medium #15 Source and destination paths cannot contain special characters such as quotation marks, dollar signs, hash symbols etc (' " $ # etc). Nested directory hierarchies containing spaces work fine. This bug effects every prior version since June 2010's Redo Backup 0.9.2. Rescuezilla v1.0.6 will allow special characters were applicable. v1.0.6
Medium #29 If an unexpected error situation occurs, it may not be handled at all, not even having a message dialogue box to explain why. This is notorious issue affects all publicly available releases. Every Rescuezilla release is incrementally improving how these unexpected situations are handled. If you ever see any bugs on latest Rescuezilla version, please report them. This issue has been resolved with the significant improvements completed for Rescuezilla v2.0. v2.0
Low #12 Boots up into a text prompt (on some hardware) unless selecting 'Safe Mode'. With release v1.0.5.1, graphics drivers for much more hardware has been added, making the 'Safe Mode' workaround unnecessary v1.0.5.1
Low #22 Unable to mount older network shares as no way to force SMB/CIFS version. With release v1.0.5.1, a version field was added to allow users to specify the SMB/CIFS version to connect to older network shares v1.0.5.1
Low #90 The "search network" button to automatically find network shares does not work. This issue affected Redo Backup and Recovery v1.0.4 but it had been too low a priority to worry about. The simple workaround has been to enter the SMB/CIFS details manually. After deliberation, the search network function has been removed in future versions in favor of a more polished improved SMB/CIFS user-interface. v2.0
Low #37 Any swap partitions present may be automatically used as a swap partition by Rescuezilla since at least Redo Backup v0.9.8. With release v1.0.5.1, swap usage is disabled at boot. Please note: Rescuezilla requires at least 1GB RAM. v1.0.5.1
Low #55 Very small hard drives smaller than typically around 40 megabytes (yes, megabytes) can not be backed up or restored. Regular sized hard drives are unaffected. It's very clear if you have triggered this bug as it remains "stuck at 0%" and doesn't progress. Rescuezilla v1.0.6 will be released in the next few weeks with this bug resolved. v1.0.6
Medium #15 On systems with 16GB of RAM or greater, backup/restore speed is VERY slow due to a bug in the Linux memory allocator on 32-bit builds. The bug can be avoided by adding "mem=10G" to kernel boot options by pressing 'tab' at the boot menu and modifying the line so it ends in "quiet mem=10G splash --" instead of "quiet splash --", then pressing enter. The 32-bit Rescuezilla release after v1.0.5.1 will run at full speeds on all systems without the need to modify that line. A 64-bit version of Rescuezilla is also coming soon. v1.0.6 64-bit

Rescuezilla v1.0.5.1 rectifies the issues above.

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