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I have a remote google cloud instance which runs Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye), and I would like to create not nessesarily a copy of it, but rather I would like to copy everything that is installed or is stored on it to my local machine. It runs the same version of the operation system and is completely stock. One of the more important aspects of this transfer for me would be Python (which was installed manually) and it's libraries. Is there a way to do this?

user9102437
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  • that does sound like making a copy of it ;) – Marcus Müller Oct 08 '22 at 10:57
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    Does this answer your question? How do I replicate installed package selections from one Debian system to another? (Debian Wheezy) – Marcus Müller Oct 08 '22 at 10:58
  • (for the stored data, you will want to copy that over manually using rsync, as it's rather specific. Might mostly be your home directory, might be things like documents served from /var/www ; short of actually copying the whole machine, there's no way for debian to know what this entails and what not) – Marcus Müller Oct 08 '22 at 10:59
  • Are you only looking to restore the installed packages or also to restore all system configurations, all configs in /etc, and so on? People here often censor posts about copying/backing up whole systems (not the same as making a clone or just copying some files) for unknown reasons so this may get deleted too. Maybe you could use the tool TimeShift. – mYnDstrEAm Oct 08 '22 at 13:04
  • @mYnDstrEAm could you please explain what your mean with censoring?! Are you sure it's not just you know bad answers getting downvoted and underdefined questions being closed as in need of clarification? Or questions getting marked as duplicates of existing questions, which is pretty much the opposite of censorship, but archives the question and points to good existing answers? If there is a pattern of actual censorship here, I, as somewhat regular contributor would like to know about it, but specifically, not as generally-unaimed accusation! – Marcus Müller Oct 08 '22 at 13:32
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    @MarcusMüller The question by your link as far as I understood only discusses apt packages, but for me one of the important things is Python which I have installed manually, and also the packages I gave installed after that using pip. I am afraid that I don't know where are all those files located to copy the folders – user9102437 Oct 08 '22 at 13:47
  • @mYnDstrEAm I don't really care about configurations, so if it is impossible it is not a big deal. I only need the installed programs, libraries, and my files – user9102437 Oct 08 '22 at 13:49
  • @user9102437 that is pretty important information that your question is missing! Would you please edit your question to include that python aspect? – Marcus Müller Oct 08 '22 at 13:54
  • Marcus referring to this & a prior deleted question but you probably can't read it anymore (I still can). All I'm asking is a way to do this (conveniently, reliably, quickly and) comprehensively, for example @user9102437 you may also want to restore/copy your .bashrc file...and there may be more things like it, a tool to multiselect such things (all integrated instead of having to know all the relevant Linux files) would be very useful. – mYnDstrEAm Oct 08 '22 at 14:09
  • that question lay there unanswered for a full year with a negative score, it got "roomba'd", i.e. just automatically cleaned up due to lack of interest... I'm having a very hard time calling this censorship... – Marcus Müller Oct 08 '22 at 14:27
  • scp, rsync, tar and upload somewhere then download it and untar. Or you waiting somebody told you what you need to copy? Dumb question. – gapsf Oct 08 '22 at 20:06

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