Can you have multiple installs of Arch on one machine? I have tried in the past to have 2 installs of Endeavour, one for backup, but it wouldn’t load up right and I gave it up for BTRFS and snapshots. Now I just have LM for backup and to help troubleshoot clients that have Mint installed.
Thanks to @anon93652015 I am now looking at putting Archcraft onto my laptop. It is an older W8 laptop and KDE is making it show its age. I tried Archcraft live and it is insanely quick. Can I install it along with Endeavour just in case I want to go back? I am making a backup just in case, but it would be nice to have 2 Arch distros. The desktop is keeping Endeavour. Wife loves it and it is so reliable that it is not even an option.
Oh, the laptop is using Grub, dracut, encrypted BTRFS and snapper. I have windows on it, but I think I am going to trash it. It runs slow and I never use it. I have other devices for that.
As far as the question is concerned, I’ve done it before with Archcraft and ArcoLinux.
Works just fine.
Now, I have Archcraft and MX Linux on the same drive and another Archcraft that has duplicate settings and such from the one I daily drive. I update and test it out once every two weeks, and all has been well so far.
In my case, the reason for multiple Archcrafts is that I work from home, and Archcraft is my main work distro. So, in the event that something goes wrong with the daily driver, I have the backup to just boot into without needing to spend time using a Timeshift snapshot, which in my case takes way longer since it’s on EXT4.
So would I be able to use snapper and grub just like I do Endeavour? I am guessing I have to set up the file system like the default layout for Endeavour. I don’t use snapshots much, but it is nice to have for backup and I do play a lot on this machine since it is not my DD. Randomly playing around with AUR packages ad then using snapper --undo-change is nice to have when I decide to quickly roll back.
I guess I could use systemd for boot since I really don’t use the snapshot option, but I already have grub for Endeavour. How hard is it to convert to systemd since grub is really the only thing lately that borks my system?
That’s fine. Like I said I really don’t use that feature anyway, it is mostly for package rollbacks. I always keep a USB handy and chroot into the system to roll back.
If I remember right last time I used a copy of Mint to load timeshift and used it to restore the system. Maybe that was for my debian machine that used timeshift.
Or maybe even something Arch-based. Timeshift is made to work with any distro ISO you have, not just the distros related to the snapshots in question. To clarify, I don’t mean restore to Linux Mint, for example, from an Arch snapshot. I meant to use the Timeshift on the LiveISO for Mint, to restore an Arch snapshot back to a previous Arch state.
EDIT: This is what I think I remember reading somewhere, but I went and checked and didn’t find anything confirming it. Might be wrong.
I usually keep a copy of Mint on me for when I am installing it on client computers and it has timeshift already installed so I don’t have to have an internet connection.
Shoot, I’m glad you mentioned btrfs-assistant. That is what I used last time I installed Endeavour and it worked so smoothly. I think you were the one that helped me out after following directions from a Youtube video that jacked up my system originally. If I remember that was the actually cause for my problems before, not grub itself. Thanks.
Now I remember, I used the guide @lorebett has posted for snapper install and setup. My system has been running so well that I have not installed Arch in a long time. Sad when I do more Debian restores on my server than an Arch system. And they say Arch is unstable?
Yes i remember too. I am using btrfs with btrfs-assistant, snapper-support, grub-btrfs, btrfsmaintenance and grub bootloader. Hardly any setup to do just a few settings after installing eos with btrfs and the above packages.
Thanks, that did the job.