Making an iso backup of my system

Question

at work I use my system more like a Virtual Machine than a real computer, as I am always reinstall the operating system fresh then downloading the same stuff over and over again, so I just made an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system that is set up, it has corrected drivers and such for my nvidia card, is there some way I can create an .iso image of my pristine system so I dont have to remake it 3 to 5 times a day?

Also, I am aware of how bad this treatment is for the system, there is a more proper solution on its way, but it will be a bit.

Solution

I would recommend to use a disk imaging tool like Clonezilla, which can backup the complete contents of your disk into an image, which can be stored on a USB drive, another disk, a network share, or even a writeable DVD.

To use it, Download the current stable version, write the ISO to a DVD or USB stick, and boot it, and follow the instructions to create an image of the entire local disk (There's plenty of tutorials, too). You will then have a compressed image, which you can later restore onto the system, using the same clonezilla DVD or bootable USB. (You can even put Clonezilla and the image on the same USB stick for subsequent restores).

If you want to make an actual installable ISO of your system, there are various tools for this, such as SystemBack, however, I haven't tried any of these myself.

Comments

[Mohamed Slama]

possible duplicated askubuntu.com/questions/2596/comparison-of-backup-tools or askubuntu.com/questions/7809/how-to-back-up-my-entire-system

[Admin]

I have tried this, however, the sources.list path throws and error on apt-get update

[Admin]

If i do that though, wont it also clone all of my free space?

[luk3yx]

It will. It is the best option I can think of without installing 3rd-party software.

[Admin]

I'm fine with 3rd party software

[Admin]

also, including this difficulty there is not support for 16.04 yet/

[sudodus]

Clonezilla is a good tool :-) Download the iso file and create a bootable CD disk or USB pendrive. Clonezilla will create a clone or a compressed image (a directory with a number of files) and it will only copy/clone the used blocks (not free space).