Avoiding re-installation from NRR 2016-01

Netrunner Rolling Rolling 2016.01
1

During the most recent update of 2016-05-08 I lost Internet connectivity during the update and got a tooltip message saying the network-manager-xxx could not be found.

After failed attempts at trying to resume the update, I found that top gave me 100% CPU usage for NetworkManager.

I then tried reviving the update from the NRR 2016-01 live USB image and when that failed, I did a re-installation from scratch. This cost me time and effort as I needed to re-visit all the customizations and additional packages I had installed. The most time-consuming of all was the actual upgrade process from the NRR 2016-01 version to the latest.

Is there any way I can make a system backup of my current packages so that I need not install from a standard image like NRR 2016-01 with its multi-stage updates in the event of a dysfunctional system? This will allow me to restore my system far more easily and quickly.

Thanks.

2

I keep regular monthly CloneZilla backups of my system on an external drive just in case.

3

Thanks for the suggestion.

Do I have to unmount the root partition that I am backing up, boot from the live NRR 2016-01 USB, and run Cloneailla from it to perform the backup?

4

I use clonezilla live at home: http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php
However, as far as I know you can use clonezilla on a running system without having to unmount anything.