Thanks, chris2be8 and rayburn,

I already knew those tips, but then again, you two didn't know that I already knew them and even understood why they make sense.   

So your tips were very right-on and very appreciated.

And, to be perfectly honest, it's probably only a matter of time before I won't know those things any more, so reminders are a good thing for me.   

Thanks, again!

Cool! Thank you!

I just got as far as your rsync command itself, and I felt my eyes glaze over! 

But it looks like it could be a good possibility for my future.

Because my brain is still too exhausted to actually read and understand your rsync command, could you tell a couple of things?

Would your rsync script backup my / only, or would it also backup my separate /home (with all of my newly-restored data in it)?

Did you include a "restore" script in your post? Again, my brain cells are currently still too full to even try to look. 

Once you somehow restore your backup to your local (or network) computer, what do you have to do to get it to boot, other than just use rsync to copy all of the system files into place? That's the part that still ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIES me. I've always felt very safe when my system is backed up, but I've recently learned (from my long and bitter experience) that a backup does me no good unless I can RESTORE it so that it will work.   

AGAIN, THANK YOU!   

Yes, I searched for "linux" and "refracta." That's why I kept finding stuff about Refracta Linux. I may be stupid, but I'm not dumb. 

In the past 2 days, I've spent 24 harrowing hours on this issue. Yes, you read that correctly. Twelve hours a day for two days.

NOW, I'm finally up and running again.

No matter what I tried, NOTHING would see my separate data partition.

This morning, I finally restored a 3-month-old backup of all of my data to a completely different place inside my home folder, which is mounted separately.

I think my problem is that I used to know a lot more about this stuff.

I used to be able to do a fresh install, and then -- with a couple of commands -- see all of my data.

Not so any more. It's been several years since I had to do it (I've done dist-upgrades for many years). I just don't remember the magic that I used to use to see my data.

None of this is anyone's problem but my own.

As for Refracta Snapshot and Refracta Installer, once I was able to find and APT install the installer, BOTH worked really quickly and easily.

Until that LAST step of the installer, when I thought it was going to congratulate me on restoring my snapshot, but instead, it gave me a lecture about BIOS and GPT and boot, and partitions. Other people probably know what to do. I didn't.

So I spent several hours, trying to get past the bootup black screen with the grub prompt.

Using my wife's PC, I found an excellent how-to by Carla Shroeder. Step-by-step instructions. Easy to understand.

I followed every step. EVERY STEP. Still got the grub prompt.

At the end of Carla's article, it says something like, "If you STILL can't get it to work, you'll need to use something like Super Grub2."

So, I downloaded Super Grub 2. It saved as an image (picture) file. When I tried to open it, my wife's computer spit up, trying to open it with LibreOffice Draw or GIMP or something.

So, I re-downloaded it. But when I tried to boot from it, the end of the boot process suddenly stopped and said something about waiting for the internet. Multiple boots, same problem.

That was how EVERYTHING went for me, for 2 DAYS. Run as fast as you can, and then suddenly slam into a wall. Sheesh.

Long story short, a fresh install, plus restoring 3-month-old backups, and many hours of painstaking configuration, finally got my system back to exactly where it was 3 days ago.

Don't ever have two strokes, if you can help it. 

Thanks if you tried to help me, or if you bothered to read this entire rant.

Well, that explains a lot.

It looks like DON'T HAVE THE REFRACTA INSTALLER!

How do I install the Refracta Installer? I have both Refracta base and gui installed, but I only see Refracta Snapshot.

And there is refractasnapshot  in /usr/lib/, but there is nothing about refractainstaller in there.

I don't even see refractainstaller in Synaptic package manager or in APT:

root@T3500:/usr/lib# install refractainstaller
install: missing destination file operand after 'refractainstaller'
Try 'install --help' for more information.
root@T3500:/usr/lib# apt install refractainstaller
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package refractainstaller is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  refractainstaller-gui refractainstaller-base

E: Package 'refractainstaller' has no installation candidate

???

I didn't mean to insult you.

When it comes to my computer, I distrust ANYONE who hasn't already earned my trust over time.

Also, I run a web site that has had 22 million visits from all over the world. I study its server logs every day. In all these years, I can't even remember the last time my site received a visitor from Russia (you have since changed your location to USSR) that wasn't malicious and needed to be blocked. So, I am especially suspicious of security advice from anyone who is from Russia.

Sorry, my feelings are based on my own experience, and are not personal against you.

Those "lock file" messages appear to me to be saying that you're running your commands as a normal user, not as root. Since you're using sudo, my guess is that something is wrong with -- or has changed --- in your sudo configuration.

Even if I weren't convinced of Devuan's technical superiority to the very similar, but now-systemd-dependent distro that I used for years,

I still remember the first time I installed an booted up Devuan Ascii, several years ago. I was almost immediately struck by:

• Devuan's ease of setup, configuration, and use

• How much Devuan reminded me of a much-older, easier (for me to configure) version of my  previously used distro, BEFORE IT ADDED SYSTEMD.

During the years that I've been here, I've also been VERY impressed with Devuan's knowlegable, helpful, patient (not sarcastic) community, as demonstrated in this 110-post thread in which MY OWN STUPIDITY caused me to open and then keep the thread going to successful completion, AND this 2-post thread, in which I thanked everyone for their patient help, and apologized for having been so stupid.

I've used Linux full-time since 1996 (CORRECTION: IT WAS 2006), but I've personally never experienced that incredible combination of knowledge, skill, patience, and true helpfulness that I've seen AND EXPERIENCED here.

To me, not only is Devuan the best software, but, also, its community is as good as its software, and that's really important to me.

I learned to understand about 1/4 of what you learned today. 

I now realize that this entire problem and LONG, LONG thread was MY FAULT.

My mistake (and your kindness) resulted in all of you spending HOURS and HOURS, trying to help me.

But you were all great! NO ONE ever told me, "Hey, you idiot, none of this would have happened if you had allowed enough work space on your hard drive for the software to work correctly!"

So, THANKS AGAIN, EVERYBODY, FOR YOUR EXPERTISE AND INCREDIBLE PATIENCE WITH ME -- and I'm very, very sorry for causing so much trouble.

I'm still here, as a monkey with a keyboard, if there is anything I can do to help. 

I had ASCII on sda1 (installed from scratch to straight gpt partition - no special secure boot or anything) for the past several years. To make sure that I still remembered how to install Devuan, I installed Beowulf (a brand new simple - not advanced install), and got it all configured, on a separate partition.

Once I was confident that that freshly-installed Beowulf was working great, on the separate partition, I waited  a few days, until  I got enough confidence to "risk" trashing my "perfect" existing ASCII install by doing an upgrade-in-place of it to Beowulf, still on sda1. I was very, very pleased with how quickly that upgrade process went, and how correct its results were.

I think that, earlier in this thread, I said that I had installed Beowulf on sda1 from scratch, but tonight, I remembered that, even though I had done that on a separate partition, the Beowulf that I've been using on sda1 USED TO BE ASCII, and was upgraded to Beowulf, preserving its autologin capability.

I don't know if any of that makes any difference to you, but, in case it does, I thought I'd better make it clear, now that I remember how it all happened.

I'm sorry I didn't remember to figure that out yet. I'm using Xfce, with whatever the default login manager is, but I first set it up years ago, in ASCII, and it was automatically upgraded to work when I finally got up the motivation and courage to upgrade ASCII to Beowulf a few weeks ago.

I promise that I will figure out what I did, and where I did it, to make autologin work.