Restore Fedora with encrypted drive

Step 1: Install to hard drive

Boot the new machine from the installer medium and choose install to hard drive.

Choose the default storage layout with encryption enabled and set a new passphrase. See fedora install guide for detailed instructions.

Do not reboot after the installation finished.

Step 2: Mount the toplevel btrfs volume

During installation, a new btrfs filesystem was created by the installer. It is necessary to mount the toplevel volume of this filesystem in order to replace the root and home subvolumes in a later step.

Open a terminal window and become root:

$ sudo -i

Note

Since this is still the installer environment, sudo shouldn’t ask for a password.

Figure out where the new system was installed into:

# mount | grep 'on /mnt/sysroot type btrfs'
/dev/mapper/luks-ea656713-63b6-407e-b13b-a2edea855999 on /mnt/sysroot type btrfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,compress=zstd:1,space_cache=v2,subvolid=257,subvol=/root)

Note

The device path should start with /dev/mapper/luks- and end with an UUID. Substitute this path with the correct one in subsequent commands.

Create a mount point directory and mount the toplevel subvolume:

# mkdir /mnt/toplevel
# mount /dev/mapper/luks-ea656713-63b6-407e-b13b-a2edea855999 /mnt/toplevel

Confirm that the mount has succeeded:

# mount | grep 'on /mnt/toplevel type btrfs'
/dev/mapper/luks-ea656713-63b6-407e-b13b-a2edea855999 on /mnt/toplevel type btrfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,compress=zstd:1,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

Step 3: Copy backup from attached hard drive

Attach the backup disk, unlock it (using the passphrase of the backup disk) and mount it using the file manager app.

Figure out the backup mount point. Attached disks are mounted somewhere under /run/media/liveuser/...:

# mount | grep 'on /run/media/liveuser/[^/]* type btrfs'
/dev/mapper/luks-7977ef3a-1bce-4ea5-b776-f9daf44b52f6 on /run/media/liveuser/Backup type btrfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,seclabel,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/,uhelper=udisks2)

Note

Take note of the backup mount point (in this case /run/media/liveuser/Backup). Substitute this path with the correct one in subsequent commands.

List available snapshots in the backup:

# btrfs subvol list /run/media/liveuser/Backup
ID 256 gen 20 top level 5 path ROOT.20220916T1320
ID 257 gen 20 top level 5 path home.20220916T1320

Copy selected snapshots to the toplevel volume of the internal disk:

# btrfs send /run/media/liveuser/Backup/ROOT.20220916T1320 | btrfs receive /mnt/toplevel/
At subvol /run/media/liveuser/Backup/ROOT.20220916T1320
At subvol ROOT.20220916T1320
# btrfs send /run/media/liveuser/Backup/home.20220916T1320 | btrfs receive /mnt/toplevel/
At subvol /run/media/liveuser/Backup/home.20220916T1320
At subvol home.20220916T1320

Confirm that the backups have been transferred to the toplevel volume:

# btrfs subvol list /mnt/toplevel/
ID 256 gen 12 top level 5 path home
ID 257 gen 37 top level 5 path root
ID 258 gen 44 top level 5 path ROOT.20220916T1320
ID 259 gen 48 top level 5 path home.20220916T1320

Move newly installed system out of the way:

# mv /mnt/toplevel/root /mnt/toplevel/root.away
# mv /mnt/toplevel/home /mnt/toplevel/home.away

Create writable subvolumes from the restored snapshots:

# btrfs subvolume snapshot /mnt/toplevel/ROOT.20220916T1320 /mnt/toplevel/root
Create a snapshot of '/mnt/toplevel/ROOT.20220916T1320' in '/mnt/toplevel/root'
# btrfs subvolume snapshot /mnt/toplevel/home.20220916T1320 /mnt/toplevel/home
Create a snapshot of '/mnt/toplevel/home.20220916T1320' in '/mnt/toplevel/home'

Step 4: Fix UUIDs in fstab, crypttab and grub config

Since the new system resides on a freshly formatted disk, some filesystem related UUIDs in restored configuration files need to be adapted. A very quick approach is to simply copy the relevant configuration files from the newly installed system to the restored one.

Copy /etc/fstab from the newly installed system to the restored one:

# cp /mnt/toplevel/root.away/etc/fstab /mnt/toplevel/root/etc/fstab

Copy /etc/crypttab from the newly installed system to the restored one:

# cp /mnt/toplevel/root.away/etc/crypttab /mnt/toplevel/root/etc/crypttab

Copy /etc/sysconfig/grub from the newly installed system to the restored one:

# cp /mnt/toplevel/root.away/etc/sysconfig/grub /mnt/toplevel/root/etc/sysconfig/grub

After that, reboot the system and remove the installer media.