Don't use timeshift with an encrypted system drive

[Jason]

The Subject: pretty much says it all.

When I installed MX Linux, I encrypted my entire drive and keeping the root path (/) and /home/jason on the same partition.

After installing some programs, the desktop panel in Xfce disappeared. Try as I might, I couldn't bring it back. It kept popping up the same error message (attached for kicks). I could still run programs by right-clicking on the desktop to attempt to fix things (thank you for that, Xfce developers!).

I tried creating a new user and copying over files from it inside ~/.config/xfce/panel  over to my user account. It didn't work. For those unfamiliar with the terminal, ~ is the home directory of whoever is logged in (e.g. ~ is /home/jason when I'm logged in as jason. I tried Timeshift to restore the system to a previous state but it didn't work after two attempts and that's when I realized that it's because it's an encrypted drive, it couldn't do it. You see, timeshift reboots the system after figuring out what files will need to be restored. When the system starts up again, it copies those files over. Hard to do that when the system files on the root partition are all encrypted. Ugh.

I don't have to do a re-install, but it's still a pain. The panel is in the new account so I'll try once more copying every dot file and dot directory (means hidden). If that doesn't work, I'll reverse the copying, this time copying all the dotfiles. I'm also going to use my cloud backup program (SpiderOak One Backup) to back up the dotfiles in the future as I should have!

A better encryption technique is to encrypt just the home directory (i.e. /home/foobar not /home) on a distinct partition. And a related tip is to keep /home separate from the root drive. Buster can give you other good reasons. After I'm done, I may do that. You can do it without a re-install. Maybe I could demo that sometime if anyone is interested.

I learned the hard way so you don't have to. Be careful out there, Linuxers!