Hi,
Maureen L Thomas wrote:
> I used the reinstall on brasero and it just said that it was up to date.
What error message does Brasero issue before refusing to work ?
What optical medium type do you give Brasero for burning ?
I can probably help with composing a xorriso run which performs a similar
backup as you normally do with Brasero. (I am not aware that xorriso would
try to access /var. So a try might succeed or tell us how deep the problem
is located in the software stack from kernel to desktop applications.)
Roadmap:
1: Check whether xorriso is installed.
- Install if not yet there.
- If apt does not install it, try the GNU xorriso source tarball.
2: Describe which hard disk directory trees or single files get normally
backed up and to what paths on the backup medium they get copied.
3: Create a shell script with the necessary xorriso commands.
If the steps under "1:" don't work or if you want to stay with Brasero,
consider to get a Debian Live system like
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-11.7.0-amd64-lxde.iso
and to put it on a USB stick as described in
https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb
After booting from the USB stick the system should be able to install
xorriso or Brasero, so that you can backup your data.
Maybe you can even use the /var directory of the running Debian Live as
template to recreate the damaged /var tree on hard disk.
Have a nice day :)
Thomas
