How to backup my OS?

[noble tendon]

I am about to resize my EFI partition and file system partition; however, in case things go wrong I want to back everything up. What is the easiest way to do this?

[short pelican]

hook up a drive, mount it and copy root to that

if your config isnt complicated just remembering important package and copying the home directory is faster

[noble tendon]

Do I just use the copy command?

[wide yew]

You can use rsync or use cp command but make sure you preserve permissions

man cp or cp -h will tell you how

[noble tendon]

I've used rsync to copy root to my usb; however, I've noticed that with some files it says "operation not permitted" despite using sudo

[wide yew]

these files are probably immutable files which usually aren't required when backing up (stuff like EFI variables and whatever)

no guarantee tho