It's a little confusing to explain because of the smoke and mirrors involved.
The persistence file, when you look at it from the outside, (from another system, viewing a USB, for example), it is called
casper-rwInside casper-rw is just the directory structure and data you see when you are working in the system that supersedes the data in the
/casper/filesystem.squashfs (the entire system in compressed form) of the same USB installation.
This is long way of saying, yes you can back it up, but it is like moving a bed you are lying on.
A far simpler method is to locate the area (in that file structure) you wish to back up, and back up those areas.
With the Menus (
.desktop files) it really is a small amount of data. While their locations do have a rationale, to me it looks scattered like someone dropped a box of index cards and just filed them in a first convenient spot.
For example,
- /etc/skel/Desktop/home.desktop <-- .:Home:. on the desktop
- /home/moe/.config/autostart/shutter.desktop <-- added to autostart and not directly Menu
- /home/moe/.gnome/apps/jetbrains-pycharm.desktop <-- added
- /home/moe/.local/share/applications/idle-python3.4.desktop <-- like the one above
- /home/moe/Desktop/lxterminal.desktop <-- Desktop "shortcut"
- /usr/local/share/applications/calibre-gui.desktop <-- No idea why...
- /usr/share/applications/pcmanfm.desktop <-- Where I think they all should be
but they are not. There are also some scattered elsewhere, and I just get confused pondering the reason, particularly when the name of the menu entry may not be the name of the file that controls that menu entry.
This is why I prefer an application like
menulibre (listed as Menu Editor, in two Menu locations, but is one file /usr/share/applications/menulibre.desktop) so I don't have to think about it.
A very 'simple' solution is to copy the file you are modifying, either to a different directory, or renamed in the same directory with the file manager, or commandline, for example
Code:
sudo cp /usr/share/applications/pcmanfm.desktop{,.backup}
My father always said, "education is expensive", and unfortunately you are learning how things go wrong the hard way...but I'm not sure there is an easy way that stays with us, 'cause education is expensive.
For a little more background:
http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Main_Menuhttp://lkubaski.wordpress.com/2012/11/0 ... -sections/ Good luck.