extract files from filesystem.squashfs file

Question

I have installed Xubuntu on a USB stick and created some files. Later there was a problem with Xubuntu, so I made a backup and re-installed it.

The wayt I made the backup, isn't exacly the right way of doing it (I'm not so familiar with this subject :) ):

I cnnected the USB stick to a running Windows computer and just copied all the files I found there form the USB stick ("My Computer") to the windows computer.

The files I copied are some folders (e.g. .disk, boot, casper, dists, EFI and some more.) and some files (e.g. casper-rw, md5sum.txt, menu.c32, README.diskdefines, syslinux.cfg and more.)

Now I want to recover some files from my desktop in Xubuntu in order to edit them in Windows or even linux.

I notices in the folder casper there are few files:

• filesystem.manifest
• filesystem.manifest-remove
• filesystem.size
• filesystem.squashfs
• initrd.lz
• vmlinuz.efi

The biggest file there, filesystem.squashfs, weights almost 1 GB, so I have a reason to beleive that this file contains my files from Xubuntu.

How can I exctract them? I can use linux (I have a new, working version of Xubuntu on the same USB stick, while the "backup" is located on the C drive of the hosting computer)

Thanks!!

Answer 1

From your overall question, and comments like:

• i ran a diskless virtual machine with an iso as a "cd drive", and booted from the "cd".

It sounds to me like you may have only been running "live" with no persistence. Especially given the iso in the VM's "cd drive", I'm suspecting there might not be any saved files to recover, unless the VM saved them somehow...

But, maybe using a USB it did let you save persistent data. If there is a casper-rw file then you should be able to mount it and take a look, as Eric's comment suggests, with

mkdir /tmp/casper
sudo mount -o loop /path/to/casper-rw /tmp/casper