In general, the Backups app restores your apps quite well. I’ve nuked my FreedomBox a couple of times and recovered without major issues.
That said, you shouldn’t have to be “running in various states of broken-ness”.
Have you made a lot of manual changes to your box?
Re: Certbot
In your post, you never replied to James Valleroy, who was trying to help you. We could try and troubleshoot that with you.
Also, you haven’t shared this information in your post:
Information
- FreedomBox version: (from Help → About page)
- Hardware: (name of single board computer or server hardware with architecture)
- How did you install FreedomBox?: (‘bought pre-installed hardware’ or ‘apt install freedombox’ or ‘downloading testing images from https://freedombox.org’ or ‘using a cloud image’)
Having this information would help contextualize your setup (except the FB version which we now know).
Try running the commands and answering the question that James Valleroy posted in his reply to your post.
Another helpful thing might be running a full diagnostics checkup. Sometimes your issue could be caused by a failure in another app or with your setup.
You say that you “can’t install new apps”, which is odd and could be caused by a myriad of different issues, like low storage, DNS problems, misconfigured sources file, etc.
I understand not wanting to nuke your install, but, also, it sounds like you are not able to use your FB to its fullest. Reinstalling from scratch and recovering is not a huge deal, but might be a bit annoying.
To start, would you mind sharing your diagnostics and setup info?