Not dumb questions at all. You need to install refractasnapshot-base and refractasnapshot-gui for the gui script (/usr/bin/refractasnapshot-gui) to work. If you just install the base, you can still use the cli script (/usr/bin/refractasnapshot). And you may want to install refractainstaller, in case you want to install the snapshot back onto a hard drive. There are some prerequisites, too, like xorriso, squashfs-tools, and some others. Your package manager will complain until you get them all installed.
Your installed system is safe. The snapshot script uses rsync to make a copy of your entire system, adds isolinux bootloader to the directory that contains the copy, squashes the copy, and then wraps it up into a (bootable) CD iso file. You just need to have a lot of extra space on the drive for the copy and then the iso image to fit. Recommended is to have twice as much free space as the size of the system you want to copy. If you need to plug in an external drive, you can change the location of the system copy or the iso.
Review the config file for important settings.
Review the rsync excludes file and change it as needed. It's a real good idea to exclude anything that takes up a lot of space. This is not a good way to do a big data backup.
Use the testing versions if you're running jessie/sid:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/files/testing/And if you are running jessie/sid, and you want to have ssh with password authentication in your live system, see this post -
new-versions-of-installer-and-snapshot-9-1-x-for-sid-t383-60.html#p4284Documentation can be found here -
http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta/documents.htmlTo put it on a usb drive, use refracta2usb. It will put the contents of the iso file on a fat32 partition on the usb stick and make that bootable with syslinux.
So...
This is the second time in about a week that I've thought about skipping the step that makes the iso file, and just transferring it directly to usb. In other words, adding some of the functions of refracta2usb to refractasnapshot. If I get snowed in this winter (without losing power) maybe it'll happen.
Sorry, I got off-topic.