Image backup for N810 without SD
 

I have a N810 which can't read SD cards from the SD slot(probably the reader is dead) and I would like to make an backup image with "dd" command for example and store in the pc (just in case).

The main problem is I should execute the command in the N810, and copy to N810 free internal flash or to PC by network.

Suggestions?

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

Backup is easy to do, but don't use dd. You have three options:
- use 0xFFFF and save the image to the internal mmc ("0xFFFF -e /media/mmc1/backup"), then transfer the image to your pc. That image would be flashable.
- make a flashable image with mtdtools (see http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=223846&postcount=2). You can save the image to the internal mmc, a network share or pipe it directly through netcat to your pc.
- mount --bind / under /mnt, then backup with tar. You can save the tar.gz file in the internal mmc, a network share, or pipe it directly through netcat to your pc. You can make a jffs2 flashable image in your pc then (see previous method), or boot a ext2/3 image from usb to be able to restore it.

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

I will try Maacruz, your info is very interesting

and for people who doesn't know what 0xFFFF is (like me few minutes ago):

The 0pen Free Fiasco Firmware Flasher
http://www.nopcode.org/0xFFFF/

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

Howto make a 0xffff backup step by step, from
http://bloglon.blogspot.com/2011/01/...p-by-step.html

DOwnload "0xffff" v0.3.9 from
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=654646&postcount=3
(in order to execute the file 0xFFFF.static, you must copy it to a folder in the main partition (Not FAT/FAT32))


cp 0xFFFF.static.gz /usr/local/sbin
cd /usr/local/sbin
gunzip 0xFFFF.static.gz
chmod +x 0xFFFF.static
mkdir /media/mmc2/mybackup0xfff
sudo ./0xFFFF.static -e /media/mmc2/mybackup0xfff/


Now you have some new files in /media/mmc2/mybackup0xfff/ (total 262MB)
config.bin
initfs.jffs2
rootfs.jffs2
secondary.bin
xloader.bin
zImage

you can put in one tar file.

tar -cf /media/mmc2/myN810backup.tar .
And I copied the file to my PC

Notes:
To extract the contents from the tar file
tar -xvf myN810backup.tar

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

Interesting... the 0xFFFF method appears to work OK for me during backup, but when I try to restore it to another N810, even one that's been freshly flashed with Nokia's own image, it complains about checksum errors in rootfs.jffs2 and secondary.bin (these errors seem to be near the start of each file), and fails. That's true whether I try to restore via flasher or 0xFFFF on the PC, piece by piece or all together. This is repeatable, unfortunately. I can backup, but not restore...

I have CSSU and Diablo Turbo installed. Don't know if this affects anything when making the image with 0xFFFF.static?

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

Not at all. What command are you typing to do the restore?

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

I'm not at that computer now, but I used the pieces command:

0xFFFF -p (part-name)

This seemed to work for initfs but failed with the other parts. In particular, for the main rootfs filesystem, the flashing process began, the hashes would increase to about 6%, then the bar would quickly complete and 0xFFFF would complain of a possible checksum error.

Since the same behaviour appeared with flasher-3.5, I wondered whether the problem is on the NIT rather than the restoring laptop.

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

So you try to flash just rootfs with flasher-3.5 ("flasher -f -r rootfs.jffs2") and it fails. And you have tryed extracting a new image and flashing it several times and it is repeatable. Isn't it?
Well, then probably 0xFFFF is failing. You'll have to follow the longer route: make a tar.gz of rootfs and then make a jffs2 image from the tar.gz.

Re: Image backup for N810 without SD
 

Yes, that's right. The backup process appears to be fine each time, but the backup doesn't restore. I even tried using 0xFFFF -e on mmc1 and mmc2, in case one was corrupted, but the error was the same.

Having reflashed to the Nokia image, it only took me 3 hours to restore my old configuration, so I'm not so worried about flashing a backup now. But I'll try the tar.gz option next time; thanks. I have two N810s and I usually only break one at a time...