How can I clone my N900?
 

I've got an N900 that I use daily, and another which I keep as a backup. What would be the easiest way to make my spare N900 into an exact software clone of my working N900? In other words, does someone know how I could copy the kernel, the rootfs everything else from the working phone to the backup phone?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

It should be a breeze with backupmenu.
Just put the same version of backupmenu on both tablets, backup the source and then put the sd card for restore on the target.

Or, if you feel hardcore, you could boot the target with rescueOS and send the filesystem image over wifi with dd and netcat (just joking).

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

But backupmenu doesn't allow me to backup and restore the kernel, does it? I'm using the 2.6.28.10-power52 kernel, so I need to get that copied to the backup N900 too. Is there a way to do that?

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

You can flash the kernel before restoring with backupmenu. Either by installing via extras or with flasher.

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

I use backupmenu to write a copy of the rootfs to the micoSD, and then I write copies of all partitions to my laptop.

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

Yeah, I'd do that but I need to get the kernel copied too, and I can't get flasher-3.5 to work. If you wish to, you can see my tail of woe here:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...65#post1360765

Thanks!

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

Sadly, this doesn't work. I installed the default Nokia software, and made the spare N900 bootable. I then installed backup menu and installed the power kernel. I checked that the spare N900 still booted after the kernel update. I made certain the kernel version was the same on both phones, and used backup menu on the phone I want to clone to make backups of rootfs and opt. I copied the rootfs and opt tar files onto the target machine, and restored the backups using backup menu on the target. Result: bricked phone.

Does anyone know what I might have done wrong?

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

I see the great minds think alike :)

Your method seems alright to me. With the exception of the missing step 5 in the third post in my thread, but I cannot see how that might have made a difference since BabkupMenu wipes both rootfs and optfs anyway before restoring the backup.

However I found that restoring a backup on another device may be a bit of a hit and miss. Currently I am employing a bit lengthier approach: stock reflash, update, upgrade kernel and CSSU, install and remove apps as necessary, copy personal data. It takes a few days but works every time, unlike the restore-from-other-device's-backup way.

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

Yes, I'm coming to the conclusion that the answer to the question posed in this thread is "You can't". It's not possible to clone an N900. You have to re-install everything from scratch. Rats!

Re: How can I clone my N900?
 

For the record I just tried restoring a broken-usb N900 with clean BM images and resulted in a boot loop. (Probably it had KP installed and stupidly, I didn't check)

Anyway I was lucky to be able to solder the usb back on so the unfortunate failure resulted in me having a fully working device :)