Hi,
Here is the one I found.

I sometimes fresh reinstall a N900, from time to time.
To restore it the "normal way", it's a long and sweaty way. Setup wifi, reinstall repos, rootsh, HAM, power-kernel, bootmenu, backupmenu, dependencies... all thorough ssh to make it easier, what means usb networking and so on. I never remember which wiki page is the right one and which files to modify for this...

And I don't mention the supplementary steps for repartitioning and modifying boot files to allow home and sd encryption...

As I am not doing it often enough to remember the easy way, I have to rediscover a not-to-hard way each time.
At the moment, I am serial reinstalling some N900, so, the systematic came back to my mind. I catch it before it goes away again and put it down here for later and others.
So this is my way,
What is yours?

My departure point is a backup from Backupmenu, with cssu and other apps and personal adjustments. You also must have a backup of your MyDocs, as it is not the same partition as /home (also called opt in backupmenu). It is another partition mounted in /home/user/MyDocs/.
Beware to reinstall the same kernel that the one you used when you made your backups. Here, I have the power53.

Here are detailed and basic instructions in case newbies still exist or will come on N900 - Dreaming is not forbidden

So:
1. Reflash your device (sure you backed-up everything?)
2. On a microSD or in MyDocs, copy your systemBackups dir with the backups from backupmenu and the following packages:
The ones with a * are not mandatory.

rootsh_1.8_all.deb
*zsh_4.3.2-25_armel_opt_a_installer.deb
tar-gnu_1.22-2maemo5_armel.deb
liblzo2-2_2.03-1maemo3_armel.deb
mtd-utils_20090606-1maemo1_armel.deb
libattr1_1%3a2.4.43-1_armel.deb
libacl1_2.2.47-2_armel.deb
i2c-tools_3.0.2-1maemo3_armel.deb
openssh-common_5.1p1-6.maemo5_armel.deb
openssh-server_5.1p1-6.maemo5_armel.deb
bootmenu_1.14_armel.deb
backupmenu_1.2.0-1_all.deb
kernel-power_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
kernel-power-modules_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
kernel-power-bootimg_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
kernel-power-flasher_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
kernel-power-settings_0.18_armel.deb
*fapman_0.7.1-1_armel.deb

Copy them after having them renamed to allow automating of reinstall:

000_rootsh_1.8_all.deb
00_zsh_4.3.2-25_armel_opt_a_installer.deb
01_tar-gnu_1.22-2maemo5_armel.deb
02_liblzo2-2_2.03-1maemo3_armel.deb
03_mtd-utils_20090606-1maemo1_armel.deb
04_libattr1_1%3a2.4.43-1_armel.deb
05_libacl1_2.2.47-2_armel.deb
06_i2c-tools_3.0.2-1maemo3_armel.deb
07_openssh-common_5.1p1-6.maemo5_armel.deb
08_openssh-server_5.1p1-6.maemo5_armel.deb
09_bootmenu_1.14_armel.deb
10_backupmenu_1.2.0-1_all.deb
11_kernel-power_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
12_kernel-power-modules_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
13_kernel-power-bootimg_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
15_kernel-power-flasher_2.6.28-10power53_armel.deb
16_kernel-power-settings_0.18_armel.deb
17_fapman_0.7.1-1_armel.deb

-On the N900, in the stock file manager, click on the rootsh package.
Application manager will start, let it install and quit it.
-Open a terminal, type root, you are now logged as root.
-Go into the directory you copied the packages
-type:
(the ">" are displayed and don't have to be typed)

With zsh, it would be
This should install all the necessary packages at once, freeing you to do all the sweaty things I mentioned before.

Then, reboot and you can restore your backups with Backupmenu and then MyDocs.

You should always download from a trusted source, like by searching here.
But if you trust, here are the files.

Have you found a better way?
I dreamed since 2010 to be able to make a custom image, once for all, that I could reflash from my PC but it seemed impossible to do. I am wrong?

You can make your own fiasco image (kernel & rootfs) with 0xFFFF.

Unpack fiasco image to current directory:
Generate new fiasco image from files xloader.bin, nolo.bin, zImage, rootfs and append device&version information (xloader for RX-51 hw revision: 2101 and 2102, version 1.0)
Or you could use rescue os to backup (dd) the rootfs of your N900.
This could be also flashed back.
Prepare for rescue Nokia N900: full backup

About emmc (/dev/mmcblk0) I don't know if it's working, you could try this:
how to generate flashable eMMC image with fiasco-gen and flasher

As far as I Know it is yet not possible to flash the emmc with 0xFFFF.

There are still newbies who have never done it this way: me. I always reflash and start from the beginning. I have thought of learning this when Leste is ready, hoping someone would make an instructions like this in LesteWiki then. It would be great. Thanks for keeping the beast alive and well. My main phone.

I have not yet done any repartitioning to get bigger rootsh or MyDocs or encryptions or changing them to a sdcard or making a bigger swap partition and use ereswap or what was it. Hoping though to finally getting all that done with Leste. A thorough instructions - a walk through like "The perfect setup" but without links to other posts or threads or pages - would be highly appreciated. But as I said I will wait for the Leste and then hoping someone would have time to make one for that when all is working - without needs to "mod this which was previously this" or "change that file to there in that new system".

Once tried backupmenu and I thought I had the same kernel (kp53) but messed the whole device and barely got it flashed to a working device again.

I keep on going back and forth with the N900, so this is sometimes new for me as well

0xFFFF has also a dump function which I never used. I tried today and getting an error.

File initfs_tmp is empty, removing it.

And later....

Error: Cannot open image file initfs_tmp: No such file

But I don't know if this is a problem or not. Maybe someone has some more experience or sees the same error message.

Edit: The N900 has no initfs, Pali made a patch that a skipped file does not throw an error.


Here is what I did.

Activate these repos:

Try Ios or Android !
No, joking, but as nobody is paid for writing wikis and everybody can give a hint, so it is not always that someone can sum up cleanly all what we need. We just swim into a big mess.

Try again, it works ans saves much time.

Thanks a lot for refreshing my memory about 0xFFFF. I used yesterday for something totally different but it saved one of my N900 with dead gsm (except the dead gsm is still dead, well...).
Flashing with the default flasher was impossible. It stayed stuck when trying to flash something to the modem, I believe.
With 0xFFFF, I could flash perfectly.

Back to the backup question, IIRC, I read somewhere on TMO that there is a question of image size or something. When you change it, flashing is not working any more...
But it looked very complicated to get to the point of something which did not work, so I abandoned the idea of something which would have worked.

So now I have the clarification that 0xFFFF can't flash the emmc.
And flashing the emmc will erase the home partition. Furthermore until today there was no way found to integrate the home partition which also contains /opt to the fiasco image.

This means you can flash kernel + rootfs with fiasco and home + emmc needs to be dd to the device which can't be done during runtime without taking some actions. There is a way during booting the N900 to replace emmc but I would suggest using rescue os.

Dumping with 0xFFFF works and you could also use the file for flashing but you need to specify what images do you like to flash from fiasco. It is save to flash rootfs and kernel but don't flash nolo unless you know what you doing.

If you would like to participate to 0xFFFF and include flashing the emmc you could have a look here:

https://github.com/pali/0xFFFF/issues/6

As reference the explanation from Pali on irc.

..
I notice that trusted source:
http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...bootmenu/1.14/
and
http://maemo.org/packages/package_in....28-10power53/
pages says "Warning: This package has missing dependencies!"

And I trust to another link, but mediafire link is death.

Can I still try ric9K's method to reinstall Backupmenu backup-file from N900 with Kernelpower to another N900?

this is my how-to form a while back.
Cloning a N900 from backupmanager restore files
https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=100595
If you can find the posts by JeorgRW on how to directly extract the required kernel and directly cold USB flash a complete built and ready to use backup image including kernel you could even bypass the bootmenu stuff. He is still almost always on the Maemo IRC chanel https://libera.chat/ #maemo I think he is just Joerg there