I've had some issues with Diablo messing up my N800 install, and have been reinstalling to the SD card. But I've also had some PC issues lately and am having to LiveCD boot while I make sure I've got everything backed off the PC's hard drive. It was working from an installed 8.04.

Sigh.

Problem is, I can't mount the jffs2 for some reason to restore my N800.

1. downloaded flasher-3, diablo ARM binary,

2. ./flasher-3.0 --set-root-device mmc

3. ./flasher-3.0 -u -F diablo_ARM.bin

>>>> already done these, and the rootfs.jffs2 and flasher file are sitting on the Windows partition of the hard drive (NTFS)

Continuing....

- I boot the Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD, then copy flasher and rootfs.jffs2 to the desktop, open a terminal and CD to Desktop (tried it to the hard drive to, same thing)
- Insert my SD card-reader, and it automounts on /media/disk

4. sudo su

5. losetup -f
>>>>> responded with loop1

6. losetup /dev/loop1 rootfs.jffs2

7. modprobe block2mtd block2mtd=/dev/loop1,131072

8. modprobe jffs2

9. modprobe mtdblock

10. mount -t jffs2 -o ro /dev/mtdblock0 /mnt/jffs2/

>>>>>>>>> problem: get the following error message
mount: mount point /mnt/jffs2/ does not exist
>>>>>>>>>

>>>> before, I continued with the following

11. cd /mnt/jffs2

then chmod -R ugo+rwx .

12. tar -cf - -C /mnt/jffs2 . | tar -xvf - -C /media/disk

>>> had to add the "-" on the second tar or it failed all the time

13. then finished off with

cd /media/disk
chmod -R ugo+rwx .
cd /etc
chmod 0440 sudoers

>>> sudoers had to be 0440 or nothing would save, made the theme look very odd.

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STEP 10 is where it started failing... couldn't create the mount point. Is that because I'm on a LiveCD or something else? The SD cards mount fine, as do CDs.

Confused here!

Why you couldn't create the mount point? mkdir /mnt/jffs2 should do it. Mount needs existing directory. Or maybe you are not root? You can use any other mount point in some writable directory like mkdir /tmp/whatever.

Hmm... I never had to do that before, but indeed, there is no /mnt/ffs2.

Creating that (or a /tmp directory) and then trying mount again gets me:

In fact, there is nothing related to any mtdblockN at all in /dev.

I can't figure how these commands are supposed to work really.

Oioioi! It helps if you have all the commands! I had somehow dropped the mtd link to loop. Sheesh, no wonder it didn't work!
Hmm... everything installed, started up, did the intitial setup... and froze.
Sigh.
Almost there.

Silly me, I just cd'd to the computer's /etc instead of the memory card.

WORKS GREAT NOW!