I still use my N810 daily, and it seems from this forum that others do too. But it's probably going to get harder to do standard restore operations using repositories, as some of them start to go offline.

I developed a fairly straightforward backup/restore process. I can have my full configuration up and running on a new N810 within about an hour, without even going online.

Posted here in case it's of use to anyone. As usual, no warranties, DYOR, be careful, bear in mind this works for me but might not for you.

(the rsync and sudser deb install files are attached if you need them)

AlexC

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Backup:

Making an archive of the internal or external memory card is straightforward: just use your favourite zip, 7z, whatever tool to archive the files on them. But backing up the active internal drive is potentially more tricky. Here's how I do it:

1. Format an Ext2 miniSD card, at least 512MB. Insert it into the N810.

2. Reboot the N810.

3. Open a terminal window.

4. Gain root, however you normally would.

5. Type these two commands:

mkdir /media/mmc1/n810_backup
rsync -axHAXv --delete --progress / /media/mmc1/n810_backup/

6. Wait a while.

7. Reboot and repeat the rsync command, so it catches a few more files that might have been locked first time around.

8. Switch off, remove the memory card, put it in your PC and tar the n810_backup directory as an archive (mine's called full_backup.tar).

9. That's it.

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Bare metal restore:

1. Reflash the N810 with Nokia's clean image using either the Windows flasher or flasher-3.5 under Linux. In Linux, do flasher-3.5 -F RX44-Diablo-blah.bin -f -R and that should do it. Remember to switch the N810 on while holding the top 'swap' button on the front, to get it in USB mode.

2. Restore (if necessary) the contents of 'internal_memory_card_backup.zip' to mmc2.

3. Restore (if necessary) the contents of 'external_memory_card_backup.zip' to mmc1.

4. Expand (under Linux) the full_backup.tar onto an Ext2-formatted memory card. Put the card in the N810.

5. Install rsync and its dependencies, either locally or from online. If locally, you will have to enable R&D mode on the tablet first (using flasher-3.5 --enable-rd-mode -R when connected to a Linux machine) and then do 'dpkg -i rsync/*.deb' as root, because for some reason it won't install through the application manager and you can't get root any other way on a bare machine, unless you install 'sudser', 'rootsh' or similar from online. Though you could first try the 'sudser' .deb file; double-click on it in File Manager, and if it installs you can then use 'rush' to get root and then use dpkg to install rsync.

6. Restore as root using rsync:
rsync -axHAXv --delete --progress /media/mmc1/n810_backup/ /

7. Reboot. When restoring to bare metal you should do rsync, then reboot, then do it again, then reboot, and then do it again. Maybe more. This increases the number of files that are sync'd and makes the restore more accurate.

8. Flash the kernel to the Community SSU version [or whatever version you're currently using]. If in doubt, use dpkg --extract to get the zImage_blah file itself, then fiasco-flasher -f -k zImage_blah.

9. Add Diablo Turbo if you like.

10. That's it.

Does this have any particular advantage over using mkfs.jffs2 to create a jffs2 image of your rootfs? For creating the image, see the first half of this post: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=33348#post33348 .

There are various ways of restoring the jffs2 image to the nand flash. Fanoush's suggested method (in the second half of the post linked above) does not require a PC, but does require a bootable rootfs somewhere on mmc. You could clone a pristine rootfs to an mmc partition specifically for this purpose (and not use it for anything else).

Alternatively, you could copy the jffs2 image to PC (it's a good idea to tar it first) and restore it with the 0xFFFF flasher. If you don't have a Linux PC handy but you do have another Maemo device, you could use the other Maemo device in USB host mode as the “PC”, and flash the image using 0xFFFF.static .

The various scripts involved (mkfs.jffs2, sumtool, flash_eraseall and nandwrite) are bundled into Fanoush's initfs_flasher folder, and you can still get a .tgz of it from http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/ .

0xFFFF flasher is obtainable from http://www.nopcode.org/0xFFFF/ .

You can find a link for 0xFFFF.static in this post: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=741534&postcount=2 .

P.S. Although Fanoush says he creates the jffs2 image while booted into mmc, you can do it equally well on the internal flash. However, restoration can not be done on internal flash, since everything there is erased when you run the flash_eraseall script (hence the name).