There are circumstances where you might caught with bricking your device or something happened to it which ultimately leave you with no other choice other than flashing your device and reinstalling all your favorite applications right from the scratch. Or it may be possible that the repository doesn’t host your favorite application any more.

One of the solutions is to keep DEB package of your favorite apps as a backup for future installation.

Tools Needed
• Terminal emulator (X Terminal or SSH)
• VIM editor (Available in Extras http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras)

Create Backup Folder to Download Apps
Openup XTerminal and create the required folders as follws:
$ mkdir -p /home/user/MyDocs/apt-archive-cache/archives/partial

Create Application List
1) Once all required applications are installed, create a new backup in your device.
2) Copy “applications.zip” found in Backup folder from your device into your PC.
3) Extract “packages.backup” file from the created backup “applications.zip”.
4) Open “packages.backup” in notepad. Remove “<backup> ” and “</pkg> ”. Both of these should be removed. Do not remove “<pkg>”. Now save the file as “download.txt”
5) Now replace all text “<pkg>” with “apt-get --force-yes -yy -d install --reinstall -o dir::cache=/home/user/MyDocs/apt-archive-cache ” then save the file.

All the rows should look like this
apt-get --force-yes -yy -d install --reinstall -o dir::cache=/home/user/MyDocs/apt-archive-cache mathjinni

6) Now rename the file “download.txt” into “download.list” then copy back into “MyDocs” folder of your device.
7) Now open this file “download.list” in notepad and save as “install.list”. Remove all “-d ” switch from this file and save it once again. (this step is for installing back all downloaded packages from the scratch)
8) Copy these two files “download.list” & “install.list” into your device MyDocs folder.

Download Apps Packages
Executing download.list script will download all the packages.
“rootsh” package should be installed in your device. If you don’t have, download and install it manually. After that, key in following commands in XTerminal.
$ sudo gainroot
/home/user # cd MyDocs (Changing the directory to MyDocs folder)
/home/user # ls (Make sure that “download.list” is found)
/home/user # sh<download.list

You should now see the downloading process running.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 213kB of archives.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://repository.maemo.org fremantle/free 100boxes 0.5.0-4 [213kB]
Fetched 213kB in 0s (538kB/s)
Download complete and in download only mode

Depending on the size of the list, the process could take a while. Once finished, the downloaded packages can be listed using following command:

$ ls /home/user/MyDocs/apt-archive-cache/archives|grep deb

Nokia-N900-42-11:/home/user# ls /home/user/MyDocs/apt-archive-
100boxes_0.5.0-4_armel.deb
accdisplay_1.0_armel.deb
cache/archives|grep deb
ati85_1.4.1-1_armel.deb
bluetooth-dun_1.0-2_armel.deb

Copy the folder “apt-archive-cache” from your device into your PC and secure it. If you want to reinstall these apps from scratch, proceed to “Installing” step.

Installing steps would be updated soon!

...or you could use the build in backup program which backs up a list of apps and can restore them.

but this way you don't have to DL them again

unless application(s) is (are) updated....

of course. Personally, I won't be doing this but maybe someone find this useful.

As time passes, updated/upgraded versions of packages currently installed on your device might become available from repositories. To make sure your device is up-to-date:

First you need to update your package index by executing following command in XTerminal

sudo gainroot
apt-get update

Second execute following command to upgrade your apps.

this might screw your application manager into a state you need to reflash. there is atleast one reported occurence.

It shouldn't do - dist-upgrade certainly can, but upgrade should be safe.

i have a question! i restored my applications using app manager when i updated to pr 1.3 but i still get a option to restore applications in app manager! how can i remove this backed-up list of applications???

Is it possible to retrieve a whole, actual application and store it instead of just retrieving and storing a list?

The reason I ask this is that my friend's N900 has the Panorama application. I want it too, but I can't get it. It is available for FREE on the Nokia site, but:

- there is no direct download
- it requires some Nokia Suite thingy, which I downloaded and it's a Windows program, I use Linux
- there is an option to have the site send me a link over SMS (why??????!!!!!!!!!), which doesn't work either. I get the SMS on my N900, try to open it and the Nokia site tells me my phone is not compatible.

I've run out of ways of obtaining the software, now I want to extract it from my friend's N900 and transplant it to mine. It must be possible, it's Linux! But I don't know how to do that.