@karijackson: xterm will do.

I had to look up "xterm" to see what that is.

So you're assuming I'm not one of those people who'd drop dead of a heart attack when confronted with a command line window.

That's okay - I wrote a book about DOS. UNIX command line = a bit more difficult, however!!!!!!! But okay.

So I imagine that I can handle the "cp" and the "/etc/apt/sources.list", but how will I know what drive letter (or whatever) my memory card is, so I can specify the target location?

And, do I need to be logged in as Administrator (I believe you call it "root") in order to access the /etc/apt directory? In which case I'll need to know how to do that too.

I guess I'll have to get out my old book "Using LINUX" which I could not manage to understand a few years ago when I tried it.

If you are an old hand from the DOS days there is hope still :-)

Think of xterm as a DOS box inside Windows, except you get a "$" prompt instead of "C:\>"...

Now, you need a "#" instead of that "$". Yes, that means being "root". Fortunately it's become much easier. Just use the Application Catalog and Manager to install a package aptly named "BecomeRoot". Once you have that, in xterm just type "sudo gainroot" and voilà, there is your pound sign...

Last but not least : if you knew DOS you knew Norton Commander, right ? So look for the "Midnight Commander" package and install that.
Now, after you've done the above just type "mc" and things will look brighter :-)

PS: the place you need to be in the right pane for copying your stuff to, is below /media/mmc1/

Do a 'df -h' in the command line. It will show you what's mounted. If you have two cards and they are of different sizes you'll be able to identify which is which. If not, then do 'ls /media/mmc? (where ? is 1 or 2) and recognize your card by the content. Or, you can just rely on the common knowledge (see previous post) that the external card is /media/mmc1/ :-)

The question is about backing up the 770, so the point is moot :-)

Ah, indeed :-) Too many threads to keep track of.. but in any case, the 'df' command will give you the name of the mountpoint, whether you have one or two card slots.

I was able to "cp" the file to "/media/mmc1" without being root!

But I figured I'll shortly find something ELSE I want to do that does require root, right? So I went to have a look at BecomeRoot, and its author scared me away! It says "WARNING: This packages could brick the device (by touching /usr/sbin/gainroot file). DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK."

Do I really want to do that?

I don't ever intend to program on this thing, or anything like that. I'm just using it for its originally intended purpose plus a few Maemo applications that I find.....Maybe I won't ever need to be root?

Or is the warning really not as scary as it sounds?

1) Yes, you were able to back it up without fuss, because as "user" you have read permissions on /etc/apt/sources.list, and write permissions on /media/mmc1. But when you want to restore it after a flash you will need *write* permissions on sources.list, hence root priviledge :-)

2) Nokia's own Application Manager displays a warning that's even scarier every time you try to install or update something. Yet everyone does it, right ? :-)

3) BecomeRoot is the most problem-free package I've ever seen on the 770. The only real danger is not with the tool, but lies in being root, if you muck around in xterm or mc doing things you don't understand. But did you never delete you autoexec.bat or config.sys in the bad old days ? :-)

I will do it, fpp, thank you!

Well, it seems I can't install BecomeRoot after all. The http://eko.one.pl/maemo repository is one of several which I have not been able to access, ever since I installed the http://www.nokiausa.com/support/phon...61,770,00.html upgrade that started this whole thread. I had thought it was a coincidence but now I'm not so sure. These sites could not just "happen to" be "down" all this time, could they? I really doubt it. So how did the Nokia software upgrade make those several maemo repositories stop working on my device? And more importantly, how do I make them start again?