Notices

Are you all waiting for my test? XD

Yes, of course Meanwhile I am weekly doing a full backup both in tar and img format - but I haven't had the guts to test it yet.

I just got on #maemo today, and learned about mtd-tools. Apparently, there are some nand-write tools that can actually write things properly, which would be a good replacement for the old-style image writing using DD.

Unfortunately, I'd also need a nand-read tool also. And, more importantly, man-pages for both of these.

Let me know if any of you guys know of these things.

UUUP

Bu the way ... i temporarily got 2 N900 and a PC...
So i'm going to try backupmenu... and on the different devices :P
I'll make an image with my device and i'll try to restore it on the second N900 Give me a couple oh hours

PS: .. robbie... i see that you have a bit of experience with shell scripts ... could you help me with this stupid error?

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=61956&page=8

Robbie... it gives me permissione denied .... :/
I haven't succeded to read the whole error message ... but it is a problem with the "line 1" in the file /usr/share/backupmenu/backupmenu.item :/

PS: i've solved the problem with my script :P

Somehow, I comletely missed these last two posts.

Anyway, check and make sure that /usr/share/backupmenu/backupmenu.item is marked excecutable:
"chmod +x /usr/share/backupmenu/BackupMenu.item"

In other news, it seems that there is no way to -properly- do an image-backup. The best solution possible is to backup things at the file-level.
Fortunately, between that(either with tar or rsync), and mkfs.ubifs/ubinize, we can make flashable images out of file sets!
I'm going to go test this out now, see if they actually boot.

I had a big problem using BackupMenu: I backed up the rootfs and optfs to MyDocs -> worked without any problems, then I tried to restore the backup, but the result was a bricked device - even the mass storage feature did not work anymore

Fortunately I found a solution to fix this without loosing anything:

-first I flashed the original firmware to reenable the mass storage feature
-then I backed up my MyDocs directory to my PC to get the two *.img files created by BackupMenu
--> those first two steps can be skipped if the backup is on sd-card or already on the PC

-then I flashed the rootfs image created by BackupMenu using the flasher using the following command: flasher-3.5.exe -r rootfs.img -f -R
-then I turned on my device with opened keyboard which started BackupMenu again (which was a good sign that showed that the device was bootable again with my backed up rootfs)
-then I restored my optfs using BackupMenu
-after that I rebooted and the device was back in the state it was before it got bricked (everything works as it should again, including all programs, settings etc.)

-now as i knew how to restore the device I did a second attempt to restore the rootfs using BackupMenu and it got again bricked... but this time I managed to unbrick it within a minute by reflashing my backed up rootfs.img

--> conclusion: backing up works perfectly for both, the rootfs and the optfs, restoring the optfs works without any problems, too, but restoring the rootfs always bricks my device so it is better to restore the rootfs with the help of the flasher

Why does restoring the rootfs always bricks my device ? Is this a bug in BackupMenu or did I do something wrong ? (I do not know what I should have done wrong, just selected restore rootfs and chose my rootfs.img - similar procedure as with the optfs which worked without any problems)

Well, problems restoring the rootfs is something of a glitch in BackupMenu, but one that I can't fix with BackupMenu the way it is. So, I'm building a new version that should eliminate all these problems, and be safer to boot.
I only released it last night though, and it hasn't been tested to work yet, so you may want to keep your old setup for now - Or, help with the beta-testing!
New topic: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...548#post844548

looking at the tar file, i can't see all the files that are located at:
/usr/share/applications/hildon

why are they not backed up? a restored device will not have all the application shortcuts?

They're in the rootfs backup on my N900.