Short tutorial to backup full device with ubiboot (for console enthusiasts only ):

- power down device

- connect USB to device and PC (be it Linux or Windoze flavor)

- wait for maintenance mode screen
at this time you should notice also mounted drive(s) on PC,
on Windoze only p1, on Linux all partitions (according to your ubiboot.conf)
do NOT touch that drive under Windoze yet

- open a console on PC and telnet/ssh into N9

- create some mount points
mkdir /mnt/p1
mkdir /mnt/p2
mkdir /mnt/p3
mkdir /mnt/px #for other partitions you might have

- mount MyDocs read-write, rootfs (p2) and home (p3) read-only
mount -w -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/p1
mount -r -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/p2
mount -r -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p3 /mnt/p3

- tar up rootfs and home on MyDocs
cd /mnt/p2
tar -cvf /mnt/p1/p2.tar *
cd /mnt/p3
tar -cvf /mnt/p1/p3.tar *

you may also use
tar -cvzf /mnt/p1/pX.tar.gz *
for compressed tar, but it will take ages...

- now unmount all
umount /mnt/p1
umount /mnt/p2
umount /mnt/p3

- if you like, grab the tar files on N9/MyDocs NOW via the mounted drive from PC (do this first at this stage/unmounting as MyDocs seems mountable twice from PC and from N9, read access should not get you into trouble, but concurrent write access may do so, to the extent of fully broken file system)

That's it. Full backup of device done under Windoze with the help of ubiboot maintenance mode.
For Linux you may do it the same way or just directly mount and tar from PC.

Thanks again to juiceme for providing such wonderful tool!


Just thought I write it down, even all above is obvious.
Maybe worth to add to wiki or Readme?



--
Restore:

- power down device

- connect USB to device and PC (be it Linux or Windoze flavor)

- wait for maintenance mode screen
at this time you should notice also mounted drive(s) on PC,
on Windoze only p1, on Linux all partitions (according to your ubiboot.conf)
do NOT touch that drive under Windoze yet

- open a console on PC and telnet/ssh into N9

- create some mount points
mkdir /mnt/p1
mkdir /mnt/p2
mkdir /mnt/p3
mkdir /mnt/px #for other partitions you might have

- mount MyDocs read-only, rootfs (p2) and home (p3) read-write
mount -r -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/p1
mount -w -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/p2
mount -w -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p3 /mnt/p3

- untar rootfs and home from MyDocs
cd /mnt/p2
rm -fr *
tar -xvf /mnt/p1/p2.tar
cd /mnt/p3
rm -fr *
tar -xvf /mnt/p1/p3.tar

if you have compressed tar.gz, use
tar -xvzf /mnt/p1/pX.tar.gz

- now unmount all
umount /mnt/p1
umount /mnt/p2
umount /mnt/p3

If you need to copy the backup from PC back to N9 first, then do it as first step before mounting.

Disclaimer: verified the restore up to now only to copy Harmattan root from p2 to p5 and it worked. So I am convinced, this will work.

Thanks for the guide, that's pretty much how it can be accomplished.
One minor suggestion, though;

For people using Windows, and hence never needing to mount the ext4fs partitions outside the device, I suggest you change the key
G_EXPORTED_PARTITONS="/dev/mmcblk0" to G_EXPORTED_PARTITONS="/dev/mmcblk0p1"

Reason for that is that even as the WinPC is not going to try to mount other than mmcblk0p1 ever, it is still safer not to try to export the other partitions if you are going to mount them inside the device.

Yep, generally a good idea.
BUT...
... this is one thing I wanted to ask you either:
when using maintenance mode with windoze (having G_EXPORTED_PARTITONS="/dev/mmcblk0"), I only get the first partition offered and it is mounted automatically. The others not. So no prob at all, right? Or we would get device busy error, or?
When using modified usbmoded, I do get all partitions offered and may mount my extfs partitions manually.
I would like ubiboot to behave the same way!?

Hmm, that indeed so? But can you mount the rest of the partitions in Windows anyway, even if offered from the device since I thought there's some kind of ext2fs support but no ext4fs...?
Now I am not sure about this and have to test a bit. However, as for Linux, when /dev/mmcblk0 is offered all partitions are seen by the host computer.

Isn't this an ext4fs for windows:
Paragon_ExtFS_for_Windows_2.41.exe ?
https://www.google.com/search?q=Para...ndows_2.41.exe

https://www.google.com/search?q=Para...4+for+windows8

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-windows/

Okay, now I have tested a bit

The results are as follows;

• if you set G_EXPORTED_PARTITONS="/dev/mmcblk0", you will get all partitions exported.
• if you set G_EXPORTED_PARTITONS="/dev/mmcblk0p1", you will get just one partition exported.
• if you set G_EXPORTED_PARTITONS="/dev/mmcblk0p1,dev/mmcblk0p2", you will get both partitions 1 and 2 exported.
  (the driver will contain 2 different luns in this case, one for each partition)

Now this above is what happens on Linux.
My guess is that on Windows the 1st and 2nd behave similarily, only the partition 1 gets exported, but the 3rd case would export both partitions correctly.

Well, this is OSS evolving, this kind of thing happens. Besides, we are all grown ups, we can deal with bugs.

Successful after use new preinit..lucky I havent reflash it yet

Absolutely correct ( I assume ).
Windoze recognizes only first partition on flash drives (default).
In usbmoded I have defined the partitions item by item (but without root and home, you remember? ). And it worked, so could have thought of trying it the same way (dumb me ).
Once more thank you.

Will test and let you know.
About ext support: I am using ext2Fsd, as it is OSS. ext2 rw, ext3 r(w), ext4 ro. But I normally need only to read from ext, When I have the need to write, I rely on a VM.
Paragon is closed (despite having had good experiences with their SW). Do not know about their reliability about write support.

Hi, is it correct to simply put the new preinits.tar to MyDocs and do tar -xvf preinits.tar -C / as in the wiki or? Thanks