so... I've been using an n800 (although not the same one- see below) for about a month and a half now. while I really like the device, I have one major issue:

is it in any way possible to access/mount/image/backup the onboard (not sd card) memory *without* installing the 3rd party init.fs bootmenu package?

I've been hacking away at this thing off and on, installing programs and changing stuff in /etc and various hildon config files, and a couple times now I've edited the wrong file the wrong way or installed an unstable program and caused the n800 to hang or crash on reboot. I solved those by reflashing, but that gets real old real fast.

I've been looking into ways to fully backup the n800 (or at least mount the internal memory on another machine so I can dd it), but I'm not finding any good solutions. the backup program that's provided by nokia is a joke as it doesn't actually backup any programs (much less /etc), searching on the forums lead me to init.fs, but installing that completely bricked my n800 (black screen, wouldn't boot, wouldn't charge, wouldn't reflash, wouldn't anything)... thankfully I was still within my 30 days return period so I was able to swap it for the one I have now.

it's kinda gotten to the point where I'm almost afraid to use it, at the very least, I'm very leery of installing anything or changing any settings anymore for fear of it hanging and me having to reflash it and lose everything again.



so I pose this question: is there any way I can get at the onboard memory on this thing without installing another program? do people have instructions on like building a cable for the serial port? would that even work? is my only option to keep buying (and potentially bricking) n800's till I get one where init.fs suceeds?

Just create a tarball of the rootfs?

Yes, since OP asked only about backup, this is good suggestion. The hard part with tarball is how to restore it :-)

If one intends to restore backup as is, it is possible to create jffs2 image directly from rootfs and such image is flashable via Nokia linux flasher over USB.

See http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...3348#post33348
or search this forum for sumtool, mkfs.jffs2 and possibly also nandwrite, flash_eraseall

Sounds scary but I believe it is just coincidence. Either the HW was really faulty or the "wouldn't reflash, wouldn't anything" part is not true. initfs flasher reflashes just initfs partition which may indeed render device temporarily unbootable, but in such state reflashing is still possible via Nokia flasher (just like when flashing bad linux kernel which is run even before initfs). While I understand that your experience is pretty discouraging, I still suggest to try to install bootmenu again.

If I do say so myself I am really good with backups and have one of my home computers backing up all my machines each night via rsync (much faster and only backs up the files that have changed).

When I got my N800 I added a script to back that up too. I set my home router to always issue the IT the same IP every time it connects via WiFi (also makes things easier to connect to for other things). Each night the script pings the IT and if it's online will SSH to it and backup securely via rsync, this backs up the entire tablet including any cards loaded.

I also added a few more things, using hard links on my backup box I can keep weeks of backups using a fraction of the space and if the IT is offline for more than 10 days then I get an e-mail each night until it gets backed up

when I installed init.fs, I followed the instructions that came with it, chose dropbear, etc. it then attempted to reboot but apparently died in the process. it wouldn't turn on no matter how long I held the power button (no Dpad light or anything), and plugging it into the charger would not display the 'charging' icon on the screen. I know the ac adapter and battery were good because I charged the battery ahead of time before I started, and tested them later before I returned everything to the store.

in any event, since I couldn't turn it on, I couldn't reflash it. and yes I tried leaving it out overnight with and without the battery.

I use rsnapshot, which copies over the network with rsync.
With rsnapshot you can configure daily/hourly/whatever backups and it only stores the changes, then you can restore from any backup point.

rdiff-backup works similarly, but I've not tried it yet.

I'll look into that. the thread you link to seems to imply I need to boot from an sd card first though, which AFAIK requires installing init.fs, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

??

I'm not sure how this would help me though if the tablet is borked and hanging on the splashscreen or something. unless I can get unrestricted access to the onboard memory from another machine, any other solution seems to require booting the tablet to some runlevel or another to run a restore program.

... unless you mean there's a way to convert that rsync into a flashable image I can use with the flasher program.

if I could get a version of the flasher capable of ripping and re-writing the rootfs, that would be good enough. can the nokia/linux/mac version of the flasher program do this out of the box?