Hey, I've got 2 N9 phones, one 16GB PR1.1 and second PR
1.3 64GB.
now my 16GB phone, fully customized with many private / exclusive bugs can not hold the SIM tray in, as it is simply broken (not tray, body itself, has really a lot of damage). that is what I want to dump the filesystem /mounting them to Linux PC and using "dd" utility/ and restoring them the same way to the PR1.3 phone. However, it has different kernel and I do not know if it will work.

did anyone try that? or do someone know if is even possible? Thanks.

Best guess, No, it wont work.
I didnt try dd method you suggest, but, I did try using backupmenu on my 16G N9 (which I donated to David for working on injection drivers) in the hope I could use that backup on my second N9. Resulted in a needed reflash of that second phone.
Remind, you will probably end up changing parts like IMEI, HW revision etc.

Using ubiboot it should work, even as the kernel is not the same. Of course both devices have to be in open mode before starting.

• 1.) install ubiboot on both devices
• 2.) boot to maintanance console on the source device. when partitions are exported, archive the content with tar (dd is not needed, as the filesystem image need not be byte-to-byte complement, and tar archive gives you a lot smaller file than dd dump)
• 3.) boot to maintanance console on the target device. when partitions are exported, restore the archives taken from source device
• 4.) copy the kernel you use on the source device to the mmcblk0p2:/boot/ directory, and copy the modules to mmcblk0p2:/lib/modules/kernelname/ directory
• 5.) you should be done

Caveats:
I have not tried this myself, so even as it should work there might be some problems, like the firmware on the device. For example, I have no idea what happens if CMT is from a newer PR and runtime SW is from an older PR...?

CMT firmware differences don't really matter - e.g. China flashed CMTs more-or-less work just fine on say, PR_LEGACY 001.

Restoring partitions using BackupMenu and loading the kernel with ubiboot will work, though.

You might want to apply the L2 enable patch onto the PR1.1 sources, though!

NOTE: Flasher-3.5 will still recognize the device firmware as PR 1.3, software version is stored in CAL, IIRC.

Are you sure?
Restoting using backup menu did not work for me when trying to restore my (16G) backup on my new (64G) device.

I kind of assumed this is so but have not got definite proof on it, as I have not tried this myself. (that's just because I do not have any devices other than PR1.3...)
Other than (possible) CMT incompability I do not see any real roadblocks in doing it.


It is better to do both saving and restoring under ubiboot rather than BackupMenu, IMHO, as when you run the traditional BackupMenu you have rootfs mounted. It's good for backups of the home partition but as ubiboot runs orthogonally to all filesystems on mmcblk0 it is preferred when you want to grab everything from it.


That's a good point! However at least I do not have sources for kernels of earlier PR's.


Yes, but that should not be visible for any userland software unless it really wants to dig the version out from the system basement. All OS SW will be on PR1.1.

One thing to note, the kernel command line given by NOLO when the device boots might be different between PR1.1 and PR1.3
If that is so, then you have to patch the differences in ubiboot loader where it handles the input and output command line.
(fortunately the newest ubiboot can also replace the whole command line, not just inject parameters into it like previous versions...)

All of that comes to kernel from NOLO, from the boot command line.
You do not really have to worry about those things

Well, did you do it under ubiboot?

Nope, just using backupmenu

So you tried to boot PR1.1 SW with PR1.3 kernel?

I thinkg going the way juiceme described may work ...