How to backup "everything" on SBT?

[diego]

Hi there!

Is there a way to back up just everything of a SBT?

I mean: To back up the entire configuration, Kernel, Firmware... just everything that is on its internal "Hard Disk" (some flash memory).

On a "normal" computer, I would boot it from a stick and back up the hard disk with all its partitions.

Who knows a way to do this on a sbt?

Cheers!

[nk7z]

Use Clonezilla... It will give you a mirror perfect image of your machine.

[diego]

Use Clonezilla... It will give you a mirror perfect image of your machine.

Thank you. I know Clonezilla. How can that be run on a SBT?

[aubuti]

Backing up everything seems like overkill to me (especially because released firmware is available from http://update.slimdevices.com/update/firmware/). But if you really want to back up everything the most straightforward way is to enable remote login on the SBT and then copy all the files over to another device on your network. You could do the copying using a GUI tool such as WinSCP. Or you could use standard Linux command line tools like scp.

EDIT: Also note that the Touch has common "roll your own" command line backup tools such as tar, gzip, and dd. You can write the backup output to a USB drive or SD card attached to the Touch.

[diego]

Backing up everything seems like overkill to me (especially because released firmware is available from http://update.slimdevices.com/update/firmware/). But if you really want to back up everything the most straightforward way is to enable remote login on the SBT and then copy all the files over to another device on your network. You could do the copying using a GUI tool such as WinSCP. Or you could use standard Linux command line tools like scp.

EDIT: Also note that the Touch has common "roll your own" command line backup tools such as tar, gzip, and dd. You can write the backup output to a USB drive or SD card attached to the Touch.

Hi there Aubuti

Thanks for that. This is exactly the way I wanted to do it. However, I had a doupt. I am "usually" a windows user, so makes me doupt is, wether there are inaccessable files, like files currently being used, hidden files or system files? This would obviously be the most important to back up. Can all of them be copied correctly over the network? And as importantly: Copied back if needed?

I'd still prefer some kind of offline boot solution... some partition cloning/backup tool like norton ghost, clonezilla or whatever similar.

[JohnSwenson]

None of the usual backup methods are going to work properly for the Touch as far as a COMPLETE full exactly as it normally is state. The reason for this is that the Touch uses a union file system. In a union filesystem there are multiple physical file systems that are combined at run time to provide what you see. For the Touch it is setup with a read only filesystem which contains the firmware from Logitech and a separate physical filesystem which contain "changes", anything you modify (directly or indirectly) goes in the "change" filesystem. What you see is the union of these two filesystems (its actually more complicated, but that's the easy to understand version). This actually is how the factory restore works, it clears out the "changed" filesystem.

So if you use normal backup procedures you will be making a copy of the union filesystem, when you restore it, everything goes in the changed filesystem, not back into the "official" read only filesystem. So lets say you get corruption in the read only system, you restore your backup into the changed filesystem (assuming there is enough space in this filesystem!), everything now works, but if you do a factory reset you blow away the "changed" filesystem and now you are back to pointing at the corrupted read only filesystem!

Obviously there are ways to write to the read only filesystem, a firmware change has to do that, but you have to go through special hoops to actually get at the different filesystem and back each one up separately, and on a restore put them back in the correct physical filesystems. It certainly can be done, but a "normal" backup procedure is NOT going to do that.

John S.

[diego]

None of the usual backup methods are going to work properly for the Touch as far as a COMPLETE full exactly as it normally is state ... a "normal" backup procedure is NOT going to do that.
John S.

Thanks indeed John for this very complete explanation!

Now... I might be a bit old school... but I don't actually feel very confortable with the idea of being dependant of the internet and Logitech or whoever. I run now Beta 7.8.0 and Triode's EDO with Test Kernel #11. This is the only way that lets me play my stuff over async USB to my DAC, that has a TE8802L based USB input. So... I am looking for a way to back up this configuration to be able to restore it, also, if one day Triode's Test-Kernel #11 or Beta 7.8.0 are maybe not available online anymore.

Hopefully this won't be necessary, as hopefully, Tenor/GFEC, Linux and Logitech will do what is necessary to properly make the whole stuff compatible, but who knows...

D.

[aubuti]

... I am looking for a way to back up this configuration to be able to restore it, also, if one day Triode's Test-Kernel #11 or Beta 7.8.0 are maybe not available online anymore.

I haven't used the EDO software so I don't know how it is packaged, but the simpler and more effective solution for backing up beta 7.8.0 is to download the 7.8.0 package and then save it and back it up with all the other files on your pc. Back when I was regularly running nightly betas that's what I would do -- just in case a nightly release would blow up I could always rollback to an earlier beta from the stash on my hard drive. And it's much easier to restore that way than it would be from a backup image of the Touch, for the reasons John S gave.

[Mnyb]

I haven't used the EDO software so I don't know how it is packaged, but the simpler and more effective solution for backing up beta 7.8.0 is to download the 7.8.0 package and then save it and back it up with all the other files on your pc. Back when I was regularly running nightly betas that's what I would do -- just in case a nightly release would blow up I could always rollback to an earlier beta from the stash on my hard drive. And it's much easier to restore that way than it would be from a backup image of the Touch, for the reasons John S gave.

+1 that's what I do and also saving server packages for rollback . But I've rarely had the need .

That leaves how to get the EDO app files and how to use the app installer against ones own hard drive ?

[diego]

I haven't used the EDO software so I don't know how it is packaged, but the simpler and more effective solution for backing up beta 7.8.0 is to download the 7.8.0 package and then save it and back it up with all the other files on your pc. Back when I was regularly running nightly betas that's what I would do -- just in case a nightly release would blow up I could always rollback to an earlier beta from the stash on my hard drive. And it's much easier to restore that way than it would be from a backup image of the Touch, for the reasons John S gave.

Thanky aubuti and Mnyb. However, maybe I am a bit slow, but still not fully convinced. Do I understand you right: You just to store all the files that are accessible over SSH the firmware as it is found on http://update.slimdevices.com/update/firmware/7.8.0/ and the server files on http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/?ver=7.8 .

However, will this enable you to restore everything, if for some reason, the update servers or whatever is on the internet are not accessible through the touch? In particular, Firmware / Kernel, Installed Apps...?

What bothers me a bit is, that a factory reset does obviously only revert settings and apps back to default, but not the firmware. So what if a nightly firmware or an experimental Kernel messes up the touch, so that the internal restore tool does not work anymore? How can the thing be reinstalled from scratch?

As far as I understand, this is simply a piece of gear made to live as long as Logitech supports it, and one has to live with that.