backing up rootfs fails - after 40m FreeRunner continues booting

[Paul Fertser]

Bram Mertens <mertensb.mazda at gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Paul Fertser <fercerpav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Any particular reason you omitted the list from Cc? Feel free to bring
>> conversation back there, so everybody benefits.
>
> No reason, just hit reply like I did with all other posts.  Only this
> time Gmail didn't address the list but you personally.  Could have
> something to do with the fact that you wrote your reply to me and CC'd
> the list...

That's how the mailing lists are supposed to work. Whenever you mean
to send an answer to the mailing list, you're supposed to press "Reply
All" (it can be called differently but the meaning is the same). That
way you avoid accidentally sending a private e-mail to list
btw. Moreover please take into account that the person you're writing
a reply to may not be necessarily subscribed to the list (and everyone
should be free to send mails to any list he desires to), so in case
you reply to the list directly, the person you address might never
receive it.

> Backing up the rootfs took about 10 minutes compared to +40 minutes
> with dfu-util and the complete image is merely 83M in size, whereas
> the file created by dfu-util is 247M when the backup is terminated due
> to the timeout!
>
> Does this mean that dfu-util backs up the entire disk (which according
> to the output below is approx the size of the resulting jffs2 image)
> and NeoTool only backs up the data that has been written?  However
> even then 83M is less than what's reported in use.
> Or does NeoTool compress the data somehow?

Yes, dfu-util doesn't care about filesystem, files etc, works on the
whole NAND partition. And i guess with NeoTool you're using ssh
actually.

> Perhaps (well actually likely) I'm missing something but as far as I
> understand you need a working distribution before you would be able to
> restore files via SSH.

If your distro works at least somehow, you'll get ssh over usb
access. If not, you can get a uSD image that works.

> Thanks again for the help, I'll play around some more tomorrow and
> will update the wiki based on your suggestions.

Thank you, our wiki really needs to be more accurate. :)

HTH
-- 
Be free, use free (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) software!
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