QtMoko backup/restore

[Neil Jerram]

"dmatthews.org" <mail at dmatthews.org> writes:

> Hi Neil
>
>> 1. it wants to mount and unmount the device (/media/card) where backups
>> are stored, whereas QtMoko wants /media/card mounted the whole time
>
> That's not the case. You can configure it to backup to a directory on the same device as the one you're backing up.
>
>> 2. it wants to use symbolic links on the backup device, which FAT
>> doesn't support.
>> 
>
> You could make a ext2/3 partition on the card and have that mounted on /media/card with a backup directory.
>
> Although I'm not wanting to do this myself, I've no doubt it's doable. I'm a long term backup2l user - I fell in love with it after reimaging a foobarred server and having everything back up exactly as it was within an hour.
>
> IMO backup2l is an unsung gem

It is a very nice tool for its job, but I'm thinking now that that job
is not exactly what we need for QtMoko, and that we'd be better off with
a QtMoko-specific tool.

- For QtMoko we only want a one-off, user-initiated full user data
  backup immediately prior to each upgrade.  We don't need the automatic
  cron-based backing up and backup levels (i.e. full + incremental
  levels) that backup2l provides.

- For QtMoko I think the restore operation, or at least some of it,
  ideally needs to happen immediately after unpacking the new rootfs,
  i.e. before the new QtMoko has had any chance to run.  One might not
  even be running on Linux at that point.  Therefore that step should be
  as minimal as possible - ideally just unpacking a tarball of user
  data.

- We will probably want other not-just-backup operations for QtMoko,
  such as exporting contacts to a file and later reimporting them, or
  reinstalling additional packages in the upgraded system.

Probably backup2l has hooks for these kinds of things, but I suspect it
could become harder to maintain a combined backup2l + hook script system
than just to write a QtMoko-specific script.

My first stab at that is attached below.  Comments welcome!

Radek, it's pretty alpha and incomplete, but would it perhaps be worth
committing already to the repository, so as to have something to build
from?

Regards,
        Neil