[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: [maemo-announce] New Nokia 770 software image available

[From: Marius Gedminas]

On Thu, Nov 02, 2006 at 08:09:47PM +0100, Antonio Orlando wrote:
> Reflashing the device is a fine thing, but it's rather annoying to  
> reinstall all the stuff back, so before doing anything I prefer to ask  
> here:
> provided I have everything installed the "normal" way (on the internal  
> memory: not used the trick of extending the root filesystem on the MMC),  
> is it possible to flash the device and re-set it up like it was before  
> reflashing, without having to re-install everything manually?

I don't think so.

Well, you could write a shell script to re-install everything
automatically ;)

> So, let's say, is it possible to backup some directories and files via  
> ssh, flash the device, reinstall the ssh server and write the backed up  
> stuff into the flashed device, in order to have everything working again  
> with minimum effort?

That's more or less what I did when I upgraded from OS2005 to OS2006,
and that's what I plan to do to upgrade to OS2006.2:

  - create a backup with the backup tool
  - back up some files in my home directory (a simple shell script that
    tars things like ~/.profile and my ~/mmc -> /media/mmc1 symlink into
    the memory card)
  - flash
  - restore the backup
  - install osso-xterm, becomeroot and ssh
  - untar my home dir archive (another shell script that untars the
    archive)

> If yes, can someone write a list of the dirs/files to  
> include (or exclude) in the backup in order to accomplish this task? It  
> seems linux is rather good for this kind of things, but I don't know well  
> what to backup'n'overwrite after the reflash and what to exclude, so wise  
> advice here is really appreciated. It would be nice a command to tar all  
> the stuff needed directly from the device to the PC via ssh (the "backup"  
> step), if that's possible, and the corresponding reverse command for the  
> "restore" step.

I think that using tar to back up and restore applications installed
with apt/dpkg would be a Bad Idea.

It should be pretty easy to get a list of installed packages from apt
(or the application installer) before the flash, and then reinstall them
in one swoop with apt-get install.  I plan to figure this out over the
weekend.

By the way, can someone confirm or deny that the backup tool does not
back up your /etc/apt/sources.list and therefore you will have to re-add
all the application manager repositories manually?

Marius Gedminas
-- 
A secret: don't tell DARPA I'm not building the sun destroying weapon they
think I am.
        -- Michael Salib, the author of Starkiller
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