[ANN] Object Oriented Christmas (Squeak PC)
Michael Roberts
mike at mjr104.co.uk
Wed Dec 17 03:22:04 UTC 2003
> > 2) Will there be a way to restore (from some kind of backup) the initial
> > flash configuration so that the system can be restored to its pristine
> > condition?
>
> Sure, why not?
> Plug the flash into your Mac (using a PCMCIA/CF adapter if necessary),
> and use dd to copy the contents of the block device to a file. Reverse to get the flash back.
>
> <eject the disk from the Finder>
>
> su
> dd if=/dev/disk1 of=TheFlashStuff
>
For people who
* don't have a mac handy
* don't have a linux laptop handy
* but do have a Windows laptop handy
* and have a unix server account with ssh access
you can safely boot the windows laptop into Linux using a Knoppix CD and do
dd if=/dev/hdg | ssh user at server "dd of=TheFlashStuff"
This pipes the output of dd through ssh and another dd to the file on the remote host.
You can do the reverse as well to do a restore
ssh user at server "dd if=TheFlashStuff" | dd of=/dev/hdg
which sets the pipe up in reverse. I only mention laptops above because PCMCIA-CF adaptors are really easy to use with Knoppix. They appear as /dev/hdg for example. CF via USB would probably work in any PC using Knoppix but I've never tried.
Ned's warnings about dd apply, although getting the restore wrong on a Windows XP laptop might not be such a bad thing!
You could potentially do this backup from the Squeak Box live, as it where, but I'm not sure about dd-ing the drive whilst it is mounted at the same time. I haven't tried that and don't know if the filing system could be in an inconsistent state. If you could get the fs into a read-only mode then it might work from the box itself. You could maybe automate this from the boot-loader somehow. If you are worried about the space on bigger CF cards, you can add gzip to the pipe.
Cheers
Mike
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