Howto: Easy Full System Backup and Restore

jinx022, thanks for posting about PING. It is exactly what I've been looking for! I've been using fwbackup to a gzipped tar, but I like PING better.

metoo1956, I just used PING for the first time using a USB stick on my AAO and all went well. I even did the backup to a network share on my Win XP laptop. Everything worked like it should.

I do use the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool" to format my USB stick's before trying to make them bootable. I'm not sure if that step is needed when using UNetbootin, but I've always used it before running UNetbootin.


VVarwick

 

VVarwick:

Glad it worked for you.

metoo1956:

I didn't use the HP Disc Format tool but it is widely recommended so maybe I just got lucky with my USB stick. If you are using Windows XP to make the bootable flash drive, check that the flash drive has just one primary partition and is formatted FAT32. Right click on my computer, select manage, and then disk management to see the flash drive partitions. Don't mess with the "C:" partition, of course.

 

Works perfectly, FULLY TESTED!

I wanted to make sure it fully worked, as in a full backup, trash my system and then restore. So after doing a backup to a network share on a XP machine, I booted back into PING and logged in as root. I did a "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/linux". I then did a "cd /mnt/linux" and made sure I could see the files on the internal SSD. I then did a "rm -rf *", removing all files from the internal SSD. I did an "ls -la" and nothing was there. I then tried to boot from the SSD and got an error 15. Yep, my SSD was totally wiped as expected. I booted back into PING and did a restore. Within 5 minutes my system was fully restored with all my tweaks and installs. I'm typing this message on it right now.

So yes, PING does a great job with backing up the AAO!


VVarwick

 

Hi, I noticed that the screenshots of the backup procedure doesn't exist anymore. Can you please post them again?

 

How can i use PING on Linux Linpus, i have saw the site but it's evrything for win only!!!


help!

 

If you have the 8G SSD version running the Acer version of Linpus:
Just follow the directions here. And when you get to this stage:


Choose the partition "sda1" (not listed in the image above, but will be when you run PING) as the partition you want to backup. That is the primary partition for your AAO. You do not need to backup the swap partition "sda2" so do not check it.

 

Wow, thanks a bunch! I've set up a ping live CD and live USB drive and am in the process of "pinging" every computer in the house (including the AAO).

:geek:

ADDITIONAL (one hour later) -- Incredible program. I imaged all the partitions on my older dual boot laptop (WinXP/Ubuntu) to an external drive. Then, while fooling around with the program I inadvertently started the restore process! I didn't want to stop the process and leave a trashed file system, so I just let it run for the required 12 minutes or so and sweated it out. No big deal -- both OSs work just fine after the restore. While that was going on I imaged my AAO to another external drive, but I haven't tried the restore on it yet.

Need to do my newer dual-boot laptop next, but looks like all the external drives are too small so will have to pick up a new drive first.

 

Glad to see this discussion expanding so far beyond my original contributions!

I've personally never heard of PING so I'll definitely be giving that a shot on Ubuntu machiens where I don't have fwbackups...

To address some fwbackups concerns:

Regarding ntfs: I could be wrong but I'm not entirely sure it's just a fwbackups problem. You may need the ntfs-3g driver (more advanced capabilities than the stock ntfs drivers) to get stuff going properly.

Rince77: What settings are you using when you run your backup? Where are you saving it to?

It seems to be a common problem, one I haven't been able to reproduce.. It's probably down to settings so some more information besides "it doesn't really work" would be of much help to everyone else

So yeah, if fwbacups didn't work for you, please post exactly how and what you've been trying to backup and where and let's take it from there.

 

hi all
well i'm still unable to get my aao to boot off a usb;

rbil ;
as per post viewtopic.php?f=29&t=317 ;
i did EXACTLY as stated except i didn't have a 4 gig usb so i tried a 512Mb & a 8Gb drives, obviously the 512Mb couldn't form the 3.2gig 2nd partition but the 1st partition looked ok. i booted from it (my boot order is usb, ext optical, sd internal), the aao started & showed me "MBR FA:" & stopped at that point, when i removed the key, the aao wouldn't respond to the keyboard, touching the power button caused an imediate shut down.
with the 8gig stick EXACTLY the same behaviour! (your image has the the format shown as 'W95 FAT32' which seems to be what others have had sucess with)

VVarwick;
i'm glad that you have managed to ping & that was a leap of faith with the "rm -rf *" , i'm still on trainning wheels here & don't wish to undo all the good work others have suggested (yet!) as per above the format is FAT32 (but at times i have tried the linux formats too)

jinx022;
from scratch (again) on my acer windows xp machine, with the 512Mb key inserted (showing as drive F: & 'managed & formatted' to FAT32), running the application "unetbootin-windows-282.exe" ; selecting diskimage (iso) & browsing to the folder where i select "PING-2.01.iso" as the source. the destination is USB Drive, the drive is F: & i click on the 'OK" button.

it goes through the 4 step process ending with the reboot or exit options, here i exit the application, & 'safely remove' the USB drive.
inserting the USB into the already powered up aao, thunar reports that i have a 457Mb free of a 499Mb USB, there appear to be 12 items in the directory, some show the 17 & 18 september 2008 as their creation date, ther rest show today.
slipping into 'sudo fdisk -l" i get :
/dev/sda1 & sda2 looking as they normally do; /dev/mmcblk0p1 also looks the same

/dev/sdb looks normal but the next message is

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

it shows 4 partitions with unknown ID's, partitions have different physical/logical endings and the block counts do not seem sequential

however just because i can, i exit the terminal & restart the aao

boot screen comes up & the USB flashes, the aao then ignores the USB and boots off the internal sd.

with my reading of the PING docs & since at this stage i only want a sucessful boot, the iso as downloaded should at least get the words "ISOLINUX 3.36" on to the screen, for me this is NOT happening.
please any suggestions?

tia

p.s. have also not been able to get slax, dsl, systemrescuecd to boot using unetbootin.. from a cd dsl does load but the mouse control is too course and items are selected & running by just pointing, clicking seems to be flacky

 

On a seperate note with PING I am unable to dump the image!!

I select SDA1 as the source but in the destination list I only have SDB1, 2, 3 and 4 all of which generate a mounting error

Had to crack out the faulty 2.5" drive to try and get it backing up

Is it possible to boot from the USB drive (pen drive) and backup the SDA to the same pen drive?

 

Metoo1956, when you say:

you are hitting the F12 key after hitting the on button to bring up the boot selector screen, correct? If not, you need to do so. If you are, you might need to download "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool" (google is you friend) and install it. Then use it to format your USB stick before running unetbootin. If all that fails, you might have a USB stick that just does not play well with bootup. I'm using an old 128M "freebie" USB stick some vendor gave me and it works.

neomaximus2k, sorry I can't help, I've only backup up my AAO using PING to a network share.

 

From metoo1956:

"slipping into 'sudo fdisk -l" i get :
/dev/sda1 & sda2 looking as they normally do; /dev/mmcblk0p1 also looks the same

/dev/sdb looks normal but the next message is

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

it shows 4 partitions with unknown ID's, partitions have different physical/logical endings and the block counts do not seem sequential"

Try reformatting the flash drive or a different flash thumb drive. I used UNetbootin-282 on three different thumb drives to boot PING, GParted and FreeDOS. It worked perfectly on each one. Pressing F12, I was able to boot from each drive (except once when I accidentally plugged the drive into the LAN jack). Maybe download UNetbootin again.

neomaximus2k:

"Is it possible to boot from the USB drive (pen drive) and backup the SDA to the same pen drive?"

Yes, that is why I used an 8GB USB drive. But on my aoa110 there is only sda1 (linux system), sda2 (linux swap) and sdb1 (the USB flash drive). This is using local backup, not network, in PING. So my source is sda1 and my target is sdb1.

 

very weird I get loads of sdb's but none of them will mount!

 

Hi, I noticed that the screenshots of the backup procedure doesn't exist anymore. Can you please post them again?

 

attachments have been disappearing all over the forum. I will repost the screenshots as soon as I can be certain they won't disappear again, because I wouldn't want to do it a third time

 

Hi, trying to follow this guide but the screenshots have been removed. After "Click "Add Folders", and select the following folders:" what folders should I mark for full system backup?

Thanks.

 

These ought to do it

Code:

/bin
/boot
/var
/etc
/home
/initrd
/lib
/opt
/root
/RPM
/sbin
/selinux
/usr

 

Hi all
(1 weeks holiday & not even a working phone, no net, no civilisation)
& still i can't get the image to boot
for what it is worth, i created an aspire usb recovery from the supplied recovery disk and that boots to the aspire recovery platform without a problem (no F12 required & format is Linux), the usb boot works but not with the images got from the net.

VVarwick:
i don't need to touch the F12 key as the boot order is set to use the USB first, i have tried formatting the key before use, i have used different usb pen drives by different manufactures, this defaulting to the internal happens with the 'ping' image, when i used rbil's method (& image) it did use the usb first but his image hung my aao.

jinx022:
reloading unetbootin hasn't helped either, have reformated the drives both under windows xp & via fdisk on the aao, when i write the image the partition table gets overwritten with the 4 incorrect sub entries that do not run sequentially, but thanks for the tip on GParted and FreeDOS, i'll look them up & see if they work better.

with just a data usb in the drive the system stops with the message:

"Invalid system disk"

which is exactly what i would expect so i am not doubting the hardware but i am doubting myself :cry:

 

metoo1956:

Your problem seems to be creating or recognizing a bootable flash drive. Have you tried formatting the drive first with the HP flash drive formatter? Another difference is that you are setting BIOS for USB ahead of the SSD HD. Try going back to the normal boot order and pressing F12 after POST. The flash drive should then be listed as USB HDD and select it.

Any other differences in your set up from a factory AOA110?

 

hi jinx022
grabbing an old twinmos 128MB usb key

i tried the hp format tool & changed the boot order as suggested, using Unetbootin i was finally able to get the menu up (i changed the boot order back & still the screen shows the menu) BUT

if i chose default the screen shows:
Loading /ubnkern...
a locks up, even after 10 mins nothing further happens

if i chose rescue the screen shows:
Loading /kernel...
a locks up, even after 10 mins nothing further happens


i reformatted the stick again & used the freedos iso (fdbasecd.iso) this time UNetbootin had only default, i selected it & up came the countdown timer again, it counted down the 10 seconds & reset again to 10 seconds, a dead loop.

i then got a 512MB usb key & carefully reformatted it again, this was the same one that was loaded with system rescue (with the screwed up partitions), no sure what exactly i did differently but the PING image this time booted (in options rescue & default)

i then got the 8gig usb key & carefully reformated it again, this time i ensured that it was set as bootable, (this was the one that i had rbil's image that didn't work). AND it WORKS!! (well it boots, now back to the learning curve on PING & i might even try annafil's fwbackups too; if i don't need that download i can do a 1/2 step back)
thanks to all for suggestions, it may just have been that "toggle boot flag"