Stupid issue backup up a Rpi SD card.

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Talkiet

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Topic # 216714 9-Jul-2017 19:50

I need to create a backup of my working OpenHab config on a Rpi microSD card before I stuff around and upgrade everything and probably break it.

How do I do it? Please don't tell me to use one of the literally dozens of guides saying to use Win32 Disk Imager, because me card looks like this.

I found one post with someone suggesting "Roadkil's DiskImage Version 1.6" which I am using now, but that had no replies. I found a few other people with the same issue (of a multiple partition SD card) but no obvious answers.

Other options

DD (on the Pi itself) : This also seems to assume a single partition, or needing to restore only a single partition. Yeah, it might work but I want to be able to dump one image back on a card to get a working image back.

Apparently there's an SD card copier added as well ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-update-raspbian/ ) but again, it's not clear whether this will copy all partitions, or restore them...

Can anyone help me out with the easiest approach here? Will one of the options I have discarded actually do what I want without being an expert in Linux and knowing exactly how to recreate the CD card partitions of exactly the right size and type?

Cheers - N

Behodar

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Reply # 1817465 9-Jul-2017 19:59

dd can copy the entire card. I've only done it on a Mac, and Linux uses different notation for naming disks, but I think you want to leave the number off the end of the device name (eg. if /dev/sda0 is the first partition then /dev/sda is the entire disk). Don't quote me on that, but I think that's how it works under Linux.

Talkiet

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Reply # 1817466 9-Jul-2017 20:02

Yep - I was in windows at the time, and doing the slow sector backup using the windows app I listed... I have seen that there are some dd commands that will do the whole card as well... Still pretty frustrating that the Google results are so polluted with an obvious, easy solution that doesn't work for me :-)

I think my sector backup is ok, so have started typing all sorts of reckless upgrade commands :-)

I wish there was a simple how-to: that actually matched my setup.... I don't recall being stupid when I set it up so there must be others in the same state.

Cheers - N

plas

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Reply # 1817475 9-Jul-2017 20:40

I've actually just spent the last 2hrs figuring out how to use Amanda to backup my Openhabian PI install I spent all weekend rebuilding. I might have a valid backup now, but I'm not yet brave enough to test a restore.

https://github.com/openhab/openhabian/blob/master/docs/openhabian-amanda.md

Talkiet

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Reply # 1817477 9-Jul-2017 20:44

plas:

I've actually just spent the last 2hrs figuring out how to use Amanda to backup my Openhabian PI install I spent all weekend rebuilding. I might have a valid backup now, but I'm not yet brave enough to test a restore.

https://github.com/openhab/openhabian/blob/master/docs/openhabian-amanda.md

Thanks - bookmarked. I'm still on a POC install only, but will include that when I set things up properly in a couple of months!

Cheers - N

plas

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Reply # 1817479 9-Jul-2017 20:50

When you run openhabian-config there is an option to setup backups, run through that to install and configure. I just had issues because I wanted to dump to a network share and which then ran into permission issues. Looking at the log files now I can see the backups have occurred but the disk image has failed.

fe31nz

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Reply # 1817489 9-Jul-2017 21:27

I normally use Clonezilla for disk and partition backups. If you have a PC with an SD card reader, boot that from a Clonezilla image and you should be able to do a proper backup.

http://clonezilla.org

richms

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Reply # 1817491 9-Jul-2017 21:31

What happened when you tried win32diskimager on that card? I have an issue with windows 10 in that it seems to try to mount all the partitions on the card, so sometimes it will not be able to lock the drive but removing drive letters from the other partitions that are not boot in disk managment lets win32diskimager do its thing ok.

Richard rich.ms

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Reply # 1817536 9-Jul-2017 23:20

Hi.

Considering your screenshot looks like it was taken from Windows, why not try ImageUSB?

Copies the entire SD card / USB drive into file anywhere else on your PC. Backup sorted.
Need to restore, simple select single file and write to new SD card / USB drive. Plug in & reboot RPi.

ImageUSB copies bootable sectors & works very quickly, even via USB 2.

michaelmurfy

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Reply # 1817537 9-Jul-2017 23:43

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/path/to/image.img bs=1024k

Since you're dealing with a Linux EXT4 partition do the disk copy under Linux and just tar it up from there. Anything else is bound to cause you issues.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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