eeepc Backup & then remove UnionFS
Date: 25th July, 2008 Hosted By: Michael Pope & John Coombes
This is building upon last months hacking eeepc as a request from regular MLUG attendees.
Backup before you remove the unionfs and after any major changes on a regular basis. This saves a lot of time in the future.
This backup procedure will work with any linux machine not just eeepc's. It's the most simple way to backup your system. It takes more room and you cannot move it from disk to disk unless they are totally identical but this is ok for the eeepc.
Insert your backup media (SD or USB) (make sure you have at least 2GB free on that device)
Create a directory /home/user/bin
Start kedit and paste in the following script:
echo `date` echo "Backup usually takes about 45minutes..." sudo dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -c9 > /media/MMC-SD/partition1/eeepc-backup_dd.gz echo "Finished " echo `date`
Change the /media/MMC-SD/partition1 to your USB or SD device and partition name.
Save this file in /home/user/bin/backup
Now when you start up a new terminal you should be able to run backup.
To restore you will either need a USB cdrom drive or a bootable USB stick. Refer to our first workshop linux on usb.
Now you can insert the backup media (SD or USB)
Mount that media device and type the following command.
Warning this will over ride all data on your eeepc
gunzip -c /<path to backup media>/eeepc-backup_dd.gz | dd of=/dev/hdc
Note that /dev/hdc could be different depending on what you have booted from.
Under Backtrack 3 it's /dev/hdc, under System Rescue it's /dev/sda. You can check by unpluging your backup media and typing 'df -h' and looking at the size to determine which device is your internal HD.
The wiki has heaps of information on how to remove the unionfs. If you have any questions let me know on the mailing list and I'll post the answers up here.