In this post you will find information about how to easily clone your OS running in flash to an SD card.
There are two deb’s that are used to accomplish the cloning process.
install-tools.deb (800 Internal/External, 810 Internal)
install-tools-N810e.deb (810 External)
PREREQS
Remove any virtual memory before starting, the script will clone and automatically setup virtual memory partition for SD partition.
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N800 CLONE HOWTO
install-tools.deb is used on the N800 to clone to either internal or external cards.
On an N800, boot to flash. Insert 1 SD card, you can only have 1 SD installed durring installation of the deb. All data on this SD card will be destroyed
Insert SD card (internal or external)
Install the deb
Once deb install is complete, reboot your tablet.
If all went well, a menu will appear and you can select your new boot image.
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N810 CLONE HOWTO
INTERNAL MEMORY
install-tools.deb is used on the N810 to clone flash to internal memory. You cannot use install-tools.deb to clone external SD.
On an N810 boot to flash. REMOVE EXTERNAL SD CARD, you cannot have an SD card installed durring installation of the deb. All data on this internal memory will be destroyed
Install the deb
Once deb install is complete, reboot your tablet.
If all went well, a menu will appear and you can select your new boot image.
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EXTERNAL SD SLOT
install-tools-N810e.deb is used on the N810 to clone flash to external SD slot. You cannot use install-tools-N810e.deb to clone to internal memory. All data on this SD card will be destroyed
On an N810 boot to flash. INSERT SD CARD, All data on this SD card will be destroyed
Install the deb
Once deb install is complete, reboot your tablet.
If all went well, a menu will appear and you can select your new boot image.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
MENU WILL NOT APPEAR
boot to flash and open xterm and become root and run the following command:
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool –set-root-device ask:flash
Instead of flash, you can also set the default boot image to be mmcX
mmc2 is partition 2 on internal
mmc3 is partition 3 on internal
mmc12 is partition 2 on external
mmc13 is partition 3 on external
Your menu will not display until you set it to ask:somthing then reboot.
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MENU IS AVAILABLE, BUT BOOT TO mmcX FAILS
Often the deb will need to be installed twice. The first time you repartition the DEB, often the system will fail to reread the partition table and so cloning appears to work, but it does not. The bootmenu will appear but the boot to SD will fail. When this happens just reinstall the deb
DOWNLOADS
MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT SAVE IT TO THE SD CARD, SAVE TO DOCUMENTS AND INSTALL FROM THERE
Please review the thread on InternetTabletTalk.com for further information and other users experiences
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15 users responded in this post
Is there any speed bonus or penalty for booting from SD?
I did these numbers yesterday, its slightly faster to boot from SD. Flash is a jffs2, which is a compressed filesystem. So it takes a small cpu hit to uncompress to load.
Flash boot
Start
Thu Oct 9 17:27:49 EDT 2008
Boot (can see desktop) 36 seconds
Thu Oct 9 17:28:25 EDT 2008
Connected to AP 59 seconds
Thu Oct 9 17:28:48 EDT 2008
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SD (4GB Kingston microsd)
Start
Thu Oct 9 17:31:54 EDT 2008
Boot (can see desktop) 29 seconds
Thu Oct 9 17:32:23 EDT 2008
Connected to AP 51 seconds
Thu Oct 9 17:32:45 EDT 2008
Thanks for great instructions and software. However: What are the reasons to clone? Will it stop me from getting “out of disk space” problems after installing tons of applications? What are other possible advantages?
“/mnt/initfs cal-tool –set-root-device ask:flash” — I couldn’t find this command. /mnt/initfs is a directory.
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool –set-root-device ask:flash
You missed the chroot
@tom2 it will stop the out of disk space problem. Also it can make it nice and easy to back up your tablet once you get it all setup the way you like it.
Thanks! I got it working. But because ‘/usr/sbin’ where ‘chroot’ command is found is not in my root’s default search path (I’m using rootsh app), so I have to prefix the command with /usr/sbin. The full command becomes:
/usr/sbin/chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool –set-root-device ask:mmc2
(for partition 2 on internal memory card)
[...] The debs still works and is quick and dirty, but this works great if you want to specify some values. Debs can be found here –> http://tablethacker.com/wp/?p=151 [...]
Very interesting article, i bookmarked your blog, thanks for share
Hi Penguinbait, thanks for the awesome deb. Just thought I’d mention something I beat my head against all day today. I installed a bunch of programs on my flash that I wanted to clone, left enough free space for the process, and proceeded to try and clone, I kept getting an error and Application Manager was unhelpful, tried again in Xterm with dpkg -i and noticed I got a lot of xargs errors, well apparently the “full featured” find-utils-xargs available from one of the repos on Gronmayer’s site prevents your install scripts from working. I haven’t narrowed down the exact cause (bad symlink or whatnot) but uninstalling that package did alloow me to proceed freely and get it installed and cloned.
A question as well, could you post up on the backup/recovery method you mentioned in one of your posts on the cloning process? I ran into a case where my boot menu stopped booting to the SD and it would have been nice to have been able to recover my settings intact after a reflash/reclone. Rsync/ssh/ftp or a physical PC with cardreader the best way?
Awesome!. I have been looking all over the web to find a way to do this. Being a newbie to Linux, scripts didn´t serve me much. Your program and explanation solved my problem. No more running out of disk space for a long time. Thanks!
Hi,
Thank you very much for this useful deb. I have it working on an external 8GB card on a nokia 810.
I have a few questions, File Manager show 474.8 MB total size and 8 kB in use after OS cloning. Why is this? Is the rest in another partition? Why is it not visible in File Manager? What do I have to do?
vjktm
how to change boot order?
flash boot is default!
hi, i have a n800 with the newest diablo firmware and this wont install! it says unable to install
I like this model and very good article.
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