Save the entire file system of an embedded system

Jul 06, 2009 3 Replies

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Bogdan 17 years ago

I have been asked to backup the entire file system residing on a flash memory of an embedded system. How this can be done when using as host a PC running linux (the target also runs linux) ? The file system type is jffs2. I am interested also in reverting the process, that is from the obtained binary image to install the file system on the flash. It could be possible to install the obtained image on a virtual machine (for ARM processors) in order to further test the operating system and the associated software?

thanks Bogdan Cristea INCS & ESECO Systems Lunel, France

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Juergen Beisert 17 years ago

mtd-utils.

formatting link

jbe

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David Brown 17 years ago

On the target system, mount a nfs share from the host PC to a local directory. Use something like:

dd if=/dev/mtdblock1 of=/tmp/nfsshare/block1 bs=4096

to make a host copy of the partition. You can copy partitions or the entire mtd device like this.

On the host PC, you can then mount the jffs2 partition locally using a loopback device.

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Dirk Zabel 16 years ago

And it's also possible, to copy this file to an erased(!) flash partition on another device with dd.

This, unfortunately, is not true. You can't do this with jffs2, because the device which contains the jffs2 imaga has to be a real flash device. The loopback device does not suffice.

Regards Dirk

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