(2nd Jun, 2013 06:27 AM)effemmeffe Wrote:  thanks. so i have to conclude there is no safe way to backup all my sd from inside the system, the only way would be remove the sd, put it in a card reader and dd it on an external system. not very friendly...

(2nd Jun, 2013 07:05 AM)effemmeffe Wrote:  afaik XBMC Backup only does backup of XBMC configuration. If I install xbian and then I personalize it for my needs I'd like to have a copy of all the system to restore. I thought that dd'ing the whole sd would be the fastest way: in case of sd corruption I could take the sd card, put it in the card reader on my mac and dd on it the image backup. 10 minutes up and running.
am i wrong?
i'm open to learn some way to have that.

(2nd Jun, 2013 07:11 AM)rikardo1979 Wrote:  So what stopping you to do it this way? I see you trying to do it the automated way but to be honest I dont see a point to complicate the life with this. How many backups do you really need ?

(29th Jul, 2013 05:15 AM)kraleksandr Wrote:  @kas_27_es
try this:

Code:

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=first.img
dd if=/dev/sdb2 of=second.img

Then create 2 partitions on ur second SDcard (first - 34M Fat32) and

Code:

dd if=first.img of=/dev/sdb1
dd if=second.img of=/dev/sdb2

---

How exactly it doesnt work?

(29th Jul, 2013 10:50 PM)zilexa Wrote:  edit: after reading Fred's post and link I will definitely try rsync. Although creating a backup on the device I want to backup just sounds wrong to me (especially after reading mk01's comment above that post "after one run, run it one more time to copy changes from time during the copy and you are ready.")

(2nd Jun, 2013 08:07 AM)mk01 Wrote:  btw; if you are putting so much importance into the actual RPi setup / files, transform RPi to a thin-client. move the filesystem to a mirrored NAS (or similar solution) and boot the RPi directly from network. I'm using it like this, you just needs the small VFAT partition to load network and rootfs is mounted from network directly via NFS.

Quote:sudo xbian-config xbiancopy start source dest label size

where:
1- source is source partition - normally this is /dev/root (actually booted root), but can by used to copy others as well (btrfs only)
2- dest is destination partition - like /dev/sda2 etc. if "dest" is prefixed with "file:", then file will be created

not required:
3- label - by default is "xbian-copy" used
4- size - this makes sense only for destination as file. by default it is size of source partition. but sometimes you have 16gb sdcard, but 2gb used, so could be specified.

exemple:
xbian-config xbiancopy start /dev/root /dev/sda1
xbian-config xbiancopy start /dev/root file:/mnt/path/to/file.img

if file is used, btrfs-auto-snapshot script is copying also /boot and adapts /boot/cmdline.txt so direct flash of that img is possible.

(10th May, 2013 06:03 AM)captainsammitch Wrote:  Apologies if this thread is somehow an infraction against the forum procedures or out of format or in the wrong forum, but I checked the FAQ and other threads and haven't found an answer thus far. I work at a store in a modest-sized chain of computer stores and was recently handed the assignment (well, I kind of volunteered) to build a looping video kiosk for product promos, tech demos, and the like. I used the most recent release on an RPi v2 and have it configured exactly how I want it - plug it in, it boots into XBMC, shuffles the videos in a playlist and loops them continuously with no interaction needed. It's completely self-contained and everything is on the SD card.

Our store manager and I hit on the idea at the exact same time that if you could somehow clone that SD card with everything on it and ready to go, then you could have an identical kiosk in every store in the chain. Unfortunately, everything I've tried thus far to duplicate my existing installation has fallen flat. The problem is that the partition XBian is using for the root filesystem won't show up in any of the OSes to which I have access - I've tried XP, 7, 8, OSX 10.6, Mint 14 KDE, and even Paragon, DriveImageXML, and Clonezilla show that partition as unallocated space or don't pick it up at all. The only way I can add/remove videos or edit the contents of my userdata folder and subfolders is by piping in for FTP via SSH using WinSCP; I use PuTTY to config everything.

So what I'm wondering is, can I somehow clone the card on which XBian and our videos are kept so that I can pop the duplicate into another RPi and have the exact same thing happen that happens with our display unit when I come in in the morning? Or am I just going to have to do a separate install procedure on each card and manually drag-and-drop the media and any userdata and configs via the FTP program? I have a feeling the first option would be quite a bit quicker and make my manager a lot more likely to pitch this to home office. Any advice would be appreciated.