How to back up a few files?

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Walt
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:39 am

How to back up a few files?

Post by Walt »

Well, after I took a year off from trying to use ROS to browse websites & other general home applications I come back, and Ta-DA! It WORKS. On recent nightly builds the file system is solid enough (no need to re-install in maybe 10 hours of use, always passes boot up testing even when shut down via power off button).

Firefox 30 mostly works well (later ones I tried hang before writing the screen) but sometimes gets into a loop -- Javascript mainly I think and killing it trashes its app data -- passwords, bookmarks, etc. The bypass for that is to copy the Mozilla appdata file but I haven't found a way to get a (say) 30 meg file off the disk to somewhere else.

USB? Write a CD? I can't find anything that works. Any inspirations/suggestions?

Running on Dell Lattitude D610 with usual device ... works VERY well. I could write more about how too in some more appropriate place ('Discussion'?) if there's any interest. Congrats to developers -- It's PERFECTLY USEABLE which is pretty amazing!

Backup for that darn appdata is the only real problem now -- everything else can be reinstalled pretty easily.
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binarymaster
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Joined: Sun Nov 16, 2014 7:05 pm
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Re: How to back up a few files?

Post by binarymaster »

Walt wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2019 2:01 pm USB? Write a CD? I can't find anything that works. Any inspirations/suggestions?
A separate hard disk drive partition, formatted with BTRFS.
Walt
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:39 am

Re: How to back up a few files?

Post by Walt »

Solved it!

Had an 8gb USB thumb drive made with RUFUS (bootable) with assorted tools including XCOPY. Boot from that, the ROS C: disk is at D: and via the usual DOS commands I got to my copies of the Mozilla appdata files thinking to copy them into the ample extra space on the thumb drive.

I got 'read access denied.' I'm guessing that both FF and XCOPY play by Access Control rules and I've no idea how to fix that directly.

(Can anyone tell me how to do this? Either make those files 'help yourself' to anyone who shows up or tell XCOPY 'don't worry about it'? That's really the most direct solution to the issue.)

Bypass: Installed the FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) that works with FF 30. This backs up EVERYTHING and creates a folder without access restrictions. THAT I was able to XCOPY onto the USB drive.

Using DOS-level tools you get shortened filenames that will probably have to be restored by hand if the backup is ever needed. The ROS file system may be solid enough now -- in 20+ hours I STILL haven't had a failure -- that the backup won't be needed for a crash but my impression is that upgrading ROS without reformatting the disk isn't there yet.

Overall this is an awkward, but useable approach to occasionally getting modest amounts of data out of ROS until it has USB and other media writing abilities.
Walt
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:39 am

Re: How to back up a few files?

Post by Walt »

Okay, much better solution.

The FEBE idea only works for Firefox environment stuff and turned out to be so fussy about dates and such that most such files wouldn't restore anyway. PLUS the major pain of straightening out the DOS short file names.

A much better way to move a few files off of ROS (in case of HDD crash or just to move the data) is to 7zip a folder which has everything. (In this case the appdata 'Mozilla' folder.) In doing so file permissions issues are disposed of AND the amount of data to be copied becomes smaller -- MUCH smaller in this case.

Copying the 7z file onto the bootable tools thumb drive using an xcopy thereon works fine and it extracts into what looks like the right stuff on my XP system. Still a cumbersome approach, but perfectly general and will open up some new things I can do on ROS.

I've been running ROS a few hours a day for over a week now and have had not a single file system/disk failure. The ROS system gets sick now and then but it never messes up the file structure. IMPRESSIVE!
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