In Windows just download the installer from here.
In Linux open a terminal and run the following commands.
wget -O aa1blinux http://sites.google.com/site/aa1backupinstaller/1/aa1blinux
chmod 755 aa1blinux && sudo ./aa1blinuxYou can install it to FAT16/32 formatted drives/partitions in both Linux and Windows, or ext2/3 in Linux. The only selectable option is the drive letter or device node.
You can now reboot and press F12 to select the USB drive from the boot menu. The next menu will only have two options: BACKUP and RESTORE. Selecting either of them will start the fully automated backup or restoration process. There will be no further prompts or warnings.
A sufficiently large USB drive is obviously required to store the backup on. If your USB stick or external USB hard drive matches or exceeds the size of the internal solid state disk or hard drive you're set.
In most cases a smaller USB drive will also work due to the data being compressed during the backup. Not already compressed data is compressed by a factor of 2:1 on average, while free space is compressed by a factor of 100:1. Note that most of the free space may not be really empty, depending on the amount of data already written to the drive, but just not indexed in the file table. To get the increased compression ratio just overwrite all free space with zeros. There are probably a few freeware tools to do this in Windows, one of them is eraser. In Linux only a single command is required.
dd if=/dev/zero of=zero; rm -f zeroAnother benefit of zeroing the free space is an increased backup speed, especially if you only have a slow USB drive. And most of them are very slow if the write speed is not specifically advertised or mentioned anywhere. External hard drives are usually fast enough, but a 120GB or 160GB backup will take a while in any case.
A fresh system installed from the recovery image with some modifications takes up about 2-4GB of disk space, depending on the amount of actual software removed or installed. The backup fits nicely on a 2GB stick and can then be used as an updated recovery image, which avoids going through all the modifications again on every reinstall.
The backup itself is split into 1GB files and stored in the backup folder in the top directory of the USB drive. The files are automatically removed before the next backup, but you can still keep several backups if you move them to another medium or simply rename the backup folder if there's still enough space for another backup.
And despite its name suggesting otherwise AA1BACKUP is not limited to the Acer Aspire One, but will also work with all other currently available netbooks like the Asus EEE, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Samsung NC10 or Lenovo S9. There is however a limitation: it only makes a backup of the first physical drive.
As a final note a few words on the software used to realize this project. The installer is a custom version of Unetbootin and the distribution is based on Linux Live with many modifications to increase boot speed and reduce file size.
I still do have two questions:
1.) You mentioned the first physical drive would be backuped. In Linux, it has two partitions, one of them 1GB swap space. Is this space also included in the backup? That would seem a bit of a waste to me.
2.) What's with the data on a SD-Card in the AA1's storage expansion port? I guessed it will not be included in the backup, but then I saw some lines mentioning aufs on the screen when the backup started.
I like the look & feel of the backup process. The welcome screen with the two options only is comforting for new users. And when the process is running, you can see if it's doing a backup or a restore. Other solutions miss this point ;-) Still, a progress bar or ETA would be cool to add to the progress percentage.
I can only recommend this to any user. I do system backups before every major software install since I've got the black screen of death on my AA1 just 15 min. after unpacking it (!). Now, with this backup solution, free and easy to set up. even a new user who never got in touch with Linux before has no more excuse not to do regular backups.
only some little questions... in the backup, the hidden recovery/system partition of the HDD (AA1 versión XP) is included?
In this case, this backup solution will be perfect!!!
Another issue: How we can convert the HDD image in bootable DVDs?
I have only one external HDD and I can use it for the backup, of course, but I need to use it also for many differents things... so I need to save the backup in DVDs
Now,I have no time to do the backup and test your soft, but when I have some free time, this will be my next job... I´m sure it´ll work perfect!
Thanks you again!
THANKS.
You can just burn the files in the aa1 folder on a DVD and move them back to the external hard drive when you want to restore the image.
And to the last question: Do you get to the menu with the two options or does the error appear before that? Are there any files on the USB stick?
wget -O aa1blinux http://sites.google.com/site/maclesblogspotcom/aa1b/aa1blinux
The terminal say:
[user@localhost ~]$ wget -O aa1blinux http://sites.google.com/site/maclesblogspotcom/aa1b/aa1blinux
--12:11:45-- http://sites.google.com/site/maclesblogspotcom/aa1b/aa1blinux
=> `aa1blinux'
Resolviendo sites.google.com... 74.125.95.101, 74.125.95.100, 74.125.95.102, ...
Connecting to sites.google.com|74.125.95.101|:80... conectado.
Petición HTTP enviada, esperando respuesta... 503 Service Unavailable
12:11:46 ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.
Can fix this
Thanks again
I noticed the same problem when I prepared the stick for BIOS update. I had to use the HP program to make a bootable stick, the procedure described here didnt work either, I got the same error message about being unable to load the linux image.
Obviously something seems to be generally wrong. How can I fix this since I really would like to do the backup!
Very much thanks, and indeed a nice christmas gift!
Thanks so much for your great Xmas present!
All the best,
sudo yum remove syslinux mtools p7zip
sudo rm /usr/bin/ubnsylnx
sudo rm /usr/bin/ubnexlnx
sudo rm /usr/bin/7z.so
The last file may have been already removed.
I have been looking for a good backup solution for a while and was really exicited when I saw this...When I went to try it, I found that my portable USB HDD (Seagate 160GB) is not detected by the program...If I plug in my 2GB USB stick, it detects that no problem...any ideas on this one...any help much appreciated.
Happy Holidays!
Any ideas? Does it have something to do with my SSD having to partition, the main one and /boot?
The only thing that wasn't clear to me was that AA1BACKUP will only put the backup onto the disk it's running from. I installed it on a 1GB USB stick then booted that with a 120GB USB HDD plugged next to it, thinking it would write to that (or ask me which drive I wanted to write to). It wasn't until I saw no lights on the HDD and a solid light on the USB stick that I realized my misunderstanding.
First of all: thank you very much for this great site!
It's a wonderfull job you're doning here!
Today (22th dec-2008) I followed your instructions, which resulted in one file on my USB-stick: idlinux.sys
I tried to reboot from the USB-disk, but the AAO responded with:
Could not find kernel: linux.
What can I do to fix this?
Greetz
Arie
Thanks for this. I have usede it to make a backup - so far haven't had to try to restore the backup, but have already used the Backup part three times. So I have a question: does the program overwrite the already exisitng backup, if you run it again? That's what it seems to me to be doing...
Just one othetr thing: when the Backup is finished, there is a message: "Press any key to reboot" - but nothing seems to happen when I do that. Is that OK? Should I take out the USB stick?, and reboot by switching the AAO off?
As explained in the original post by Macles, Yes. the backup software overwrites the previous backup before it makes a new backup. You can save older backups by either renaming the AA1 folder on the backup-disk or move it to a safe place.
@Anonymous asking if the drive have to be FAT32.
The drive can be either FAT, FAT32 or EXT2. Linux can not write to NTFS partitions as the NTFS file system is copyrighted, closed source and Microsoft refuses to release details about it.
I had the same problem as you, the windows version of the setup program could not detect my external USB hard drive but the Linux version of the setup program worked just fine.
So here's my suggestion. Download a Linux LIVE-cd, burn and boot on it and prepare your external hard drive there. Or run the LIVE-cd through VMWare..
I have a question: I thought the back up would be saved by 1gb chunks, how come the aa1 folder is empty?
Anon,
the aa1 folder is the folder this backup software saves its backup to. Are you sure the folder is empty and the files are not just hidden?
It still doesn't work for me. When booting from USB-stick, the AAO says it could not find kernel: linux.
There's only one file on it: Idlinux.sys
I formatted the stick under FAT32, went through the download and install-procedure again, and booted.
Same result.
By sheer luck I discovered a hidden folder on the stick. Thunar doesn't show this folder (not even in advanced mode). I discovered the folder while saving a textfile on the disk with softoffice-textmaker (which has an excellent in-build file-browser!!)
The hidden folder is named: 04032GB and in that folder there are two sub-folders: boot and slax and in those two, there are a lot of other folders, with lots of files in it.
Can you tell me what went wrong and, more important: how can I fix this, so that I also can use the backup-procedure you described?
Any help would be nice!
Greetz
Arie
I just want to thank you for all the time and energy you've put into this blog. Without the suggestions, techniques, and instructions you've posted here, my experience with my AA1 would be far less happy than it's been. You're generous and community-minded, and it's inspiring. Please know that there's a huge group of us out here who are truly grateful.
Warmest holiday wishes,
Tony
Brooklyn, NY
Backed up my SSD 8gb in about 12 minutes.
No problems.
Used 20gb usb ext hd .. fat32.
Thanks gerryaspire
OK...I open a Terminal by pressing alt-F2
I type in the first line above "wget -O aa1blinux http://sites.google.com/site/aa1backupinstaller/1/aa1blinux" and hit RUN. The screen flashes.
I type in the second line above in a terminal window "chmod 755 aa1blinux && sudo ./aa1blinux" and the screeen flashes again. Nothing happens. I tried rebooting; nothing happens.
I triple checked my typing and I AM connected to the inernet.
I KNOW I'm making a noobie mistake so...can someone enlighten me?
Thanks!!!
Thanks anyway and Merry Christmas!!!
--- AA1BACKUP 1.0
--- BACKUP
Detected drives and partitions:
Drive: /dev/sda {/dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 }
Drive: /dev/sdb { /dev/sdb1 }
The specified drive is mounted or busy in some other way
Please use the -f {--force) option to ignore that
--- BACKUP FINISHED
--- PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT
This is a brand new Acer Aspire One with Windows XP and a 160gb hard disk.
i changed my OS into win xp in my acer aspire one. but i want to change it back to linux by using the recovery dvd that comes with the package. will it erase the windowsos that is installed in my laptop?
You are a genius! Thank you so much for this - I've just restored my system following an unsuccessful try out of Fedora 10. Its like going back in time - wonderful. Sarah
Thanks in advance macles.
I found the aa1 folder that macles is referring to at the slax>changes>mnt>usb. that's where i found the aa1 folder with the 1gb chunks. cheers.
I´ve been looking for a more straightforward backup solution for the AA1, and this seems to be the most simple. Unfortunately, it doesn´t work for me. When I try to create the boot disk, only one file is copied to the USB stick (ldlinux.sys) and therefore, it can´t boot. I tried redownloading the installer a couple of times, used different USB drives but nothing works.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
About the ldlinux.sys problem: If the files are indeed copied according to the progress bar but the drive is empty they are probably copied to a wrong destination. Or maybe no files are actually downloaded.
As a last resource, you can create a Virtual Machine with VirtualBox (see the tutorial on this same site) and generate the USB drive files there, if you don´t have access to a Windows machine. Or try something like BartPE. You´ll need at least a 4GB USB drive.
Hope this helps.
Cheers.
Great backup program.
Does anyone have an "nLite.ini" file they can post that is a good striped-down version of winXP for the AA1. I want to build a small version that will make the AA1 nice and sleek, but still functional.
Thanks.
Is it possible to backup to a DVD on a drive on the USB?
Thanks
When I run the command
"dd if=/dev/zero of=zero; rm -f zero"
my AA1 complains it is out of disk space before creating the output file to delete - is there any way around this? To do it in pieces?
In other news i just uploaded version 1.1 which has a few improvements. There is now a progress bar and an ETA displayed during the process, and a few statistics afterwards. I also changed the imaging software which resolves all the Windows related problems like the drive being busy or the wrong partition type being set.
The backup files are now stored in folder backup in the top directory, while the previous location was folder aa1. The images created in 1.0 are not compatible with the images created in 1.1 and vice versa, but AA1BACKUP will just fall back to the previous version if it detects an older image. The detection is not very sophisticated, it just checks for files in the old default folder.
I also made some other minor changes which will probably help with the ldlinux problem.
I'm having the ldlinux prob with my 4GB Buffalo stick - here's the output of those 2 commands.
[user@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root.old /initrd ext2 rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext2 rw,noatime 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw 0 0
none /mnt/home aufs rw,si=d5c747c0,xino=/home/user/.aufs.xino,create=mfs,dirs=/home/user=rw 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/disk vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=500,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=winnt,utf8 0 0
/dev/sdb /media/BUFFALO\0404GB vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=500,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=winnt,utf8 0 0
[user@localhost ~]$ sudo ./aa1blinux
audit_log_user_command(): Connection refused
[user@localhost ~]$ ls -l /media
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2008-12-31 13:36 BUFFALO\0404GB
drwxr-xr-x 2 user root 4096 2008-12-31 13:38 BUFFALO 4GB
drwxr-xr-x 9 user root 4096 1970-01-01 01:00 disk
One suggestion, could you consider adding a third menu option to boot to unix prompt with SSD mounted. I occasionally need to boot linux from a keydrive to fix a broken (by me) file on SSD, so if I could do this with this AA1BACKUP keydrive, I wouldn't have to keep another keydrive just for booting linux for this :-)
regarding the backup installer, after typing the command
chmod 755 aa1blinux && sudo ./aa1blinux
there is no selectable option. the "drive:" is blank.
would you know the reason behind this?
TIA
thank you very much for this helpful and informative site.
I have the following problem:
When I boot - using an 8GByte USB-Stick - the backup process start and shortly after terminates with the following error message:
--- AA!BACKUP 1.1
--- BACKUP
split: /mnt/usb/backup/aa1.000: No space left on device
--- BACKUP SIZE: 291 MB
--- BACKUP FINISHED
I got the exactly the same result with another 8GByte-USB-stick.
What would you think I am doing wrong here?
MRK
Yep, I get the progress bar for a short while and everything looks fine. Then the process stops with the error message quoted above.
Linux and windows report 7.5 GB of free space on the two 8 GB USB-Drives (different models).
I find no "backup" folder on the UBS-drive afterwards.
Regards, MRK
Regards, MRK
Here is the result:
--- AA1BACKUP 1.1
--- DEBUG START
--- #1
[3:0:0:0] disk ATA P-SSD18000 Ver2 /dev/sda/
[4:0:0:0] disk UDISK PDU01-8G 8CH2.0 0.0 /dev/sdb/
--- #2
--- #3
--- DEBUG END
The last two lines printed before the above may also be of interest:
Mounting non-root local filesystems:
mount: special device /dev/sbd1 does not exist.
Best regards,
MRK
No additional functionality that I am aware of on the USB-drives.
fdisk returns nothing.
dmesg returns:
Adding 1052248k swap on /dev/sda2. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:1052248k
usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access UDISK PDU01-8G 8CH2.0 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 15794176 512-byte hardware sectors (8087 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 15794176 512-byte hardware sectors (8087 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: unknown partition table
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
thx, MRK
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 15794176 512-byte hardware sectors (8087 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 15794176 512-byte hardware sectors (8087 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: unknown partition table
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
That's the problem. Interesting that it happens with two different models. Just create a new partition table and reformat the drive. There are probably a few dedicated Windows tools for that. You can use sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb in Linux.
If you (or the other Aspire One enthusiasts here) ever get bored with the standard linpus user interface, here's my alternative as a little "thank you" for your time and effort: aa1.karabek.org
MRK
HPUSBFW.EXE does the trick (formatting tool developed by HP).
You can find it for example here: http://www-pc.uni-regensburg.de/systemsw/tools/systools.htm
The weird partition table seems to be related to some security feature (password protected pseudo-partition) that appears to become popular.
My AA1 is currently backing up onto the USB-Drive, 50% done and 1 hour to go.
Thank you, macles. Amazing support!
Cheers,
MRK
You are great!
Version 1.1 works for me now.
Just finished the backup of my AA1-linux 120GB HD to a Dane-Elec 32GB USB-stick.
No problem at all!
Thanks very much for sharing your beautifull work with us!
Greetz and a very happy new Year!!!
Arie
is there any way to unzero the drive after running this command
dd if=/dev/zero of=zero; rm -f zero
it made a whole chunk of free space disappear
sudo du / -sch --exclude=/proc --exclude=/media --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/tmp/posixdir
Found and deleted the file "Zero". I interrupted the process before completion. I nearly overlooked it as the file size was 0 kb
Thanks for this fantastic program. Unfortunately, I get the same error as a couple of other people here:
Could not find kernel image : linux.
I'm using Linpus Lite, 8GB SSD, 8GB Kingston Data Traveller thumbdrive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I solved the problem by using the windows installer. I'd previously installed the backup program on my thumbdrive using Linux. The backup program now works!
Thanks!
I am wondering if I can play around with other OS e.g. Ubuntu or XP and simply restore to Linpus? Does the backup take care of the MBR? How does it handle a differently formated SSD e.g. Linux vs. FAT32 or even OSX formatted SSD? Can I simply run backup/restore to go back to a different OS?
As usual: THX Macles for a perfect solution
It took around 12 minutes to backup.
This is what the program told me at the end
data: 7696
throughput 10.61 MB/s
backup size 2454 MB
I used a SanDisk cruzer micro 4GB USB.
I had previously removed the U3 partition on the usb stick using the sandisk removal utility and formated it to msdos in disk utility on my mac
Many thanks for the work you have done on this and your other tips. I have followed a few and they all worked first time.
With the 8gb SSD it took about 8 minutes.
I feel more confident now of carrying out further hacks to my system.
Brilliant and again many thanks Ian
You really got me experimenting with other distro's (thx)
So now i have a new "problem' what would be a good solution for backing up and restoring those other non-linpus trials of mine?
I'm heavily involved in Linux4One (www.linux4one.it) an Ubuntu Netboox Remix distro, finally got that internal mic working in Skype.
Thanks for your hard work and sharing it!
First, I had a problem that was mentioned above with a bad 'partition index' so I downloaded the HPUSBFW.EXE file to format my 8 gig usb stick. After that, the backup is successfully run.
When I do the 'restore', it looks like everything is going fine, but about 95% into the restore, I get the following messages;
QLZ: unexpected end of source file - try the -R flag to recovery.
The backup reported 7696 MB backed up
The restore reported 7333 MB restored. 95.28% restored
Any idea on this condition??
Thx
Luca
I am still getting the "Fatal error occurred - Can't find executable chroot command" error. This occurs with an external usb hard drive but not with a usb memory stick. Thanks again.
could this be because I booted the backup utility off of an external with two partitions?
can't wait to try this backup utility :) i just upgraded my ram without breaking anything - having this work will make my day!
thanks in advance
anna
"I canNOT give you the last lines at the moment".
OK, so this is what I get:
Creating /etc/fstab
touch: union/etc/fstab: No such file or directory
Changing root directory...
Fatal error occured - Can't find executable chroot command.
--21:28:43-- http://sites.google.com/site/aa1backupinstaller/l/aa1blinux
=> `aa1blinux'
Resolving sites.google.com... 66.102.9.100, 66.102.9.101, 66.102.9.102
Connecting to sites.google.com|66.102.9.100|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
21:28:44 ERROR 404: Not Found.
If by device you mean "type" I chose USB and the directory is dev/sdb1 (no other options to choose from anyway). Unfortunately, I have deleted everything on the USB drive which is now in use for something else so I won't be able to add the output needed this time.
If someone getting the same chroot error message is reading this, I encourage you to help solving this matter by pasting the outcome of " sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb" onto here so Macles perhaps will have a look at it and crack the case. Thank you.
5 heads, 32 sectors/track, 49600 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 160 * 512 = 81920 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa46da46d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 51 49600 3963968 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 18152 145805908 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 * 18153 19457 10474380 83 Linux
Ok this is funny - fdisk tells me my second partition is a Linux partition, while I had formatted it FAT32 before using the backup installer (Gparted confirms its a fat32).... fdisk is being very funny.
anna.
Disk /dev/sdb: 160 GB, 160039272960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 18152 145805908 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 * 18153 19457 10474380 b FAT32
Still getting a chroot error, before the /etc/fstab stuff it also says it can't load any modules and asks if the download was corrupt?
I checked and I don't have anything in slax/modules (nor in slax/optional and slax/rootcopy but I assumed that was intentional).
anna.
I have been looking for another way to contact you but this seems to be the only way.
I want to spread the word about AA1BACKUP and your terrific site in the forum of www.linux4one.it in the form of an How To called backup and Restore.
In case you object to this please let me know here in this topic.
As a matter of courtesy you will be named as the source in line 1 and linked. Linked to your topic in line 2. Linked and named as the source for more info in line 3. Finally you will again be linked to in the last lines with regards to the windows version.
Regards.
Does that mean I need to use a completely empty drive and just one partition and I won't get the chroot error?
anna.
Thanks for your permission!
You can find my post here: http://www.linux4one.it/forum/index.php?topic=219.0
If there is anything not to your liking please let me know.
Regards,
woodland
-21:28:43-- http://sites.google.com/site/aa1backupinstaller/l/aa1blinux
=> `aa1blinux'
Resolving sites.google.com... 66.102.9.100, 66.102.9.101, 66.102.9.102
Connecting to sites.google.com|66.102.9.100|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
21:28:44 ERROR 404: Not Found.
Regards,
woodland
Am I right in supposing that this will work for installing the same configuration on multiple notebooks? My nephew and niece want to get their own, and just having to install stuff on one of them would certainly save time! =)
-anna.
It backs up 0.90% and then says backup failed. Press any key to reboot.
Do you know what the problem could be?
The system has been freshly restored and all I have done is remove a lot of the bloat that came pre-installed. Thanks for any help you can give. This site is very interesting.
Sometimes you need to format the USB stick on a Windows platform I have heard. Also, there might be a problem if you're backing up a full system with only a 4 gb memory stick?
This tim eI had no mounting message but after 0.95% 1090mb backup (which took 2-3 minutes) I got the error message
split: /mnt/usb/backup/aa1.000: No space left on device
BACKUP FAILED
This is an empty (apart from the AA1Backup1.1 program)
What do I do now?
Thanks for any help you can give.
T.
However, I am having a strange problem. I have 2 identical AA0 machines with Linpus+120GB HD, the HDs are the same model as indicated in the bios. bios levels are the same etc
I took a backup of my first machine, with the intention of restoring onto the second machine to save time unlocking and installing everything
Although the backup and restore work without error, and the second machine on the face of it appears to work, the wireless resume function does not function. This functions correctly on the source machine, ie with wireless enabled, closing the lid and waiting for it to suspend, followed by starting up again, the orig machine automatically connects wirelessly to the router, but the restored 2nd machine does not. If I restore to factory settings with the supplied CD via a USB stick, the wireless resume on my 2nd machine functions perfectly
I know there are hacks with regards to shutdown and startup scripts to force this functionality, but I would have thought a backup and restore would create an identical machine
Any ideas ? TIA
this is not a one time problem, it is guaranteed to fail after each suspend
I have two external Hard Disks but cannot back up to them as I cannot boot from them.
T.
I much prefer PartImage is Not Ghost (aka PING)... It is a LiveCD that you burn and then boot from. The reason I prefer PING is because it'll make a restore image of your drive (no matter the type) to any other partition (aside from the one you're making an image of)... even to USB.
The real benefit to PING is twofold: It'll copy into an image ONLY the used sectors... and it can compress.
I have the 8GB Linux AAO... I've made many, many tweaks I dare not to put myself through again if I wanted to experiment with other distros on the unit. I would say it was a good week or two I spent using how-tos on here and on the AspireOneUser.com forums before I got Linpus set up reasonably well enough to where I would be comfortable with having that if I had no other choice. The problem is... it just took a lot of work to get to that state and I do not want to repeat it. Ever.
Enter PING. While you can use other tools to make a whole 1:1 image of a partition and restore it, PING allowed me to make a 1:1 image of my partition and store it on something SMALLER than the 8GB SSD I have in my unit.
With PING I was able to set up a nice restore image, using gzip to shrink it down, using the built in feature to copy only used sectors to have the image smaller by default... and my image file is 580MB for the entire 8GB SSD, with about 2.5GB used. You could go even further, as I used gzip only because it was fast compression. You can go with no compression (but with only sectors used, which would have left me with a 2.5GB image file)...
It requires carefully reading the menu steps, but the process is rather painless. I highly recommend it above any other method.
I've restored my AAO Linpus tweaked setup about a half dozen times so far without any issues whatsoever... aside from the self inflicted ones where I managed to break an icon or two making my tweaks. ;)
http://ping.windowsdream.com/
It will image both Windows and Linux partitions. It will also allow you to burn a bootable DVD with the image on it, making for even easier restoration. I just boot the Ping LiveCD and restore from my USB thumbdrive instead. Very quick and painless.
AA1BACKUP can actually store the backup on any drive, not only the one it booted from, it's just not available to keep everything simple. I might add it as a secret option.
Nick (England)
Thanks again.
T.
Sorry to be a total idiot but can I check that if I use Eraser I should select custom overwriting method and then select pattern (00000000)?
Is there anything else I should know.
Hope you can help me back-up my hard drive, XP, etc.
Thanks, yet again.
T.
I tried to copy the files from the usb key and burn them (including hiddens) to DVD....but if I move the files back to the usb key....I have a boot error....any suggestions? or is there a way to backup directly to .iso or dvd ?
thanks!
I just wanted to ask if I will be able to use the restore function onto a larger drive. I am thinking of replacing the 8Gb SSD with a compact flash card in a zif to cf adapter, and thought that maybe I'll end up with only an 8gb partition and the rest unavailable.
I've done manual backups by booting into Puppy Linux and using dd commands, so maybe I'd have to do this.
Cheers
Mark
I've been taking backups of my AAO for a while now (especially as I have more and more software loaded and things that I need working properly configured etc.).
There are plenty of posts inicating successful restores, and looking at the backup files produced I don't have too much of a worry that the restore process will work for me either.
That said - the *one* time that you really don't want to find out the backup is broken is when you really need to use it. [I worked for a company that discovered that the backups of their unix machines were in fact simply a backup of all the filenames of the files that would have been archived if the backup was run 'properly', fortunately they got away with only losing some non critical data]
Is there any way, after doing a backup, a validation can be performed? - I mean a non-destructive one as obviously you wouldn't want to restore a bad backup onto a good machine!
Kind Regards,
Simon.
I've used plenty of your stuff in the month since I got my AA1 [Linux, 8GB SSD]with lots of good results - so many thanks. I just hope you can help with my current problem:
after fighting with Clonezilla and needing to recover to factory a few times I saw your AA1Backup article and yesterday loaded it and made 2 backups to a USB stick. Being wary [after Clonezilla] the 2nd backup was after a couple of changes to distinguish it from backup #1.
I tried to restore b/u #1 but it ended with an error message and said "image not restored". I assumed it would be back to my recovery usb - but on rebooting all appeared fine! Then the problem - following a restart [I was going to restore b/u #2] the system is dead [power light comes on,black screen, unit hums a bit - but [xyzzy] "nothing happens"].
I've arranged a collection for a hardware repair under warranty but I'm concerned that if it turns out to be Software related they'll charge me [heavily in proportion to the AA1's cost].
It seems there's no hardware reset, so do you have any suggestions or views on whether the failed restore could have caused the inability to get to any form of boot screen?
Thanks again, keep up the good work, Mike.
You are quite right: you don't have a backup until you've done a successful restore trial.
Regarding validation, I guess you mean reversing the backup process and comparing it against the source data without overwriting. I think Norton Ghost does that, but you really wouldn't want to use Ghost -- it's a pig. I did my first successful backup of my AA1 using Acronis last night :)
Acronis has a "verify" function, but I'm not sure what it does. The manual says: "you can choose to check the backup data integrity; verification will be performed immediately after the archive is created", but it doesn't say what this involves. If I do a verify, it happens so quickly I suspect it might only be checking the intergity of the image file, instead of comparing it back against the source data. Who knows?
Anyway, the only way to ensure you have good backups is to occasionaly do restores for real. Better to pick your moment to bite the bullet than find out for real when you most need it. I guess the best time to try this is whilst your AA1 is all shiny and new and doesn't have irreplacable data on it.
I remember trying out the "sleep" button on a new laptop once. I'd just unpacked it, was all excited about this new toy and had used it for a total of 10 minutes, exhilarated. My first PC! I'd ordered it with extra memory. Because the OEM hadn't resized the sleep partition for larger memory, that single key press bricked it. There began my total noob's crash course in reinstalling Windows on a hard drive that Windows could not see. No Windows rescue diskette either. Didn't know what a Windows rescue diskette was. Ouch.
Anyway, the Acronis image of my AA1 was disappointingly large (3GB), but I didn't use the highest compression level. I'm going to try zeroing the free space and repeating the backup at highest compression to see what difference that makes. After that, I'm going to do a restore test, just for the heck of it.
Acronis 10 (and presumably later versions) will install itself onto your USB stick for you from Windows, which is nice. That would have worked too, had it marked the partition as bootable. I had to do that by setting the boot flag using gparted in Linux.
I previously used Ghost for all my Windows backups, but tried Acronis one day and never looked back. As Acronis itself is Linux-based, you'd think it would do a better job of backing up Linux than Windows, but with the AA1 that doesn't seem to be the case. I'll report back if I manage a significant improvement on my first attempt.
Dave J
Here's something to ponder: is there a safe way to zero-fill the unused portions of the Linux swap space before doing a backup?
Dave J
If you're using the latest version you'll also get a specific error message when restoring the image fails. I'll add a verifying function to the secret menu which will also allow for a few more advanced options.
I zeroed out the free space using Macles' super command (dd if=/dev/zero of=zero; rm -f zero) and it took about an hour to blank my mostly empty 160GB disk. Not sure exactly how long it took, as the AA1 went to sleep part way through. I kicked it off and blanked the screen. When I returned some time later, all disk activity had stopped. I pressed a key and the disk started again, but the screen remained blank. After a minute or so, the screen lit up, showing the command still running. It finished eventually. I guess there's a power save option I need to turn off somewhere -- I haven't looked into that yet.
So, I repeated the Acronis backup and this time noticed the total space used on the disk before the backup was 4.9GB, so my previous backup at normal compression into 3.4GB wasn't too bad after all. This time, the backup took longer, as one might expect -- about a couple of hours. The result: a 1.3GB image of the AA1. That's fantastic. The difference between normal and maximum compression isn't all that great space-wise, so it seems well worth blanking out the free space before doing backups -- with Acronis too.
Now if I could just blank out the swap space too...
Then, the not so good bit:
After rebooting to check file sizes, I decided to delete my first 3.4GB image file from the external disk. Linpus said "oh, no you don't" and proceeded to copy all 3.4GB of unwanted data from my external drive, over USB to my internal drive and into... ... the trash can. Thanks. All those lovely zeros now non-zero again. Trash non-zeros.
In the Ubuntu file browser, when you edit Preferences, on the "Behaviour" tab, there's a Delete command option that bypasses the wastebasket. With the AA1 file browser it isn't there. Is there a way to configure the AA1 file browser to do real deletes? Or do I have to remember to use rm?
Dave J
Winfried
I have today upgraded my memory and installed a 60gb 1.8" hard drive to my AAO.
I backed up my 8gb ssd using the above instructions,
I managed to restore to the hard drive and it boots successfully and the system knows the hard disc size is 60gb but looking in file manager the partition is only 6.4gb.
I tried to open disk management under the system menu and a pop up error message under the heading User mount tool says that "there are no file systems which you are allowed to mount or unmount, contact your administrator".
I'm new to all this Linux stuff but I have been getting places with help from this forum. I have done a search for disk management and user mount tool but no entries in the forum.
Any advice greatfully received.
I've written a script to prepare your AA1 for backup. It uses Macles' command to zero-fill the free disk space and a few other things besides. The main purpose in writing it was to also zero-fill the Linux swap partition, making disk backups as compact as possible.
I've tested it with Aconis, which is what I use for backup. After I've run this script, Acronis can compress the 1GB Linux swap partition into a mere 6.2K. With Acronis, this doesn't make as much difference as had I hoped, because it seems Acronis already interprets the Linux swap partition structure and only backs up the data it needs to. In my case, the difference between zero-filling only the disk free space and also zero-filling the swap partition is 1.36GB compared to 1.34GB. Still worth doing, but no big deal. However, for those using AA1BACKUP, it could make a bigger difference. I'm posting the script here for anyone brave enough to give try it.
The script also clears out the Firefox browser cache, and after zero-filling the free disk space, shuts down the system ready for backup. Before running, it checks you aren't using the Linux swap partition, so to guarantee success you should shut down all other applications. Ideally, boot or reboot your AA1 and run the script without starting any other applications (including Firefox).
If you try it out, please post the results of using the script compared to only zero-filling the free disk space.
Here are the instructions for how to set up the script:
Press Alt-F2 and in the box, type "mousepad" without quotes. Clear the "run in terminal" box and click the "Run" button.
Copy and paste the script listed below into mousepad using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. Make sure you copy the whole script and nothing but the script. Save it as the file BackupPreparation.sh in the /home/user directory (your home directory).
Quit mousepad and start a terminal session using Alt-F2 again. Clear the command box and tick the "run in terminal" box. When you have a terminal session, type:
chmod 744 BackupPreparation.sh
That command makes the script executable. Now is the time to reboot and run the script without starting any applications, including your browser, so write down the following command. It needs to be done in a terminal session, as before:
./BackupPreparation.sh
Note the dot and slash. It won't start without them.
When the script has finished, it will shut down your AA1 ready for you to install your USB stick for backup. Do your backup in the usual way. You will need to run the script every time you do a backup, but don't try it with your first backup; make sure you already have a good backup first.
Dave J
Here's the script. The lines with a hash at the start are comments. Include these.
#
# This script (1) clears the Firefox browser cache, (2) zero-fills the
# Linux swap partition (assuming there is only one), (3) zero-fills all
# unused disk space, and (4) shuts down the system in preparation for
# backup. Before invoking this script, reboot the system and don't
# start any applications. Use it at your own risk. Risk it by typing:
#
# ./BackupPreparation.sh
#
# Version: 1.000; Dave J; 2009-01-24
#
# CAUTION: Distos that identify the Linux swap by UUID (eg: Ubuntu) will
# mess up with this script. Intended for AA1 Linpus only, as published.
#
set -- `swapon -s|tail -n 1`; SwPart=$1
if (($2!='partition')); then echo "Aborted: swap type is not 'partition'; try swapon -s"; exit 1; fi
if (($4!='0')); then echo "Aborted: swap space in use; try swapon -s"; exit 1; fi
echo "Swap space usage OK. This script will shut down the system when finished."
sudo echo "Don't interrupt this script. It takes a while to run and will mess up"
echo "your system if you do. Clearing the Firefox web browser cache..."
rm -f /home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/Cache/*
#
echo "Zero-filling the swap partition $SwPart (ignore dd error message)..."
swapon -s; sudo swapoff -a; sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=$SwPart
sudo mkswap $SwPart; sudo swapon -a; swapon -s
#
echo "Zero-filling all free disk space (be patient; ignore dd error message)..."
dd if=/dev/zero of=ManyZeros.tmp; rm -fv ManyZeros.tmp
#
echo "Shutting down the system in preparation for backup..."
sleep 10s; sudo init 0
I am asking myself a question :
I brough a AAO 150 with a 120GB HD in China (I live in China), so of course the windows is in chinese... I would like to have it in english without buying again a licence. So I thinks about this recovery partition because it has Windows but also the driver for the AA0.
I have ubuntu 8.04 on dual boot so I can access the /dev/sda1 (recovery) partition.
Actually fdisk -l /dev/sda give me :
/dev/sda1 :
- start = 1
- end = 764
- blocks = 6136798+
- id = 12
- system = Compaq Diagnostics
Do you think that if I use a raw partition extracted from a english AAO 150 directly on my recovery partition (by dd of course), it can works ?
Thanks,
Georges
First, do a full-disk backup of your AA1. Once you have that and you've done a restore test to prove it works, then you can try out what you suggest and if it doesn't work, it's easy enough to restore your disk to its previous state.
Dave J
thanks for your advise, I have already done the backup with this great util from macles*.
I must find an image of a english recovery partition. Maybe somebody here can help me to provide it ;)
I have found this url : https://secure3.tx.acer.com/RCD/Main.aspx
But it says my S/N is not valid !!! I don't know why...
Georges
Does the backup format an attached usb hard drive, I have about 60gb on there I would like to keep....??
Sounds great but how do you get to save the backup to a different disk to the boot one? You mentioned a secret mode? Any clues hoe to activate it?
Thanks.
I'd just like to add my thanks and appreciation to you for developing this tool. Managed to drop my AAO earlier this week and damage the hinge so a proper backup was preying on my mind. This should be exactly the solution I need.
Cheers
RichB
First of all, thank you for your fantastic website.
I'm currently having trouble creating the bootable USB drive. I followed your instructions but I noticed that the application had some issues with the Google web server. From time to time, during the download step, a URL containing the words "error too many redirections" appears and the download counter remains all time long on "0 Byte" downloaded. After a long time, the procedure ends. When I reboot and choose the USB drive, there's an error "Could not find kernel image: linux". This seems to confirm a problem related to file download. What should I do?
Regards,
zaao1
I tried again today and it's working. Thanks!
Regards,
zaao1
I managed to successfully download the backup utility to a formatted 4G usb pen drive. When I tried to backup I unfortunately ran out of space on the pen drive (doh!)
I understand "dd if=/dev/zero of=zero; rm -f zero" will compress the file, but being a newbie how do I use this command?! Do I open a terminal & do this first then open a terminal again to run the backup downloader? Do I need to purchase a larger USB pen drive? I have an external Seagate hard drive (360G), but noticed when trying to transfer photo's from this to the AA1 it wasn't compatible-is there any way to perhaps use this instead?
Hope someone can help, I'm desperate to get my head round this Linux stuff!
Cheers in advance,
JtA
mike46
What is a recommended method for backing up and restoring the entire "virtual SSD" space (24GB in my case)? Could this be done to an external USB hard drive?
Steve S
Steve S
This may not be the right forum, but it was the only one to throw up my problem. My Aspire One running linux won't see any USB or extra SD Card memory. I get this message "There are no filesystems which you are allowed to mount or unmount.
Contact your administrator."
Is there any way to solve this problem?
Thanks
Simon
--- ERROR
qlz: CRC error -- try the -R flag to recover
51102+668 records in
51102+668 records out
1685454848 bytes (1.7 GB) copied, 145.884 s, 11.6 MB/S
--- IMAGE NOT RESTORED
--- PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT
So, how would I go about using the "-R" option since this process is so nicely simplified? Any other suggestions?
TIA, John
I have the Aspire 1 160GB with Windows XP Preinstalled.
I received NO reinstallation media for when that timescomes around when the HDD physically dies and loses the hidden partition with the Acer Recovery stuff on it.
How can I backup my computer.
I have tried the program on my USB Stick 4GB, but it only gets to 2% before the 4GB is used up.
What size media is required to complete a backup for my situation.
Has anyone successfully backup'd a 160GB Windows XP installation?
any ideas please?
I have an acer aspire one 120Gb running windows xp
I was having the exact same issue as many here and it appears that the solution is fairly simple-->the aspire has to have a working internet connection since it connects to google to retrieve the linux kernel iso..
I hope this saves some people the shrink money since it had me climbing up the walls till I figured it out :)
-Nikos
-Nikos
At first sorry for my bad English.
Thanks for great program.
And now my question:
I need restore from other device that it is not bootable.
Can I restore backup using (another live) Linux distribution with some script (dd or someting like that)....
Or is other way to do that?
Thanks for quick answer
Before doing a backup yesterday, I zeroed the free space per the instructions. That operation froze up and I finally had to reboot. From that point forward, I have been unable to get aa1backup to run; it appeared to be related to improper formatting of the several USB drives I tried using, all of which had worked before this.
So here's where I am and need some help:
I ended up building a restore USB drive using the Restore DVD and loaded my AAO to its original state. Now I wanted to reload one of my good incremental backups, or at least confirm that AA1backup is now working.
I reloaded aa1backup and tried backing up to a now-empty 4GB drive that had at one time worked, and that I had reformatted to FAT32 using HPUSBFW.exe. F12 at boot allows me to select the USB drive, but I get the message "Disk Error - Press Any Key to Restart" for any USB key I use. Except for the Recovery USB key, which gives me a "No bootable partition in table" error.
I also tried a nearly-new never-used-with-aa1backup USB drive and got the Disk Error message.
Originally I thought I had a USB flash drive problem, maybe I still do, but with so many different drives that I have tried? Is there a better way to reformat a USB key other than HPUSBFW?
Need some help in moving forward... I'd hate to have to reinstall everything, especially without aa1backup working so that I can save my progress.
Steve S
Steve S
on having an Internet connection to do the setup (i.e.
have the two downloads and the installer in one place,
so the installer looks there to get its stuff instead
of the Internet)? I guess the purpose of the download
stage is to enable upgrades to be invisibly slipped
into place, but the need for an Internet connection
seriously limits its applicability in circumstances
where a reinstall could be needed but an Internet
connection is unlikely to be available (such as a
volunteer enviro project I'm helping ruggedize
some data collection and processing systems for,
who will be schlepping an AA1 or similar off into
the middle of nowhwere for a few months next summer). ??
I backed up with no problem and after used the tutorial on dvd recovery so I was able to get to the 1.0.15.e instead of the 1.0.5 or 0.4 that shipped with my aa1.
No problems on neither of the procedures (to and from a 2gb usb drive), everything went smoothly... except for the "human factor" which made me forgot to manually backup one important folder (even though I took the precaution to backup to another linux system using nfs... but I forgot that folder)... so the question for anyone that might know the answer:
Is it possible to extract or read some files inside the aa1.000 or aa1.001 (my backup is using 1.4 gb more ore less so only 000 and 001) without restoring the whole system? In what format are they compressed, would it be possible to uncompress them? (I've tried with no luck extracting as several formats)
Thanks in advance
Mguel
And about the compression format used. You can get the files for Windows or Linux from here, but you must use the exact same version, which is 0.22 BETA, to extract it. You also need to join the files first. I may update to a newer version with slightly increased compression ratio and speed, but it will break backwards compatibility.
By the way as I'm more or less new to linux I was curious of the process you described me to decompress the files so I tried to do it by:
1) downloaded the 0.22 linux version, uncompressed the tar.gz and make sure it was executable
2) joined the 000 and 001 files by:
$ cat aa1* > aao.qp02
3) extracted using the qpress:
$ ./qpress -dv aao.qp02 ./extracted/
And I ended with a single 7,5 GB file... so I believe I uncompressed it successfully but to a single file!... lol
Is it a drive image? can I get to the file level? or did I do something wrong?
Cheers,
Mguel
> alreay included in the installer or will just look for the files locally
> first.
Great, and thanks for the answer! (All seconded :-)
In general, I think the monolithic solution is preferable as it's the most robust down-the-line when folks want to retrieve long-stored backups and the world has moved on to the Acer Aspire One (Thousand). It also addresses
> I may update to a newer version with slightly increased compression ratio
> and speed, but it will break backwards compatibility.
Update qpress as required and just keep any previous version online (maybe making it available from Day 1 for those anticipating long-term archiving)?
Less pessimistically than assuming a compression upgrade will break things:
> It's a dd image of the drive.
I haven't checked any of the following suggestions against the code of Unetbootin, qpress, Linux Live script, BUT: can you separately record the MBR during backup, and grab and examine it on restoration? (Or initially limit the stream to half a kilobyte or so in order to examine it at offset
0x1fe and 0x1ff) AND incorporate each revision of qpress that you use. If so, then modify the MBR signature during backup and check (then fix it) on restoration, calling the appropriate qpress revision accordingly: if it's 0xAA55 then use qpress version 0.22b, if it's something else (that you have written in to specify your versioning) then use whatever qpress version is appropriate, putting the standard signature back when writing it to the disk. Of course that would then break/complicate the simplicity of the loopback recovery process for people not using your routine to do the restoration. Anyway....
I just got an aa1 a few days ago, first time I'm ever using Linux of any flavour (though I have been using OS X for years, so it doesn't appear totally alien to me) and last night I downloaded your script here and set up an external USB drive (120 gig Maxtor).
First backup seemed to go just fine, and although I have a (rare) instinctive faith in your knowledge and the likely quality of your coding, I figured with the variables involved - mostly the ext. disk, formatted to FAT32 on a Mac - it was best to test the restore side of things.
Better a controlled failure/disaster than an unexpected one, no?
So I just booted from the USB, asked it to restore over a perfectly happy and unsuspecting setup, crossed my fingers, grabbed a coffee, and watched and waited for ten minutes whilst your script hopefully did it's thing.
Result: a *perfect* restore.
So many, many, thanks for this. Not only have you made available something to save people's setups but you have also, as you probably realise, truly set them free to learn, play, explore and get right into Linux and the machine.
Huge kudos to you for that.
All the best,
Rob.
John posted on 16.February his failure of restore
--- ERROR
qlz: CRC error -- try the -R flag to recover
I got the same error, but earlier - my restore took only 4 seconds untill it stopped. How can it be fixed ? There is no option/possibility to set a flag -R.
I updated to BIOS 3.309, but i don't believe that's the cause.
Greetings from germany
David
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