= Archos-Ångström backup considerations = There are two areas of concern here:
- Backing up application data (e.g., from the GPE PIM applications)
- Backing up system settings and configuration
In practice, backing up on Ångström is the same as backing up on any desktop Linux system, and the same approaches can be used.
Backing up application dataI recommend very strongly using Ångström as an unprivileged user, not as root. A default user is created on installation for this purpose. An unprivileged user has access rights to write data in essentially three locations, all of which can readily be backed up onto another computer over USB:
- The user's home directory and its subdirectories
- The media area (
/mnt_data/ and its subdirectories)
- The USB share area (`/usbshare' and its subdirectories)
Backing up the media area can be done over the USB connection either within AVOS (if you've installed a dual-boot setup), or by booting into recovery mode and selecting 'Repair disk'. You don't have to repair the disk, but doing this exposes the whole media partition as a USB storage device. AVOS does the same thing, because the Archos firmware will fit entirely into memory. But Ångström cannot expose the whole partition over USB because that's where it, itself, is installed.
If you can get to the media area to back it up, then you can back up the user home directories and the USB share area. These are both stored as filesystem images at the root of the media area: home.img and usbshare.img. A straight copy of these files consistutes a full backup.
Another approach to backing up, which may be more appropriate for smaller numbers of files or for specific directories, is to copy over a WiFi connection. Ångström provides an ssh server, so when a WiFi connection is active, you can copy from a remote host using scp. For example, to copy the entire contents of /home/user to my Linux desktop machine I might do:
% scp -r user@my_archos_ip_number:~user/ my_backup_directory
rsync offers a more subtle approach to file-by-file backup. The rsync server is not installed by default, but can be added from the Ångström repositories. The advantage of rsync over scp is that it allows for the copying only of files which have changed, which can speed up the backup process considerable. scp and rsync clients exist for Windows as well as Linux, and probably for other systems as well.
Backing up system configurationThis presents the same problem in Ångström as it does in any desktop Linux system: configuration data is widely distributed. Unlike most desktop systems, however, the Ångström installation is held in specific filesystem images which can be copied over USB. The problem with this approach is that the root filesystem image is likely to be rather large, so it's a slow process.
If you wish to back up more selectively, it's probably fair to say that most configuration data is in /etc and its subdirectories. So copying this area, using scp or rsync constitutes a fairly inclusive backup.
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