[HLUG] Quick Linux Question aimed at but not exclusively for - Julian

[Julian Robbins]

Thanks Richard for your excellent help for Paul. You answered it far better
than I could ;-)

Julian

On 23 April 2015 at 00:51, Richard Leszczynski <rjr.leszczynski at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Paul,
>
> Here's my simple approach to the problem. It's late and I'm tired, so
> I hope I've got this right... Other's may have more sophisticated or
> more foolproof solutions:
>
> you'll need to use the dd command to copy data to and from the SD
> card. For basic usage it reads data from an input file (if) and writes
> it to an output file (of).
>
> e.g. the following command will backup your sd card to a file called
> pi_sd_backup.img in your linux desktop computer's home directory.
>
> dd if=/dev/sdz of=/home/paul/pi_sd_backup.img
>
> where:
> - if is the device path to the sd card you want to backup. It should
> be unmounted at the time of running the command.
> - of is a path and filename of your choice for creating the backup of
> the sd card
>
> Now to copy the backup from your linux desktop computer to a new sd
> card, you should only have to swap the paths around:
>
> dd if=/home/paul/pi_sd_backup.img of=/dev/sdz
>
> where:
> - if is the path to the previously created backup of the sd card
> - of is the device path to the sd card you want write the backup to.
> It should be unmounted at the time of running the command.
>
> NB: dd has acquired the nickname of "data destroyer" as it will
> overwrite in an immediate no-questions-asked manner whatever you
> specify as the output file. There will be no insightful kind of "are
> you sure you want to overwrite your boot partiiton?" warning/question
> beforehand and there will be no "undo" option afterwards... Use 'fdisk
> -l' to discover the device path of your sd card before running any
> commands. I've deliberately used the disk sdz which is unlikely to
> exist on your system to ensure a casual bit of copy and paste doesn't
> end up annihilating anything important.
>
> Also it you have a spare card now, you might want to use it to verify
> the second command successfully copies the backup to the second sd
> card and that the pi will boot with the new card before deleting the
> contents of the first sd card, just to make sure that it's all working
> as expected.
>
> zipping the backup afterwards (or piping dd's output through gzip)
> should save a lot of space too,
>
> hope this helps,
> Richard Leszczynski
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 7:44 PM, Paul <paul at paulnjulia.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hi Julian,
> >
> > I've frequented the HLUG on a few occasions, but cant get the time to
> get up
> > there as much now.  I see you are a great linux fan, and I wondered if
> you
> > could help me with a little matter.
> >
> > I have a raspberry pi and want to set up a card which I can just copy
> onto
> > new sd cards as and when. So I download the NOOBs from pi.org (onto the
> > linux Desktop) and simply copy it to the sd card thru the command line or
> > even drag and drop onto the card from the GUI.
> >
> > After putting the card in the pi and powering it up, the pi expands the
> > NOOBs to a fully functioning OS.
> >
> > This is what I require help on, I want to put the SD card back into the
> > linux driven Desktop and copy the files from the card to a new Folder, so
> > that in future I can just put a new SD card in the sd card reader and
> copy a
> > fully operating OS, plus any other tweaks I have put onto the card onto
> the
> > new card, from either the GUI or command line.
> > One of my issues is what instruction do I type at the command line to
> copy
> > the whole card from the card to a subdirectory on the desktop and then to
> > copy from the directory to a new card in the card reader?
> >
> > Any help, guidance greatly appreciated.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Cheers,*
> > P**au**_l_*
> >
> > --
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