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

[Paul]

Richard,

Thanks for your time and fairly detailed explanation. whilst I'm always 
championing the cause of newbies, basically because I am one, you have 
explained it at a level even i can understand. I will play around with 
it over the weekend and report back, assuming I dont overwrite my PC 
with the debian OS!!

And don't worry, no claims will be made against you if I'm that stupid!!

cheers
and thanks again.
Paul


> 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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