Back Up

What are the technical issues involved in a backup image of the drives? I realize the FAQ about the CSV but with Hijack being able to browse the playlists and files, what would be involved in creating an image file. Obviously the file would be enormously large and a back up to hard disk would be the only logical source. Not a big issue since if the database were damaged it would probably be the least of an owners concerns. Just curious.

Using the Hijack FTP services, you can simply copy the contents of the /drive0/fids and drive1/fids to a safe place, and that's your backup.

Anyone else agree or disagree with that? That should cover playlists and tunes completely, right? If you're forced to restore the player, you will need to do some synchs to rebuild the datbase, but that's about it.

If it's that simple, then I think I'll add that to the FAQ.

Of course, it's only useful for those with ethernet, but it's a start.

Yeah, that would do it from what i understand. You'd loose EQ settings and dimmer and that stuff, but the muzak is what's more important to most people. Or just do the smart thing and buy an 80-100 gig drive just for music on your PC, organize your songs correctly, and never worry about your empeg crashin'. =]

That of course doesn't answer the question about making an image file. You could always just do a mirror as Mark Lord touts... just do a search for Mlord and mirror.

Actually, it should be remarkably easy to transfer the image of a whole empeg drive (partition table and all) to some other machine. You would need netcat on both ends (see here ). On receiving machine:

nc -l -p 2999 | dd of=empeg_drive_0

On empeg side:

dd if=/dev/hda | nc receiving_hostname 2999

Roger & others, would this be OK?

I'd like to see if there's a simple/easy way to back up all the tunes and playlists on a windows box without needing to use linux utilities or modify the player in a complicated way. Hijack is easy enough to install, so if that's all you need, then that would be enough for a FAQ entry I think.

Of course, you were right about a massive 'prompt; mget *' ftp. I was just trying to answer a 'drive image' question.

However, I am not sure whether dummy sync is enough when restoring, or whether removal of database, fids and playlists from /etc/var is called for. I remember that once, when playing with my new unit that relegated the original one to backup status, I got no playlists in emplode, although everything was there in fids. I actually had to delete /empeg/var/playlists to resurect them. However, I think that in the extreme case of restoring the complete player dropping to shell and deleting three files is not a big deal for any user, however Linux-challenged they might be.

I'm currently in the process of tagging all my MP3s correctly. I use the basic directory structure of :

Artist\Album\Artist - Album - Track # - Title.

This allows me to create playlists for each album when I drop them into Emplode. Is there any way to restore this structure from a player? Using Hijack of the download facility in Emplode and I end up with everything in one directory basically.

On receiving machine:
nc -l -p 2999 | dd of=empeg_drive_0
On empeg side:
dd if=/dev/hda | nc receiving_hostname 2999
Roger & others, would this be OK?

It would work, but it (a) requires a filesystem on the receiving machine that can cope with gigantic files (ie. NTFS or Linux), (b) backs up the whole drive including unused space, and (c) only lets you restore to a drive of identical size.

Much better is to back up the music partition using tar, a la Roger, and only back up the fixed-size partitions (root and dynamic data) using dd. Of course, the swap partition and the spare partition needn't be backed up at all (unless you've done something funky with the spare partition).

Peter

You could use split on the end of the pipe -- instead of dd -- to chop the output up into reasonable-sized wedges. Peter's other points still stand though -- why back up the unused space?

Also, unless you've been installing stuff all over the root, there's no real need to backup the root partition, either -- you can replace it by reapplying the .upgrade file.

No need for netcat here, just use the Hijack kftpd and grab the /dev/hd* files directly with it. They're huge, but so what?

Or Backup the fids directories as previously described, and then grab the other data partitions (with EQ settings etc..) using /dev/hd*

-ml

Hmm...

Okay, here's the FAQ entry I would like to write (simplified version):

Q: "How can I backup all of my music and playlists in case my hard disk goes bad?"

A: Assuming you have a Mark2 player, you can use Ethernet, and you have the disk space on your PC, here is how to do it:

- Backup -
1) Install Hijack.
2) Fire up your FTP client.
3) Grab the entire contents of drive0/fids and drive1/fids onto your PC's hard disk.
4) Grab config.ini, too.
5) Write down your EQ presets, etc.

- Restore -
1) Replace the damaged hard disk(s) as described in drive upgrade guide.
2) Run builder utility for both disks as described in the drive upgrade guide.
3) Install the latest software onto each disk as described in the drive upgrade guide.
4) Install Hijack.
5) Set player to RW
6) Squirt the backed-up drive0/fids and drive1/fids back onto the player using your FTP client.
7) Squirt your backup of config.ini onto the player.
8) Don't forget to set player back to RO.
9) Reboot player.
10) Fire up emplode, do a synch, make sure everything is there.
11) Hand-enter the EQ presets, etc.

Will this work?

You just LOVE to squirt don't you?

gross!

Tony,

Can you fill in a few alternative methods as well. It would be good to have choices of different methods to understand what works best.

Calvin

is anybody going to try before posting? i cannot see what you have could cause any damage during the backup phase. I wouldn't want to test the restore though. if i've got time, l'll try the back up tonight.

On a related note; If you had backed up the files from a two drive player and wanted to restore them to a one drive player would you have to change all the references to drive1 in the fids to drive0?

I think you can pile all of the files into the same folder if you go from a two-drive backup to a one-drive restore. Roger?

Yep. The player doesn't care which drive a particular fid is on. Stick 'em all in the same fids directory.

Instead of step (5), use Hijack to download "/dev/hda3", which (I think) holds all of the EQ presets and other stuff.

For restoration, just send it back again to the same place.

-ml

c:\temp>ftp empeg
Connected to empeg.
220 Connected.
User (empeg:(none)):
230 Login okay.
ftp> cd /dev/hda3
431 No such directory.
ftp>

cd to /dev/ and get hda3. To restore, cd to /dev/ and put hda3. Even though it already exists, it should write the data to the drive. It's probably not worth it to explain how Unix devices work, but suffice it to say that /dev/hda3 is a device and it's an interface to the actual partition. This is like doing Ghost, but only on a single partition, without changing its size or location.

Aha!! that's good to know. Thanks guys .