Merging images

[snowman]

I don't know a better description for it, so I apologize for the bad topic title.

I have hacked a 4.01b image that I got, only to find out that all partitions weren't backed up, so when I view the now playing list, it has live TV in the background. So, I've got another 4.01b image which is supposed to be clean and perfect. My question is....

Can I perform the following and not have to reapply all the hacks?
With current hacked drive
dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/dev/hdc1/part6.bak
dd if=/dev/hda7 of=/dev/hdc1/part7.bak


Apply clean image to current hacked drive
dd if=/dev/hdc1/part6.bak of=/dev/hda6
dd if=/dev/hdc1/part7.bak of=/dev/hda7

check bootpage to make sure all the extras (upgradesoftware=false, etc) are there and that it's set to use /dev/hda7.

Will it boot up with all the hacks but with the background "movies" during menus and such? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

[Jamie]

... Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

wrong tree. The background animations are stored in MFS, not in the kernel or root partitions.

[snowman]

wrong tree. The background animations are stored in MFS, not in the kernel or root partitions.

I think we have a disconnect here Jamie. I'm backing up the part 6 and 7 on my hacked drive (to keep from having to rehack again), applying a DIFFERENT image which is supposed to be clean and have the background images, then putting my pre-hacked 6 and 7 pair over the 6/7 pair on the clean image, thus bringing back my hacks and kernels. Does that change your answer?

[Jamie]

I think we have a disconnect here Jamie. I'm backing up the part 6 and 7 on my hacked drive (to keep from having to rehack again), applying a DIFFERENT image which is supposed to be clean and have the background images, then putting my pre-hacked 6 and 7 pair over the 6/7 pair on the clean image, thus bringing back my hacks and kernels. Does that change your answer?

oops. Sorry. Too early in the morning. Yes, I think that would probably work in concept, as long as you don't put anything in /var. But your dd commands are all wrong. A path like "/dev/hdc1/part6.bak" makes no sense. Where are you going to store your backups? You can't leave them on the tivo as that will be overwritten by the new image. You need to get them off your tivo disks onto a PC disk somewhere. You could dd them to a netcat pipe to transfer them across the net.

I suspect you don't have to backup the full root partition though. What areas did you modify? Probably only /lib/modules, /etc/rc.d and a new "hacks" directory you created somewhere.

[snowman]

DOH... yep, too early in the morning for me too... yep, target will be a mount point...

I have patched tivoapp, so I want that, etc. My hacks are on their own partition, so I probably ought to back that up too . Thanks for confirming that the theory is correct.

[PlainBill]

Another point - you may get strange results (menus with strange headers, etc) if the two images are of different versions.

PlainBill