Backup with mfsbackup was a nogo

[ou812]

I had a noisy 120gb drive with all the hacks in my HDVR2 that was working fine for the last 3 months. Got a new Maxtor 120gb hoping it would be quiter.

I pulled the noisy one out, did a mfsbackup(to a fat32 hd) and then a mfsrestore back to the Maxtor. No errors. Put it back in the tivo and it just sits at the "few more" screen. I am confused why there might be any difference between the two drives that would cause this problem.

I used: mfsbackup -f 4138 -6so /mnt/c/mybackup.mfs /dev/hdc

then

mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/c/mybackup.mfs /dev/hdc

BTW, I don't care about saved recordings.

[fixn278]

Mfsbackup/restore will not back up a complete drive. Check the Hinsdale guide for 'dd'

[captain_video]

I don't think he's asking about copying the drives. He's stuck at the "Almost there" screen. I'd try doing a fresh backup and restore to see if the problem clears up. It's not likely the drive that's causing the problem if it's a new drive, although a bad drive could certainly be the cause of hanging up during the boot process.

[ou812]

I meant to say that I just wanted to copy the working image from the noisy one to the new maxtor. I don't want to keep recordings, season passes etc. Would be nice but not necessary.

I rewrote the saved image and another working one several times to the new Maxtor with the same results. And just for kicks I wrote one of the older images to the noisy drive and it booted fine, minus 2 months worth of recordings. I then wrote the image I made today to the noisy drive and it booted fine also minus the recordings.

One thing I did notice when restoring is that the noisy drive is smaller than the maxtor by about 8-10 gb even though both are listed as 120's.

[BubbleLamp]

Originally posted by fixn278
Mfsbackup/restore will not back up a complete drive. Check the Hinsdale guide for 'dd'

You absolutely can backup a complete drive using mfstools. You just need to use the proper switches. Using dd means doing it at a lower level, meaning it will copy the bad blocks as well.

[ou812]

Well it works now thanks to some insight by bubblelamp. I searched for "mfstools switches" and i got:

genromfs -f /romfs.img -d img/
dd if=/romfs.img of=/dev/hdcXX bs=1024 count=1

posted by rpl (no idea where he got it from) I entered that in at prompt from the johnny death boot cd and got the 1 record in & 1 record out, put it back in the tivo and it works. No recordings(who cares) but all the season pass stuff and to do list was intact.

Do I know what that command did, NO
Would I like to know, YES

Thanks guys for the help!

Note: My original process was this, Back when I followed the cobelli guide, I got everything working fine. I then did a mfsbackup of that 120gb drive so incase I f'ed anything up in the future I would have something to fall back on. I did eventually mess things up and was able to mfsrestore from the image I made to the same 120gb drive several times.

I then decided to get a new Maxtor (bad choice) and just use that same image I just made onto my new hd. It restored fine but stuck at the "few seconds" screen. I then just pulled it back out, put it into the pc and did the command entry noted above, nothing else. Installed it back in the tivo and it worked. I don't claim to know what it was I did, but it did something.

So the image was fine, just when installing it onto a different hd is when that command has to be run(I think).

[fixn278]

I assumed he was talking about a hacked image which mfstools will not backup since it only backs up active partitions.

Based on his actions, I believe I was correct.

[BubbleLamp]

Originally posted by ou812
Well it works now thanks to some insight by bubblelamp. I searched for "mfstools switches" and i got:

genromfs -f /romfs.img -d img/
dd if=/romfs.img of=/dev/hdcXX bs=1024 count=1

posted by rpl (no idea where he got it from) I entered that in from the johnny death boot cd and got the 1 record in & 1 record out, put it back in the tivo and it works. No recordings but all the season pass stuff and to do list was intact.

Do I know what that command did, NO
Would I like to know, YES

Thanks guys for the help!

If you used the -a switch instead of -f, you would have gotten all your recordings too.

[NutKase]

Originally posted by BubbleLamp
If you used the -a switch instead of -f, you would have gotten all your recordings too.

Well, now I'm confused. If you can backup a monte'd hacked up tivo, ALL paritions with mfstools someone explain it.

It looks like to me he just rebuilt his romfs and put it onto the new drive since it wasn't included in the backup.

-f verses -a, can you explain what the switches do? I guess I could not be lazy --help it (if I can find my CD)

NutKase

[SR712]

MFSTools 2.0 Command Line Switches

Usage: mfstool <function> <args> or <function> <args>

Available functions:

backup: Backup TiVo drive fast and small.
restore: Restore mfstool backups to TiVo drive.
add: Add partitions to your TiVo MFS volume.
mls: List files in the MFS volume.
info: Display information about MFS volume.

For help on a particular function: mfstool <function> -h


MFSBACKUP

Usage: mfsbackup [options] Adrive [Bdrive]

Options:

-h Display this help message
-o file Output to file, - for stdout
-1 .. -9 Compress backup, quick (-1) through best (-9)
-v Do not include /var in backup
-s Shrink MFS in backup
-q Do not display progress
-qq Do not display anything but error messages
-f max Backup only fsids below max
-l max Backup only streams less than max megabytes
-t Use total length of stream instead of used length
-T Backup total length of stream instead of used length
-a Backup all streams


MFSRESTORE

Usage: mfsrestore [options] Adrive [Bdrive]

Options:

-h Display this help message
-i file Input from file, - for stdin
-p Optimize partition layout
-x Expand the backup to fill the drive(s)
-X scale Expand the backup with block size scale
-q Do not display progress
-qq Do not display anything but error messages
-v size Recreate /var as size megabytes (Only if not in backup)
-s size Recreate swap as size megabytes
-l Leave at least 2 partitions free
-b Force no byte swapping on restore
-B Force byte swapping on restore
-z Zero out partitions not backed up

MFSADD

Usage: mfsadd [options] Adrive [Bdrive] [NewApp NewMedia]

Options:

-h Display this help message
-r scale Set scale factor of media block size
-x Create partitions to fill all drives
-X drive Create partitions to fill specific drive
NewApp / NewMedia Existing partitions (Such as /dev/hda13 /dev/hda14) to add to the MFS volume set.


From the MfsTools 2.0 Readme.

[BubbleLamp]

Originally posted by NutKase
Well, now I'm confused. If you can backup a monte'd hacked up tivo, ALL paritions with mfstools someone explain it.

It looks like to me he just rebuilt his romfs and put it onto the new drive since it wasn't included in the backup.

-f verses -a, can you explain what the switches do? I guess I could not be lazy --help it (if I can find my CD)

NutKase

My apologies to all for spawning this confusion. fixn of course is right, dd will capture an entire drive, good/bad sectors and all. I was looking at it from the standpoint of trying to save an entire "working dataset", hence the -a suggestion for MFSTools. Again, my humblest apologies, I will stick to what I know, (which is preciously little.) I hang my head in shame.

[GREEK]

Is it safe to say you can mfs backup and restore on a series1 tivo just fine, but a certain modified sereis2 dtivo needs a dd command to copy ALL the mods? I have a couple hdvr2's I have to get around to sooner or later