[arm-allstar] Imagebackup.sh throwing io errors

[Doug Crompton]

Terry,

 The image backup routine is dated and I am going to suggest be removed
from the distribution. It is never a good idea to backup a running mounted
Linux image. Although it should work I would not depend on it. Backups need
to be depended on and unless you actually burn an image from a backup and
try it you will never know if it is actually working. Since to try it you
have to actually remove the existing card and put the new one in you mine
as well just remove the existing card and copy it.

With hamvoip's update system backup in most cases is really not necessary
to backup especially for the average user who makes few changes after
setup. With a burned virgin image you could be back up and running in less
than 5 minutes of setup. It is actually better to just keep notes on
anything you changed. You could also backup just the things that have
changed which is what the usb-backup.sh and usb-restore.sh are for. Those
routines are also dated but do work. Possibly other files/directories could
be added to this backup.

Another problem with backing up is that at some point the cards can become
corrupted but not to the point of not working. When you copy the card you
are copying these problems forward. To give you an example of this here is
a server I use for testing and as you can see the card has errors but it
runs fine. These could only be fixed if you ran the card unmounted in
another Linux system.

[root at Pi3-test supermon]# e2fsck -n /dev/mmcblk0p2
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
Warning!  /dev/mmcblk0p2 is mounted.
Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem
check.
/dev/mmcblk0p2 has been mounted 88 times without being checked, check
forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Deleted inode 46893 has zero dtime.  Fix? no

Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Block bitmap differences:  -(34818--34819) -(110208--110223)
-(645210--645219) -645432
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong (355996, counted=353507).
Fix? no

Inode bitmap differences:  -46893 -47109 -62779 -66005
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong (149499, counted=149151).
Fix? no

/dev/mmcblk0p2: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

/dev/mmcblk0p2: 93861/243360 files (0.2% non-contiguous), 616186/972182
blocks

And here is what a clena card should look like -

e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
Warning!  /dev/mmcblk0p2 is mounted.
Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem
check.
/dev/mmcblk0p2: clean, 75878/243360 files, 421364/972182 blocks

If I backed up the first card I would just be moving the problems forward!


*73 Doug*

*WA3DSP*

*http://www.crompton.com/hamradio <http://www.crompton.com/hamradio>*








On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 3:26 AM, "Terry Bethlehem via arm-allstar" <
arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> wrote:

> I checked the backup flash drive for errors. Zero. I checked the microsdhc
> card, in linux unmounted, for errors with a gui fdsk prog. Ms dos partition
> had red exclamation point with gparted. Neither partition had errors after
> scan and autofix of ext4 and dos partitions after scan. Basically nothing
> was fixed. I'm using 4gb on a 32gb sandisk evo card. It's still throwing
> errors on image backup. I'm ignoring them for now. I have screen shots of
> the backup. Do I need to worry about corrupted install? I do image backups
> after I do an update when new software is available.
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