Image Recovery (AIRcable (c))

Image Recovery

Contents

1 Introduction
2 Disclaimer
3 Getting Ready
4 Unix Systems (Linux, *BSD, Mac, etc.)
5 Windows Systems
1. 5.1 Windows Vista
2. 5.2 Windows XP, 2003, 2k, ME, 98, etc.

Introduction

In this guide you will learn how to recover or do a mayor update of your Compact Flash Card (CF from now on). To the factory settings when something badly has happened.

For this guide to work you will need an external CF card reader/writer, you can't use the one that comes into the ebox.

We provide instructions for both Unix Systems (Linux, *BSD, Mac, etc.) and Windows Systems, but if you use any other system, and want to tell us how you did it, don't hesitate to get in touch at our Google Group.

Disclaimer

This process will remove all the data from the CF, so make a back up of your data first. Also take precaution before pressing enter. Read over and over the instructions, one typo and you can breake your system files. You do this procedure on your own, under your own risk. Don't hesitate into asking if you have questions.

Getting Ready

For this procedure to be done you will need:

A CF card (1GB or bigger, some customers might got an smaller one with the first shipment of the Server XR, if this is your case please contact us and we provide you with a 512MB image)
A CF card reader / writer, there are lots of USB devices for this, most are Windows, Linux and Mac compatible.
DD image from the File System, available at http://kwort.aircable.net/ latest image when we wrote this was Kwort 2.4.
Gunzip or any application that allows you to decompress .gz files.

Unix Systems (Linux, *BSD, Mac, etc.)

On Unix Systems like Linux for example, each device is represented with a device node. In our case we need to identify which nodes represents the CF card, you need the hole CF node, not the partition one (sdX where X is a letter, not sdXN where XN is a letter followed by a number). If you don't know which node represents your CF reader you can follow this procedure:

With CF unplugged run dmesg | tail -n 20

Plug CF and run dmesg | tail -n 20 again.

Check for new messages from the kernel telling where the CF was attached to. In Linux it will be called sdX where X is a letter.

Uncompress the dd image with gunzip, for example you can do gunzip <IMAGE.dd.GZ> where <IMAGE.dd.GZ> is the file you downloaded from our web site.

So everything is ready, time to copy the image, this is as easy as doing:

dd if=<IMAGE.DD> of=/dev/sdX

Where:

<IMAGE.DD>: is the file you got after uncompressing the gz image.
sdX: is the node that represents the CF in your system.

BE CAREFUL! If you don't use the right device you will break your file system. Make sure the CF card is not mounted in the system, or the writing will fail, and you will have to do it again. Just do: umount /dev/sdX. To be sure.

dd will take some time to do it's work, it's a QUITE long process like 5 minutes or so, and there's no output from the tool, so just wait, drink something, read the news paper, play with the dog, what ever you can think of doing to pass the time.

Once dd has ended it's recommended that you check the file system, you do this by doing: fsck.ext3 /dev/sdX1 (The one at the end is not a typo, you need to access the first partition from the CF).

Well that's all, now you can plug the CF back to your ServerXR and play with it again.

Windows Systems

Windows Vista

If you are using Windows Vista, then you can't use this procedure, you will need to get a Live CD linux like Mandriva One 2008.1 and follow the Linux procedure.

Windows XP, 2003, 2k, ME, 98, etc.

If you are using a Windows version previous to Vista then you can use the Windows version of dd.

You can get it from: http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.5.zip

Documentation for the application can be find in: http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Make a folder under c: call it something like ServerXR, download dd to it, and uncompress the zip file in there. Also download the ServerXR dd image into there and uncompress there too, you can use a tool like WinRAR for this.

You will need to use the shell (sorry there's no other way by now). You press in Start, then in run, write cmd and press enter. Now write:

cd c:\ServerXR (or what ever you called the folder)

You should now be able to run dd, write dd press enter and see if you don't get any error. If you do then check the path for the folder.

Ok so everything is done, first step is finding out which is the entry point for your CF reader, unplug the CF reader, any usb pendrive, and any usb harddrive you might have coonected, now run:

dd --list --filter=removable

This will make dd only work on removable media, this means your disks will some how be more secured than if you don't use this function. The result from running this should be clean if you followed the instructions. Now plug the CF and and run dd --list --filter=removable again. And check the differences. You should get something like:

\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0

link to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DR17

Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512

size is 1014644736 bytes

In this case our target is \\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 Partition0 means hole disk. Make sure you get the right target, you can harm your file system if you aren't careful. Ok so now we are ready for doing the magic. Do:

dd if=AIRcableXRserverCF-2.4.dd of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 --filter=removable --progress

Now you just need to wait until it finishes, then plug it to the ebox and that's it. Enjoy your recovered CF.

AIRcable (c)

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