Notices

This weekend I first bumped into your backupmenu application. Long story short: It worked like a charm for what I had to do; cloning one phone OS, apps and settings to another.

Couple of things that were somewhat unclear to me.

1. The phrase "hold switch" is completely new for me. So I would rather not cancel anything

2. When you choose the things you want to backup, rootfs and or /opt, it is unclear whether the amount of space needed is just for the version with compression or not. It is located right under the compression line, but for me it was unclear whether I had enough space if I chose not to use compression. It turned out really well, I had an /opt file of 1.3 Gig, but the statement was that I would need at least 2 Gig of free space on the device.

3. I decided to make my rootfs file flashable by means mentioned in post one. This also worked like a charm. Upon restoring the files, though, it was, for obvious reasons, I guess, recommended not to restore only /opt but to restore the two (rootfs and /opt) images in combination. That kind of rendered the whole image creation slightly less useful, al though I did need the initial reflash in order to have backupMenu installed.

4. I live in two countries, and own two devices, both with different keyboard layouts. I did not use the other options of backupMenu, but I could imagine it being nice if it was possible to detect differences like that and deal with them. Now I only backed up and it was easy enough to go to keyboard settings and choose the appropriate one, but for the other functionality that backupMenu has to offer, it might be less obvious how that is supposed to be done.

5. Ext4 support from the menu would be awesome to have! I missed that whole thing and only read about it after restoring the device.

Lastly: I have experimented a bit with DD myself, especially in combination with expending image size of Easy Debian and such, but after reading your comments on leaving the DD-method behind, I was wondering if you could give some pointers to the relevant threads (old method, new method), in order to learn more.

Thanks for the app! (PS. Where can I vote for this?)

Anthonie

for all i care, he might be santa claus and the easter bunny rolled into one -- but grabbing private data w/o prior information and consent is plain wrong.
the imei is a unique identifier and as such the kind of private data that's not gonna leave my realm w/o prior consent as long as i can help it (please, no useless discussion about police, providers or whatever).

as i said, i don't see that the program needs that information to function properly nor has the imei probably any use to RobbieThe1st than counting unique devices -- but just therefore i am convinced, there are more sensible ways w/o breaking user's privacy. creating a hash for example.
to make sure that the imei is unique, he has to store all imeis someweher -- which is not only potentially insecure, but, at least in large parts of europe, breaking the law!

Calm down, I totally agree. Simple one-way cryptographic cash (without feasible way of recovering back IMEI number, yet, still allowing identification of every device) would be much better solution.

That said, You can easily modify program to get rid of that function, repack it, and release "backupmenu lite" - it's Open, so no stops You from doing that, as long as you keep it licensed properly.

It's just that, up to date, no one felt need for doing that (due to trust for original creator). Which doesn't mean it wouldn't be welcome warmly - especially if - after getting rid of IMEI collector - You would contribute some actually useful code to. I'm sure that Robbie1st would happily introduce any serious code contributors mainline...

/Estel

You can always go ahead and re-write that line including, say, md5sum in it so it sends a hash of it instead and post it here.
I was just being lazy; threw together some unique id code and used it. It worked, and, until now, no one cared enough.

And yes, I really should also make a proper build with some changes, but it's just so hard to actually /do/ such when you're at your desktop for 2 days a week, and just want to play video games for an hour or two and go to bed. I'll stick my files on my N900 and see about doing it over the week...

here's a patch i meant to sent you already. it simply md5sum's the IMEI before sending -- maybe there's someone out there knowing how to do that with awk in a more sopihisticated manner, but it should work.

why do you need that unique identifier anyway? someone said you posted that a while ago, but after last nights adventures in updating i am atm tired of the sad search function of these forums.

He want to count downloads and compare this to amount people donated - to have solid base for complaining here about getting only few bucks, despite saving people's *** tens times on hundreds of devices

Seriously though, he just wanted to know number of unique downloads - AFAIK repos count each download separately (so re-installations also sums up).

/Estel

hey robbie, I installed the backupmenu app some couple of weeks back and I gotta say its a wonderful app..but I got a little issue here, My phone fell sometime yesterday and since then the keyboard slider is always detected as open..what I'm tryin to say is my device doesnt pass the boot menu.It stops at where the prompt is to backup since the keyboard is detected as open...I will be glad if you suggest how to maneuver this. Thanks in anticipation

Hello! Anyone dont mind helpin me here...?

One thing you can try is using a small magnet on the back of the device, or over the keyboard. As I recall the switch involved is magnetic. If you place it correctly on both track areas it may trigger it to think it's closed again? Worth a shot... And once it's back in normal mode, you can take backup-menu off so it will boot normally.

It would be nice to have a boot option for "reboot and ignore open slider for next X boots".

Yeah It would be really nice if it is ignored...i've tried d use of magnetic but it seems i'm pouring water on a duck...lol..just so confused..