I would like to
a) take a full disk image of N900 operating system for backup,
b) run virtualized N900 on Windows or Linux, preferably with internet connectivity so that I could install software from repositories.

My intention is simply to manage the platform and clone it to several devices, something that I routinely do with PCs. Is there a simple way of doing this (= no more than two days of work)? I am aware that QEMU can emulate ARM architecture, but does that make it a reasonably full-fledged N900 hardware emulator? I do not think so.

I think N900 with Maemo 5 is a nice platform and I would like to use it for the next 5-6 years by buying a few spare devices. But setting up a device with all tricks like vpn connectivity, removing games, customization etc. takes time.

There is a N900 qemu image in Maemo/MeeGo SDKs and instructions on how to create your own image are in the wikis as well. But I don't think it can fully emulate real N900 hardware 100%, and it is extremely slow. Internet should work, though. At least it should be a starting point for your experiments. I think to improve upon that you'll need to work on qemu itself to add its missing functionality.

Thanks. I noted that usb mass storage mode seems to have direct disk access, so this resolves the imaging issue. I can take a image of VANILLA on Windows imaging software, and probably even mount the ext3 file system on it. This is effective backup/recovery method, NAND is standard anyway.

As for customization, it's probably best to buy a spare device, install software on it, copy configuration files from my phone and then image. It would be a bit difficult to sanitize my present N900 for imaging purpose.

I think if you enable R&D mode then you can even get raw access to rootfs and home partition via USB, otherwise I think it's only giving you access to MyDocs and MicroSD partitions.

BackupMenu will also allow you to create an image of your n900 filesystem

Additionally to cfh11's good advice, here is the thred http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=63975 and there is a wiki entry for the SDK http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...l_Installation

Right, the other drive is the microsd, indeed. Then this is not as easy as I hoped. I prefer the R&D approach, hope I do not need to reflash the whole NAND every time I want to enable/disable the mode. I won't need / access, /home/ partition will be sufficient. One thing that also came to my mind was resizing the partitions to give more space for installable software. You could fit practically anything there...

SDK is not really what I meant by virtual machine. I would have wanted to setup a custom Maemo with applications and settings on PC and then flash it to the device like I would do an ordinary upgrade. Even if this turned possible with some voodoo using an additional device is much easier. SDK could be useful for trying software without messing your "production environment", though.

I guess I don't really understand why you would want to do this. It seems to me that it would be easier to just SSH into the n900 and do everything that way. As long as you have BackupMenu, the chances of screwing things up in a way that can't be fixed with a quick reflash are minimal.

CFH lol I bet u are not windows user thats why you not familiar with ghosting the whole os.

That ******** what you said about internal backup is deletable post, thats not what he needs. That backup only backs up certain folders from the users home directory and settings xml files. It wont even backup the entire FAT partition.

So you cannot make maemo vm image only run things in scratchbox. Dont even try to make one just waste of time.
The way to go here is to make a tarball for the whole root filesystem when your device is set and for example when you buy a new one you just ftp the tarball to it and restore it.

You cannot make image because how would you load it on it. That internal system drive which seems to be an mmc is an integrated chip onboard you must boot a system on it first then do a restoration.

cfh11: For instance, there is three regional flavors of the rootfs. BackupMenu author does not mention which one he used to create the flashable image... And experience has taught me never to underestimate Murphy's law.