DSGW-210-F-1 How to backup firmware image?

Technical Support
1

I have followed the steps in the quick start guide:

  1. bootm2recovery.sh to restart in recovery mode => no fails but I suspect It’s booting in normal way. In fact I can still login the system again by ssh (serial port doesnt exist, so no posibility to enter by this way…)
  2. Killall dsupdateimg => the process doesn’t exists
  3. mount /dev/mmcblk2p8 /f => device to mount doesn’t exists (mmcblk2p8). The nearest named device found in dev is mmcblk0p7…and it’s already mounted (at / )
  4. dd if=/dev/mmcblk2p7 of=/f/rootfs.img bs=10M => no mmcblk2p7 nor mmcblk2p8 so I haven’t tried this and next steps …

So no way to backup firmware image

2

Just so I understand. You want to backup the current file system as an .img file correct?

3

Yes, exactly, that is.

4

Yeah, I’m currently trying to do the same but so far no luck. I’ve managed to backup the file system as a whole, but then you have to use the sdk to create a new bootable image and that has to be performed on an ubuntu vm etc etc… So I have to read the documentation (if i can find it) and try it that way… Let me know if you have any luck

5

How did you manage to backup the filesystem? is bootm2recovery.sh restarting in recovery mode in your device? can you mount /dev/mmcblk2p8? Did you need to connect by seral port? Wich steps did you follow?

In the other hand I think the img you are backing up is just the rootfs, which, I suspect, could be flashed alone, as is, with RKDevTool (Download Image tab). I think SDK is only needed if you plan to make a complete image with rootfs, bootloader, recovery part…

6

So I did the following:
I had a spare SSD lying around with a usb 2.0 port on it and I connected that to the USB port on the gateway, I then had some help from chatgpt and it made me this script which I then ran:

#!/bin/sh

# Unmount any existing mount at /mnt
sudo umount /mnt

# Ensure the target directory on the USB HDD exists
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/usb

# Remove any existing image file on the USB HDD
sudo rm -f /mnt/usb/rootfs.img

# Copy the root filesystem to a tarball directly on the USB HDD
echo "Creating tarball of the root filesystem"
sudo tar --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/dev --exclude=/run --exclude=/f --exclude=/var/log --exclude=/var/tmp --exclude=/var/cache --exclude=ds --exclude=www -cpf /mnt/usb/rootfs.tar /bin /boot /etc /home /lib /media /opt /root /sbin /srv /usr /var /www

# Verify the tarball
if [ -f /mnt/usb/rootfs.tar ]; then
  echo "Filesystem copied successfully to tarball"
else
  echo "Error: Filesystem copy to tarball failed"
  exit 1
fi

# Create a sparse image file based on the tarball size
TAR_SIZE=$(du -sk /mnt/usb/rootfs.tar | awk '{print $1}')
IMG_SIZE=$((TAR_SIZE + (TAR_SIZE / 10))) # Add 10% to the tarball size for overhead
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/usb/rootfs.img bs=1k seek=$IMG_SIZE count=0

# Format the image file as ext4
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /mnt/usb/rootfs.img

# Mount the image file
sudo mount -o loop /mnt/usb/rootfs.img /mnt

# Extract the tarball into the mounted image
echo "Extracting tarball to image file"
sudo tar -xf /mnt/usb/rootfs.tar -C /mnt

# Create necessary directories
sudo mkdir /mnt/proc
sudo mkdir /mnt/run
sudo mkdir /mnt/sys
sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
sudo chmod 777 /mnt/tmp

sudo mkdir /mnt/f
sudo mkdir /mnt/dev
sudo mkdir /mnt/dev/shm
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sys/kernel/security
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/run/lock
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/dev/pts
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sys/fs/cgroup/unified

# Unmount the image file
sudo umount /mnt

# Clean up
sudo rm /mnt/usb/rootfs.tar

echo "Backup completed successfully and stored on USB HDD."

So that netted me the full file system. However, I have not tested building an image I can flash to the gateway yet using the .img file I got so that remains to be seen.