Making a backup

The reciva module has onboard NAND flash which is used to store the software. The flash is split into several partitions, here's the layout of my IMP box:

# cat /proc/mtd 
dev:    size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 00004000 00004000 "NAND BootAgent"
mtd1: 000fc000 00004000 "Linux Kernel"
mtd2: 00d00000 00004000 "Root"
mtd3: 00100000 00004000 "Config"
mtd4: 00100000 00004000 "Debug"
mtd5: 00000000 00004000 "Data"

A simple bacup mechanism is storing the raw contents of the block devices. I've been told that simply using cat or cp is not safe on NAND devices, but a better alternative exists: the 'nanddump' tool.

If you've got ssh running, the following is a method of creating a back of the partitions. Run these commands on another machine on the network where you want to store the backups:

$ ssh root@<address-of-the-box> "nanddump /dev/mtd/0 -" > backup/mtd0

Repeat the command for each flash partition, increasing the 0 to 5.