OLPC Firmware q4d09/fs-save

How to make an image copy of internal storage of an XO-1.5 or XO-1.75

• determine the size of the internal storage, as shown by banner, usually 4GB,
• choose a USB flash drive, USB hard drive, or SD card that is larger than the internal storage size,

• filesystems add some overhead, so it might not be possible for a 4GB USB flash drive to hold the 4GB internal storage of an XO,
• choose ext2 or FAT filesystems for best compatibility with OpenFirmware,
• choose a filesystem that has no critical data on it already, unless you already have copies of the data,

• use the fs-save command to make the image copy, for example:

ok fs-save u:\os.img

The screen will fill with grey blocks, and these will turn red indicating progress.

The process is very slow, typically 15 minutes for 4GB to a USB HDD, or three hours over NFS over USB ethernet. Use Tiny Core Linux (XO-1.5) or olpc-rescue for a faster process.

The image can be used for diagnosis. It may be converted to .zd for use by fs-update using the zhashfs program included in olpc-os-builder.