JFFS Usericon Copying for Backup / restore router

[pgershon]

How can I save the contents of all my /jffs/usericon? I have many symbolic links saved so I dont exceed the capacity of icons - many many of my icons are repeated. I have tried several ways but I am unable to move over the symbolic links.

I created hardlinks with ln ShellyNG.log B4B024551922.log (for example). When I do an ls of the directory, the files are shown in green and the hard links are shown in blue. But then when I try to copy, I either cannot copy the hard links or I copy the hard links as files too. Neither is preferable if I want to easily transfer the icons back to my newly reset router.

cp -r /jffs/usericon /tmp/mnt/NO_NAME fails: "cp: can't create symlink '/tmp/mnt/NO_NAME/usericon/B4B024B47AFA.log': Operation not permitted"
cp -aL /jffs/usericon /tmp/mnt/NO_NAME fails too because the hard linked files are copied and not as links. So I get too many icon for the directory when I restore.

Is there an easy way to do this?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Use symbolic links instead of hard links. You also need to copy them to a filesystem that supports symlinks, i.e. not FAT32. It would be better if you used tar to create a single archive file rather than using cp. Then you would be able to copy the archive file to any destination regardless of the filesystem type.

 

[pgershon]

Thanks very much.

I misspoke to start. The links I created are symbolic links - "ln -s ShellyNG.log B4B024551922.log". You answered my question though - I was trying and failing to move the symbolic links to a FAT32 filesystem on my USB thumb drive. I figured out how to use TAR to create an archive: "/jffs/usericon# tar -cvf /tmp/mnt/data.tar /jffs/usericon". I then moved it to the USB drive and I have a copy on my MAC for future use.

When I want to restore the archive, what is the best way to do that? Will this format work? "tar -xvf /tmp/data.tar"?

 

[ColinTaylor]

When I want to restore the archive, what is the best way to do that? Will this format work? "tar -xvf /tmp/data.tar"?

You have to be careful about the current working directory when backing up and restoring files (see the warning that was output when you ran your backup command). So I prefer to explicitly define the directory in the tar command. That makes things more obvious, and simpler if you want to restore the files to a different location.

tar -C /jffs -cvf /tmp/backup.tar usericon

tar -C /jffs -xvf /tmp/backup.tar

 

[toaruScar]

Install rsync on the router. When copying files, rsync has the ability to preserve hard links with -H flag.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Install rsync on the router. When copying files, rsync has the ability to preserve hard links with -H flag.

The problem was that he was trying to copy the files to a filesystem that doesn't support hard or soft links (FAT32). rsync won't change that.