The more experienced members may find this too simple, but I know that I myself would have appreciated finding this out when I was a noobie to the C860, so ......
1) You know to make NAND backups, I assume. There will very likely come a time when you wish that you could look inside an NAND to work with the contents. This can be done directly in several ways, none of them simple or easy, but, with a little advanced planning, it becomes trivial.
You will need space on a CF or SD card. How much exactly depends on your system. Should not be more than the size of an NAND, I think.
Immediately before or after you make an NAND, boot your C860 with D+B to the command line (root without password). Be sure the C860 is on AC power, of course. Make sure that you have some time because the TAR takes a while. Then:
mkdir /mnt/02
mkdir /mnt/03
mount /dev/mtdblock2 /mnt/02
mount /dev/mtdblock3 /mnt/03
tar cvf /mnt/cf/my-root.tar /mnt/02/*
tar cvf /mnt/cf/my-home.tar /mnt/03/*
You can, obviously, substitute SD for CF in the last 2 lines if using the SD card. Remember that TAR archives are not compressed, so you can save space by using AR or GZ or BZ2 or ZIP and so forth on the TAR balls.
I store all 3 files, the NAND and the 2 TAR balls, compressed with a text file about when they were created & what system details are relevant. I use a file name system based on YEAR-MONTH-DATE-TIME for the final file (2005-12-14-1631.ZIP for example).
Now you can not only restore from a specific NAND but also view & extract the files that it contains from the TAR balls of the set.
The 2nd proceedure is along the same lines. I install programs, when possible, on a 512 Mb SD card that stays in my 24/7 C860 as part of the system. So, when I make an NAND, what about the parts of he system on the SD? No problem.
This time, you will need space on a CF card. How much exactly depends on whats on your SD.
Again, immediately before or after you make an NAND, boot your C860 with D+B to the command line (root without password). Be sure the C860 is on AC power, of course. Make sure that you have some time because the TAR takes a while. Then:
tar cvf /mnt/cf/my-SD.tar /mnt/card/*
I store this TAR ball (if the C860 is the one using the SD card) in the archive set detailed above. Now, when restoring an NAND, I can also restore the SD portion of the system as well.
IOTTMCO, I know, but not so obvious to those starting up!
Have fun. Happy Holidaze!
