making a working copy of file system over ssh
 

hi everyone =) im in a bit of a jam. im a linux rookie and i have been tasked with copying the filesystem from a mini pc which boots linux off a 1 gig cf card. i have to be able to make copies of this on new cards for use in new mini pcs.

i have ssh access as root, but thats as far as my linux knowledge can take me (on my very short time limit). im using a windows 2k pc and putty right now to talk to the mini pc.

is there a way i can just copy the whole cf card onto my windows pc and then crank out copies of it with my usb card reader? or perhaps a better way exists that i dont know about yet? right now when i try to read the card with my card reader in windows i get the msg "card is not empty, do you want to format?" or i would just copy it that way. i have also tried winhex to make a raw dump of the card but it gives me a filesystem error.

thanks for any advice or links.

Welcome to LQ!

<Linux> - Google Search is your friend. After exhausting that resource, post back what you did and what happened.

ok i ended up getting it to work using a drive imaging program called diskimage.

previous to that i tried scp over putty, but im pretty sure i was getting the local (windows) path part of the command wrong. i tried winscp which let me see all the files on the mini pc but i couldnt copy a few of them over, or the mini pc would kick me out (i think it was timing out). my last idea was to try out some live cds or portable installs but there were too many things to overcome (read only filesystems, no usb card reader support, i dont have a flash drive to install to) and i was out of time.

overall my first 3 days using linux were pretty fun though. sorry for a pretty much off topic thread, and thanks for that link. im going to try to find a distro that suits me and get more comfy with it so i never get stuck like this again :)

thanks

I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with Linux, and know nothing about a mini-PC. That being said, I would recommend Slackware Linux for an operating system. It is the oldest running Linux distribution, has a large community, and complies with the published Linux standards, such as the Linux File System Standard. Slackware is simple and stable.

the mini pcs i have here are similar to gumstix , just a bit bigger. they were already set up and running, but the guy who set them up isnt available any more. when they needed more of the pcs running they picked me because im a 'computer guy'.

im looking for a distro to try out because im pretty sure ill be the one in charge of these mini pcs now, and i need more experience so every single task isnt a nightmare. ill check out slackware, and hopefully be here helping answer instead of asking at some point :)