Helios64 Re-Kickstart

[Thofer]

Hello,

 

After facing multiple instabilities during previous week, I decided to completely reinstall my helios64 to a fresh image (bookworm) from the download section. But before doing that, I need some help/have some questions:

• Currently, I’m using emmc to host the system, how can I completely backup and restore the system on an sd-card (you know, just in case...)
• Does the current image (https://dl.armbian.com/helios64/Bookworm_current_minimal) already contains usb drivers from:and this dtb file:
• Does the process to install the new image on emmc is the same as the one documented on Kobol site?

 

At the moment, I’m a little bit lost on how to proceed…

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[ebin-dev]

Here is my backup script - it copies the content from the running system - emmc (/) in my case - to sd (/mnt/sd). (create the mount point on emmc if it does not exist: 'mkdir /mnt/sd')

As you can see the UUID that starts with 87654321... corresponds to the sd card, and the UUID starting with 12345678... corresponds to emmc.

 

Type 'blkid' to get the UUIDs of your devices and insert them into the script accordingly. 

Check that the script can be executed (chmod +x backup.sh), insert a formatted sd card (ext4) and let the script run. That`s it.

 

# cat  backup.sh
#!/bin/bash

# Check if user is root
if [ $(id -u) != "0" ]; then
    echo "Error: You must be root to run this script."
    exit 1
fi

cat > install-exclude <<EOF
/dev/*
/proc/*
/sys/*
/mnt/sd/*
/mnt/ssd/*
/mnt/usb/*
/mnt/hd/*
/run/*
# /tmp/*
# /root/*
EOF

exec 2>/dev/null
umount /mnt/sd
exec 2>&1

mount  --uuid 87654321-5709-4000-91ac-099eeefe4685 /mnt/sd

rsync -avxSE --delete --exclude-from="install-exclude"  /  /mnt/sd

# change fstab
sed -e 's/UUID=12345678-3e1b-4e01-a6be-9ee203b1b54f/UUID=87654321-5709-4000-91ac-099eeefe4685/g' -i /mnt/sd/etc/fstab
sed -e 's/UUID=12345678-3e1b-4e01-a6be-9ee203b1b54f/UUID=87654321-5709-4000-91ac-099eeefe4685/g' -i /mnt/sd/boot/armbianEnv.txt
umount /mnt/sd
rm install-exclude

echo "SD - done."

 

Edited August 19 by ebin-dev

[Thofer]

Hello,

@ebin-dev : Thanks a lot for your script it is helping me a lot for the backup part.

 

Can you confirm my guess:

Now I have my system saved on the SD Card, I need to

• download the new system image
• follow the kobol wiki procedure (https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/install/emmc/)

In addition to that do I need to

• install the realtek driver r8152
• copy the dtb from your post

 

Thanks again for your help.

[ebin-dev]

10 hours ago, Thofer said:

download the new system image

 

Download a new system image with linux 6.6.y, flash it to another sd card (just use etcher) and boot from it.

I would recommend to copy the dtb from my post (for the 6.6 branch) and execute 'update-initramfs -u'.

If you are using the 2.5G interface, replace the rtl firmware in /lib/firmware/rtl_nic. No need to install a new r8152 driver.

 

You can then copy the system from sd to emmc using armbian-config (this also changes the bootloader on emmc) and boot from emmc.

(If there are issues with the new  bootloader installed on emmc, flash the following u-boot to emmc (linux-u-boot-edge-helios64_22.02.1_arm64) (see here).)

 

[Thofer]

Everything went fine.

 

At the moment, the system seems way more stable.