iMX6 Backup Problem

Every Saturday morning I back up three important directories from my iMX6. This practice has served me very well. I back up to a NAS drive over my network. From my iMX6 I open up the NAS drive, then open the particular directory where the backups are kept. I then drag the directory to the window. After it has backed up, I check the size of the backup matches that of the original. If it does that completes the task. This approach has worked flawlessly for a coupke of years but I have had a problem for the last couple of months.

In the case of one of the directories, the iMX6 freezes at the end of the process. I close down and reboot. The size of the copied directory is correct but the machine freezes for some reason. I have tried copying the directory back from the NAS drive and then using that directory until the following Saturday but I get the same problem. I have run DiscKnight but it shows no problems.

The OS is 5.27. Can anyone kindly advise how I can eliminate this problem please?

What filing system is being used to access the NAS? LanmanFS, Lanman98, Sunfish, Access? If its one of the Lanmans have you tried the other?

I back up a couple of iMX6 based machines each night to a Synology NAS using 7backup over Sunfish/NFS very successfully. I use it in mirror mode so that it only copies anything that has changed since the last backup, and removes anything that was deleted in the source. The NAS is backed up beforehand to a second NAS so I’ve always got the last two days stored.

Is it possible that there’s a non-standard character in a filename that is causing the grief?

How are you doing the backup? Is it one of the backup apps, or are you just copying stuff over? You did not say.

I then drag the directory to a window.

Thanks for the replies. I have the NAS window open and drag the files from the RISC OS backdrop to the NAS open window. I use LanMan98. It has worked correctly for years, it is only that particular directory which causes the problem. I don’t want to try another piece of software for networks as it took me long enough to get the current arrangement working.

For what it’s worth I think it is a corrupt character somewhere but I claim no knowledge whatsoever. It is only the one particular directory with which there is a problem.

Why not open the directory and copy across the files one by one until you hit the one that messes things up?

Or rather than using drag-n-drop, try *Copy

I recommend using !DirSync rather than copying, and that will remove files which have been moved or deleted on your machine, otherwise the backup will end up containing duplicates and junk.

Whatever means you use to make the backup, you need to sanitise the RISC OS filenames, or what is on the NAS wont match what is on original, and it’s not unheard of to get a hang.

You need to remove any top bit set character from RISC OS filenames as they never translate correctly, plus most punctuation characters. Each filing system (LanmanFS, Lanman98 and Sunfish) will have a different set of allowed characters, and after moving from Lanman98 to LanmanFS to Sunfish and having to remove more problem characters each time, its best to rename everything so you only use letters, numbers, pling, dash and underscore.

If you are backing up applications as well as user data files, there are quite a few with problematic characters in their names. They can be renamed, but also load their !Sprites in to !Paint and rename the icon of the same name in there too, so you don’t lose the application icon.

Other possible approaches could be:

• When you want to preserve all your filenames etc…, you could use either Zip or SparkFS to create a compressed file locally of your directory on your RISC OS before copying it over the network.

Not sure if this is suitable for your very case, but in general it solves any issues with the RISC OS naming conventions and also helps avoiding some random FileType issue.

SparkFS comes as a module that has two commands: SparkCompress and SparkUncompress

While zip is a more Unix like utility so to ask for help type “zip -h”. Zip is available for free on !Packman, search for Utilities.

• Otherwise, if you are willing to try, there is also the option to try SafeStore, which has the special option in the Backup Job configuration → Misc → Use extra filename changes for Windows (which does exactly what you want and without any problem).

There’s also a couple of other things to consider – it’s possible for the NAS to hold two different files, which are presented to RISC OS as the same name. For example @home and =home are seen as the same name on RISC OS, because the @ is changed to =. Only one file is seen by RISC OS but both exist. Delete one, and it still seems to be there, as the other now takes its place.

If the NAS file area was created and populated entirely from RISC OS this won’t occur. If you copy files there from another operating system as well, this is a potential problem.