Install a cloning program into the MoodleBox

krause

Hi Nicolas,
what do you think about a preinstalled cloning program in the MoodleBox.

Many people install their extended MoodleBox and they want to have a copy of the microSD card. They want it as a backup copy. They want to freeze their Moodle development for the MoodleBox. They want to clone the MoodleBox for some other teachers in their school. They want to send updated microSD cards to learning places without internet.

The easiest way would be to have an external microSD card reader connected to an usb port. It would be very helpful if the software for cloning could be preinstalled on the MoodleBox. I don‘t know if it would be a good idea to have also a web interface for this. But it would be a good idea to get a terminal command such as moodlebox-clone.

The Raspberry OS includes a graphical tool to clone the internal microSD card to an usb device such an external microSD card, an usb stick or an usb ssd. The graphical "SD card copier" is working fine. I can‘t say it there also is a terminal command for the same thing.

For cloning the Raspberry Pi microSD card in the terminal I found the following tool https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone but we do not need to install an additional tool if the Raspberry Pi OS already has it‘s own.

Best regards,
Ralf

Nicolas

Good idea !

krause

What do you think about this?
https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone

Nicolas

Thanks for the heads-up. See https://github.com/moodlebox/moodlebox/issues/259.

Nicolas

In fact, why not simply instruct users to use dd, which is already installed on MoodleBox? Eg.

sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=[mount point]/myimg.img status=progress

Ref:

krause

Yes, I know how to copy with dd but it should be very easy for the users who are teachers and not linux admins.

With dd you can't change the formatting of the sd card. What happens with the different partitions of the MoodleBox card? How can I copy a bigger sd card with 64 GB on a smaller card with 16 GB. You also get a problem with dd when the output device is only 100 bytes smaller than the input device.

Nicolas

krause What happens with the different partitions of the MoodleBox card? How can I copy a bigger sd card with 64 GB on a smaller card with 16 GB.

Yes I understand better your usecase now. rpi-clone seems the best candidate. I'm testing it now.

krause

A teacher will never save his MoodleBox when we can't show him an easy way to do it. When the MoodleBox crashes the teacher will loose all his courses and all his data. There should be an easy way to backup all ideas, all materials, all student documents and all learning data.

Yes, a teacher can backup all his courses individually and export them to his computer or to his mobile device. But if he wants to backup the MoodleBox completely he will stop the MoodleBox and take the sd card into an external device. On his computer he needs to know how to do the backup. And if he has a sd card with 64 GB his computer needs to have a free space with more than 64 GB. If there is no easy way he will never backup his MoodleBox.

Nicolas

Next version of MoodleBox will have rpi-clone installed, see https://github.com/moodlebox/moodlebox/issues/259.