Clone your MoodleBox to a USB Drive

Nicolas

Here's a short guide to clone your MoodleBox currently running on a Raspberry Pi.

You should first log into the MoodleBox via SSH and begin a sudo session:

sudo -Es

Step 1. Disable automounting of USB Drive

MoodleBox automatically mounts any drive inserted into one of its USB ports. This interferes with cloning, which needs the drive to be unmounted. We disable automounting by stopping the devmon service:

systemctl stop devmon@moodlebox.service

Previous command is valid if your MoodleBox is based on MoodleBox image version 4.6 and later.

If you've got an older MoodleBox image version 4.5.x, disable automounting by editing the file /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf, changing ENABLED=1 to ENABLED=0, then save. This can be done with the following command.

sed -i '/^ENABLED=*/c\ENABLED=0' /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf

Step 2. Unmount the USB Drive and perform cloning

Warning! This will totally destroy anything on the USB Drive inserted. You've been warned!

umount /dev/sda*
mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sda
rpi-clone -f -U sda

The process will last about 20 minutes for a 16GB USB Drive.

Step 3. Re-enable automounting of USB Drive

systemctl start devmon@moodlebox.service

or for devices based on older MoodleBox images (version 4.5.x):

sed -i '/^ENABLED=*/c\ENABLED=1' /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf

and exit sudo

exit

Germán Valero

If I use a microSD chip inside the USB, will that SD work in a brand new Pi and make a true clone of my server?

Nicolas

Yes, it will.

Beware though that this guide is valid for MoodleBox image version 4.5.x. Later images don't use USBMount anymore and are not guaranteed to work with this guide.

Germán Valero

Nicolas
Thanks for the update Nicolas.
If I want to clone a microSD card of a new working Pi in order to have another identical working Pi, can I use two USB microSD card readers and a PC? Which program can I use to make an exact copy of said microSD?

Ratna

Germán Valero I don't know whether Nicolas has two SD card readers. I don't.

The first thing I would try would be something like:
# dd if=/dev/DEVICE1 of=/dev/DEVICE2 bs=4M && sync

What those DEVICE1 and 2 are you will find out by reading '# dmesg' before plugging in the SD cards and then after plugging in each SD card.

ralfkrause

Has anybody used the rpi-clone tool which is integrated in the current MoodleBox 4.8.0?
https://github.com/geerlingguy/rpi-clone

Nicolas

I'm currently testing it, but am still not finished (quite busy these days, sorry).

danmcguire

Cloning MoodleBox will be very useful, especially if it can be done by an elementary school teacher without computer science experience or knowledge.

Nicolas

I've just updated and tested the instructions in the first message of this thread. Cloning works well with this procedure 🙂, provided it is followed scrupulously.