well it looks like I'm out of luck at the moment.<div>I am unable to gain root access from ssh, and so I'm going to need to wait for a time when the system is able to go down for an amount of time. and see if I can connect a monitor and keyboard to it. </div> <div> </div><div>thanks for the excellent Ideas, I will try them as soon as I can</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>Peter. <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:58 PM, Tom Schouten <<a href="mailto:tom@zwizwa.be" target="_blank">tom@zwizwa.be</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">( Or alternatively, use dd in combination with a netcat / netcat -l pair instead of gzip/ssh in case the machine isn't very fast but has at least a 100M network. But I guess speed is not your problem since it's a one-time job. ) The main point being that the "dd" method - as opposed to a file-based method like "rsync" - will also backup the boot loader. For mounting partitions inside a raw disk image, you might want something like this: <a href="http://madduck.net/blog/2006.10.20:loop-mounting-partitions-from-a-disk-image/" target="_blank">http://madduck.net/blog/2006.10.20:loop-mounting-partitions-from-a-disk-image/</a> (or this: <a href="http://zwizwa.be/darcs/pool/bin/plosetup" target="_blank">http://zwizwa.be/darcs/pool/bin/plosetup</a> i had to make some modifications to make it work)<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"> On 03/25/2013 03:48 PM, pdwald wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> The following should do it: dd if=/dev/hda bs=1024 | gzip | ssh root@host_ip 'gzip -d | dd of=hda_file.img bs=1024' hda_file.img will be an image (bit by bit) of the hda disk. You may then try to use the image with virtualbox (perhaps the raw image or using some conversion tool to convert it to a vdi image type, etc). On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Peter Christenson<<a href="mailto:pac1.mi@gmail.com" target="_blank">pac1.mi@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> Hi all, so I'm working on a device that is for all practical purposes headless. there is no documentation onsite, and in the next few months I will need to change a few conf files. the service contract has been gone for a few years and so I don't have access to OEM support at this time. I am able to ssh into it, and am able to find a bit of information I believe that its based on redhat, but I don't know... what I want to do is copy the entire drive so that (A) I have a backup. and (B) I can try and run it in a VE for testing and modification. any thoughts and opinions are welcome!! this is what I've gotten so far. Linux MTS3L-35 2.6.20.1-rt8-dsa-mts3l-6 #1 PREEMPT Mon Oct 15 16:41:36 CEST 2007 armv5tel unknown BusyBox v1.01-DSA-1 (2007.03.29-10:43+0000) multi-call binary dsa@MTS3L-35:/dev$ df Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 126263 49883 69861 42% / /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /var /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /dev /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /data /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /root/.ssh /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /home/dsa/.ssh /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /home/tester /dev/hda3 291366 184006 92315 67% /tmp thanks All Peter. _______________________________________________ linux-user mailing list <a href="mailto:linux-user@egr.msu.edu" target="_blank">linux-user@egr.msu.edu</a> <a href="http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user" target="_blank">http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user</a> </blockquote> _______________________________________________ linux-user mailing list <a href="mailto:linux-user@egr.msu.edu" target="_blank">linux-user@egr.msu.edu</a> <a href="http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user" target="_blank">http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user</a> </blockquote> _______________________________________________ linux-user mailing list <a href="mailto:linux-user@egr.msu.edu" target="_blank">linux-user@egr.msu.edu</a> <a href="http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user" target="_blank">http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user</a> </div></div></blockquote></div> </div>