Neuros Link Restore Procedures

[crweb]

EDIT: These instructions have moved here: http://www.neurostechnology.com/restore-neuros-link .  The below is for archival purposes and will be deleted in the near future.


There are several methods to restore Neuros Link software to the USB drive.  I will edit this post to add more restore paths as soon as each is fully tested.


To See Changes read: http://us.archive.neuros.tv/images/neuros-link/1.2/Changes

Windows Restore Path

Requirements: 
1.) Selfimage, a free open source imaging utility.
2.) A desktop PC with Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows Vista.
3.) Your main hard drive formatted with the NTFS file system (Fat32 does not support the large files needed for the LINK restore process).

Download one of the following, if you can use Bittorrent Please help Seed!!  This file is 900MB, so please be patient.
Download: Version 1.2.1.img.bz2
Bittorrent: Version 1.2.1.torrent

* For saftey remove all USB and media cards from the system before plugging in the Neuros Flash drive.

1.) Extract and install Selfimage 1.2.1 or newer
2.) Insert Neuros LINK flash drive in your PC's USB port
3.) Windows XP: run Selfimage from start menu.   Windows Vista: Right click on Selfimage in Start menu and select "Run As Administrator" or drives will not be listed.
4.) In SelfImage, you are asked for the input file.  Direct the file selector to .bz2 file you downloaded above.
5.) Select "Drive" in the Output options area at the bottom of the Selfimage window.
6.) In the drop-down list you will see a drive that is 3.7-4.1GB in size.  Select that drive, as it should be your 4GB USB flash drive.
7.) When you are sure you have selected the correct drive, press Start.

Troubleshooting:
* If you do not see the 3.7-4.1GB drive in Selfimage, please 1.) unplug your Neuros LINK USB flash drive, 2.) restart your computer, then 3.) plug your Neuros LINK USB flash drive back in.


Linux Restore Path (Neuros Official Cloning Method)

Requirements:
1.) Linux Desktop or LiveCD with Partimage 0.6.4, Grub, Bash, and sfdisk (provided by util-linux on debian/ubuntu). Use x86 only, x86-64 partimage will fail.

Download one of the following, if you can use Bittorrent Please help Seed!!  This file is 900MB, so please be patient.
Bittorrent Download: Version 1.2.torrent

* For saftey remove all USB and media cards from the system before plugging in the Neuros Flash drive.

1.) Do not have your Neuros LINK USB flash drive plugged in yet
2.) Login as root, or run sudo su
3.) tar -jxvf neuroslink-1.2-partimage.tar.bz2
4.) cd neuroslink-1.2
5.) ls -l /dev/sd*
6.) Plug in your USB Neuros Link drive - Do NOT mount the partitions!  If Ubuntu automounts your partitions on the USB please unmount them.
7.) ls -l /dev/sd*
8.) Compare to the list in step 7 to the list in step 9 to find your drive. For this we will assume it is sdm. So you should see sdm1 and sdm2. (Replace sdm with your drive sda, sdb, sdc, sdd, etc).  Be careful! This will erase the drive you select!
9.) sudo ./restore.sh sdm
10.) Wait 10-20 minutes and the process should be complete.

Note for ubuntu users: the above will fail at step 11 because the script will repartition the drive and then try to re-read the partitions. However Ubuntu will instantly auto-mount the drive after the partitions are rewritten, and this will prevent the rest of the script from working. Very annoying. The solution was to run gconf-editor and then go to apps > nautilus > preferences and uncheck the "media_automount" option. Then re-run step 11 and it should work now. You may want to re-enable the option afterwards.


Direct Flashing of Image in Linux
Requirements: bzip2 and dd for linux and root login

Download one of the following, if you can use Bittorrent Please help Seed!!  This file is 900MB, so please be patient.
Download: Version 1.2.img.bz2
Bittorrent: Version 1.2.torrent

1.) Disconnect Neuros Link USB Flash Drive, do not insert into desktop
2.) Login as root (or sudo su)
3.) bzip2 -d neuroslink-1.2-full.img.bz2
4.) ls -l /dev/sd*
5.) Insert your USB Flash Drive
6.) ls -l /dev/sd*
7.) Compare to the list in step 6 to the list in step 8 to find your drive. For this we will assume it is sdm. So you should see sdm1 and sdm2. (Replace sdm with your drive sda, sdb, sdc, sdd, etc). Be careful! This will erase the drive you select!
8.) dd if=neuroslink-1.2-full.img of=/dev/sdm bs=1M
9.) type sync
10.) Remove drive and insert into Neuros Link hardware


01-30-09: Bumped to version 1.2.1 to fix small error.
01-21-09: Release version 1.2 of NeurosLink firmware.
12-28-08: Fixed broken URL for partimage/Official Clone instructions
12-08-08: Removed per-partition restore in linux. Added full disk restore via dd (same image as the windows restore)
12-07-08: Added Windows restore method for version 1.1
12-06-08: Updated Partimage method to disk image 1.1
12-09-08: Cleaned up instructions and made Windows first (sorry Linux guys...) - jsdf.

[charlesv]

Looks like this is working... One caveat:

Ubuntu likes to automount new partitions that show up, so after the sfdisk command, it was cancelling out (since partimage couldnt get access to the device). Running the commands one at a time and unmounting the partitions before partimage appears to have worked... (still restoring).

Thanks!

- Charles

[infrared]

Will there be a script for this?

[crweb]

Will there be a script for this?

There can't be much more of a script.  The steps outlined here are the requirements for the restore.sh script.  Unfortunately there is no way to know which drive is the correct one so it requires the user interaction or risk destroying your actual desktop's drive.  The restore process itself is already scripted once you locate the correct drive.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to choose or detect the correct drive more of this could possibly be scripted.

[infrared]

Maybe a wizard of some sort....

[crweb]

Maybe a wizard of some sort....

I agree.  I will try and get at least a basic wizard for windows up this weekend.  Hopefully I will beable to scan drives and list them so user can choose the correct drive

[charlesv]

function pause(){
   read -p “$*”
}

ls -l /dev/sd*
pause 'look at list'
sleep 10
ls -l /dev/sd*
pause 'look at what's new!'

or somesuch

[crweb]

Just a ping here,  Windows flashing instructions have been posted.  The image file is still uploading but it should be done and exist at Midnight 12-07-08 Central Time USA.

[JoeBorn]

Worked for me on XP SP3, but I did have to reboot to get it to recognize the drive properly.

[derobert]

If anyone has any suggestions on how to choose or detect the correct drive more of this could possibly be scripted.

/dev/disk/by* is a good place to start.

[arnor]

I have my LINK back up and running.
The restore procedure works on Windows Vista.

[charlesv]

Any chance of hosting the restore images via s3 or some other distributed provider (even a neuros seeded torrent could potentially work)? Especially if upgrades are distributed this way, 1.4gb over 55kps is ~6hours...

[crweb]

Where are you located that you get 55kbps so i can notify my ISP.

[charlesv]

Austin, TX w/ time warner cable. Just pulled down some stuff at 1.7MB/s, so I don't think it's entirely on this end...

Seems to be fluctuating between 45 an 75k... Same speed from the link itself when running apt-get updates (on the neuros hosted packages only)

[crweb]

Ok, very odd.  I'll talk to jsdf (Jason) while I am in chicago the rest of this week and see what we can do.  Usually my host isn't slow at all.  I get about 1.2MB/s.  Will talk to him as well.

I know we just got introuble with upstream cause we left a backup script on after i copied the repo's etc to the server and the backup script was doing about 16GB a day.. maybe they are throtteling us.