Backup and restore procedures

You should do backups, or expect everything to die and all your work be lost forever.

Do backups. Please.

Backup procedure

This will export your configuration and list of installed packages:

uci export > /tmp/hostname-export-uci.txt
opkg list-installed > /tmp/hostname-opkg-installed.txt

You may also want to look around your /etc directory for modified files you may want to backup as well. In doubt, backup the whole directory:

tar cfz /tmp/etc.tgz /etc

Especially consider backing up those files:

/etc/firewall.user
/etc/dropbear/authorized_keys
/etc/dropbear/dropbear_dss_host_key
/etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key

Then transfer those files over to another computer:

scp /etc/etc.tgz foo.example.com:

... or, if scp is failing for you, revert down to netcat:

nc foo.example.com 34393 < /tmp/etc.tgz

... and on foo.example.com:

nc -l -s 34393 > etc.tgz

Reinstall the OS (see flashing).

Make a backup of the generated configuration:

uci export > /tmp/orig

Then restore the configuration:

uci import < /tmp/hostname-export-uci.txt

Update the restored configuration to make sure the MAC address on the wireless card is correct:

vi /etc/config/wireless

Make sure to enable babeld on boot (only found a way through the web interface, maybe there's a way through /etc/rc.d).

Restore other files from the backup as necessary, reboot.