Backup tar file restore from Windows 7?

1st Official Post

    I know that you can restore your backup tar file from the tv box by using the 2nd menu item Restore in the LE System Settings.

    But how can you restore the backup tar file (copied to my HDD) on Windows 7 on the SD card with a standard LE boot image burned?

    Edit. I was able to do that under Ubuntu mate 18.04 by changing external folder permissions in terminal (Nautilus was nada.) Perhaps not in Win7 since ext4 .storage can't be read?

    Edited once, last by shippy (December 29, 2018 at 2:38 PM).

    • Official Post

    The .tar archive only contains files (nothing to do with ext4) so the only thing you'll need to unpack on Win7 is a tool like WinRAR. If you then try to restore specific Kodi files from a Linux install to Windows you'll have issues with file paths (as Win/Linux use different conventions) and some Linux preferences in guisettings.xml do not exist in Windows. Kodi has never officially supported cross-platform config changes so sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

    Quote from chewitt

    The .tar archive only contains files (nothing to do with ext4) so the only thing you'll need to unpack on Win7 is a tool like WinRAR. If you then try to restore specific Kodi files from a Linux install to Windows you'll have issues with file paths (as Win/Linux use different conventions) and some Linux preferences in guisettings.xml do not exist in Windows. Kodi has never officially supported cross-platform config changes so sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

    I actually want to install Linux to Linux LibreElec. The way I see this:

    1. Backup from LibreElec settings menu on USB stick on TV box.

    2. Insert this USB stick in Win7 laptop.

    3. Use WinRAR to unzip .tar on USB above, on HDD. Remove USB stick.

    4. Have an SD card ready on same laptop that has a fresh LE image burned onto it via Win32DiskImager.

    5. Attempt to transfer .kodi, .cache and .config files from WinRAR archive in #3 to SD card .storage so as to override existing files.

    *So #5 should have no problems?

    The idea here is to avoid going back and forth between laptop and TV box. And Windows is way easier than Ubuntu mate 18.04 on my 32 bit laptop with frequent JIT crashes and permissions changes pain.

    Edited 2 times, last by shippy (December 31, 2018 at 4:46 AM).

    Quote from chewitt

    If all you plan to do is overwrite stuff .. why make the process complicated by manually unpacking the tarball on a Windows box. Just use the restore function in the settings add-on.

    ... because unluckily the Restore function is a bit iffy- requires couple reboots, and if you don't wait enough for the backup data on USB to settle down, you data are corrupted and you need to repeat.

    Any way I am thinking that since I cannot see the ext4 storage folder on my SD card in Windows, unpacking the tar ball cannot help 🐵🐵

    • Official Post

    There are paid-for solutions to mounting EXT4 partitions under Windows but it's not worth the effort.

    Copy the tar file to the new device and learn how to unpack a tar file from the SSH console. As the saying goes .. it's not rocket sc1ence.