Reading what Mark has said so far this isn't something we are going to get out of him... he works on the kernel and likes to stay there...

a back up application will most definitely be a userspace thing... hopefully it will be something we might be able to include in an hda2 image... maybe just having an ftpd easily installed and running will be enough for us to then be able to write a sensible backup and restore program from the desktop side (ie backup is just a get of everything... and a restore is a put of everything...)

backing up the settings would just be a get and put of the contents of /dev/hda3... this might be a bit harder through ftp (would a get on /dev/hda3 be enough to be able to add it to an upgrade file for reapplication...?)

Cheers

Kim