You are absolutelyright of course. I failed to refresh Filezilla and thought that the file had not been compressed when the finished message appeared on the TV screen. I have now double checked and it is perfectly fine. Many thanks again for a great plugin. Very useful and easy to use.

Thanks Gutamine. I thought you were the author of this plugin are you not? If yes many thanks for a great plugin. If not thanks anyway for your support.
I was too quick asking for support though. Presumably the plugin first creates a standard .tar and then it compresses it. I looked at the result before it compressed, immediately after it said it was finished, but clearly it wasn't. When I looked again later on the file had the correct extension and it had been compressed. By the way I was not looking at the back up directory under Windows but with Filezilla.
So nothing wrong with dbackup. It works just fine.

I have just tried dbackup as suggested by Gutamine from the OozooN board. It creates the image file but the extension is only .tar instead of .tar.gz. Is it ok? Strangely the information that appears on screen is but the filename that is actually written to the usb is dreambox-image-deb-dm520-exp-2017-11-09-14-59.tar without the gz extension and is 104MB instead of 58.6MB. Is this ok or am I dreaming? Can I risk flashing this image even if the extension is different and the size is twice what the onscreen message tells me?

Thanks guys. Very useful.

Thanks. "update the bios" do you mean update the rescue loader? I did flash the latest stable version dreambox-image-deb-dm520-20171017.tar.xz but my rescue loader is still 102 and there is no backup option on it. How do I update it?

Thanks for clearing up the deb versus ipk issue. Pesumably ipk plugins cannot be converted to debs either.

I aplogise if this sounds like a very naive question, but could somebody please help me with my quest for full backup and restore of my DM520?
I looked everywhere on the net but did not find any way of doing it (silly isn't it?) I considered telnetting some magic commands or using plugins or some windows program but got nowhere. What I am after is to be able to create a nice .tar.xz file of my entire box and then be able to use it to restore the full installation. Is it possible?
My second naive question is: is it possible to install .ipk plugins or do they have to be .deb? Must it be done with telnet or are there any plugins/commands on the box to do it?
Many thanks in advance

Thanks to all who replyed to my naive questions. My thanks particularly to mimisiku who has made it a lot clearer for me. I understand PCs pretty well but linux has always been a bit of a mystery. Now I am starting to get my head round it.
I'll keep quite for a while and leave you in peace . This is a great forum, such a shame I don't speak german, I am sure there would be so much more I could gain from it.

Thanks to mimisiku and dre to clear up some of my confusion. Still unclear about 2.5 and openembedded. What does that mean? I understood there was Enigma which is the operating system, currently version 2. The there is the image which acts as the user interface and contains all the apps that make the box functional. Am I simplifying too much or am I completing wrong in my understanding?

Many thanks for the info on alternative images. I'll give them a go to see wich ones I like best. When I had my dm500hd I liked the pli as it seemed to have better features, but I take your point.

Regarding the rescue loader I am still unclear how this interfaces, or not, with the image. My current rescue loader is 102 and the latest version seems to be 203, correct?
It would seem that all the opendreambox images on the dreamboxupdate.com site are classified as 2.5. What does this mean? Is it the family of firmaware images that are now at rev. 2.5 or is it Enigma that is 2.5? And are all the compatible images you mention 2.5? If there are compatible images that are not 2.5 will they then work even if the rescue loader has been upgraded for the 2.5 images. Do I sound confused? You bet I am, but hope you can make some sense of my ramblings.

By OE2.5 I take it you mean the opendreambox 2.5 image that is on the dreamboxupdate.com site. That is the only image I can find on that sire for the dm520. There are three in fact, by I assume they are essentailly the same with just a few minor changes:
Stable (opendreambox 2.5)
Unstable (opendreambox 2.5)
Unstable (opendreambox 2.2)
Why bother with an unstable version when the latest version is defined "stable"?
I could not find any other images, but maybe I am being thick and just don't understand how to use the update feeds?

Many many thanks. It worked. When I deleted the settings directory nothing changed. It just rebooted into the faulty image as before. Does restore settings do anything else that could've damaged the image?

Anyway, when I forced into into rescue mode it rebooted into http mode and I was able to do an "Online recovery". Just a peculiar piece of information on the log:

[*] Downloading 'http://dreamboxupdate.com/download/recovery/dm520/release/recovery.sig'
[*] Downloading 'http://dreamboxupdate.com/download/recovery/dm520/release/recovery'[*] Verifying signature of 'recovery'gpgv: Signature made Wed Dec 21 02:01:50 2016 UTC using RSA key ID A07683D3gpgv: key A07683D3 was created 1460384147 seconds in the future (time warp or clock problem)gpgv: key A07683D3 was created 1460384147 seconds in the future (time warp or clock problem)gpgv: key A07683D3 was created 1460384147 seconds in the future (time warp or clock problem)gpgv: Good signature from "Dreambox DM520 Recovery <dm520@recovery.dreambox.de>"[*] Running './recovery'[*] Options '-v'Warning: Could not read CA! Warning: Please consider updating your rescue loader!Warning: Could not read CA! Warning: Please consider updating your rescue loader![*] Downloading 'http://dreamboxupdate.com/download/recovery/dm520/release/dreambox-image-dm520.tar.xz.sig'[*] Downloading 'http://dreamboxupdate.com/download/recovery/dm520/release/dreambox-image-dm520.tar.xz'

etc to a successful end.
What does "Could not read CA" mean and should I update the rescue loader? Is an out of date rescue loader the reason I cannot go inot rescue mode manually with the front button?
On the subject of unsupported bootlegged image, I did not manage to find any other official or supported images. Any suggestions? Sorry for being so lame.

HI everybody. I have a DM520 which was working fine until I had the great idea of saving settings and then flashing a new image. I flashed successfully PLI 5 but when it rebooted and asked me if I wanted to restore my settings I said yes. Stupidly I had saved my settings on a usb stick that was originally in a DM500HD on wich I had also done some DM500 back ups. You can guess what happened. PLI5 took it upon itself to use the DM500HD settings and distroyed itself. Now I get the boot logo of the old 500 and then it hangs with a red flashing light. I tried to do a reflashing, but I cannot get it into rescue mode. I tried to press the front button before switching on, and then different timings after switching on, between 1 sec and 10 secs. but it just carries on and boots in the wrong image.
I have read the thread DM820 not booting which is very clear but it is for a dm820. Does it apply to the dm520 also and is the rescue loader the same? If not where can I find the rescue loader for the dm520?
Thanks guys, I will be eternally grateful to anybody who can give me some directions.