shrinking the puppy

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MwPhoto

shrinking the puppy

#1 Post by MwPhoto »

I use puppy on a USB 256Mb device and at present the pup001 file is 186Mb. I don't need all that space right now and it's taking a long time to load and unload. Is there a way I can safely reduce the size of this file and increase it again later if I need the space?

Malcolm

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Lobster
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#2 Post by Lobster »

Do a backup
delete the Puppy001 and create a new one
do a restore

- I think I have misnunderstood what you are trying to do?
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

MwPhoto

Further explanation

#3 Post by MwPhoto »

Ok, I'll try and explain in more detail.

Currently my pup001 is 186MB. However it takes quite a long time to load into memory, and on shut down quite along time to write back to USB.

the real content of pup001 probably only adds up to 1Mb or so. Most of the time on shutdown is spent 'zeroising' 185MB, which seems pretty pointless.

PERFECT WORLD
pup001 would only be large enough for the files it contains there would be no zeros.

PRACTICAL WORLD
I would be happy to have a pup001 that was only 10Mb or so as long as when needed I could extend it to 20, 30 Mb etc. This would significantly speed up my startup/shutdown cycle

so is there a tool that does . . .

set pupsize to 10MB and just safely gets rid of the zeroised parts and not the real files :)


I hope that's a more complete explanation of my problem, even better I hope it means someone can help with a solution!

Guest

#4 Post by Guest »

I think you may be wrong about why Puppy is taking so long to boot on your machine. Operating systems don't waste time reading from or writing to an area of memory that the file system thinks is blank. The "size" of your pup001 file is only what has been allocated by the filesystem, not, as you said, the amount of data which are actually in it. My pup001 file is over a Gig and yet my computer boots/shuts down Puppy very quickly. What takes the most time during boot is loading "usr_cram.fs" (about 50 MB) into RAM. That should take less time from a hard drive than from a USB flash memory stick, especially if your computer only has USB1.1. At about 1 MB/s, 50MB will take about 50 seconds to transfer.

MwPhoto

More help on slow shutdown

#5 Post by MwPhoto »

Ok,

What I can be sure about is that a large amount of time is taken in shut down is 'zeroising' when writing the pup001. I'll see if I can get the message from the boot process - although that may be tough. I'll have a look and see if the 'zeroise' message is coming from the script or something else.

If anyone knows what's causing this I'd be very grateful.

I have separately noted how much time it takes to load the usr_cram.fs and this is not the real issue.

Thanks

MwPhoto

zeroise again

#6 Post by MwPhoto »

I noticed this from Puppy News

23Sept04

Puppy version 0.9.4 released. The live-CD ISO file is 49.5M. Release notes:


Pudd, the drive/partition/image-file copy application, has received a makeover. Thanks to suggestions from guys on the Forum, I have put in the capability to copy to a remote computer over a LAN or the Internet, using nc. The image is transferred gzipped to minimise transmission time. Remote copying is not yet tested. Another enhancement to Pudd is when copying a partition to an image-file (on local PC), there is an option to zeroise the unused space in the partition, potentially greatly enhancing compression of the file (the destination file is gzipped).

Can anyone explain this further - it seems to be the slow step in my shutdown process

Malcolm

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Flash
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Re: More help on slow shutdown

#7 Post by Flash »

MwPhoto wrote:Ok,

What I can be sure about is that a large amount of time is taken in shut down is 'zeroising' when writing the pup001. I'll see if I can get the message from the boot process - although that may be tough. I'll have a look and see if the 'zeroise' message is coming from the script or something else.

<>
I seem to recall reading somewhere that there a way to stop the boot sequence, and then either step through it or at least backtrack. If there is, maybe it will also work during shutdown.

nduanetesh
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#8 Post by nduanetesh »

Hi Malcolm,

To get back to your original question, the puppy "Resize Root Filesystem" wizard is found on the start menu under "utilities". However, this only allows you to grow your pup file. According to the wizard "you can't make it smaller". Now, whether that means "this wizard cannot make it smaller" or "it is impossible to make your pup file smaller", I don't know.

BTW, when I run puppy from a USB key, the zeroising part on shut down only ever takes a second or so. (Even on a USB 1.1 connection). My pup file is only 60mb on that key, but still I wouldn't think you should be seeing a much greater time than a few seconds. Are you sure your key is ok?

ND

MwPhoto

Booting speed issues

#9 Post by MwPhoto »

Ok,

With more thought and discussion I am now sure that my problem is that my pup001 file was created at 186Mb on a clean installation. I would assume this is way over the top.

I did notice during the creation phase it wanted to create a 256Mb pup001 files and compromised on a 186Mb file so this may have happened as there wasn't enough USB space for a 256Mb file. In particular there may be a bug in the code that happens in the branch that occurs if the available space is < 256 Mb

I will investigate further . . .

Malcolm

MwPhoto

Partial solution

#10 Post by MwPhoto »

Ok,

I've solved my problem, I realised the reason pup100 was so big was the syslinux.cfg file when I initially created the USB stick. SO I started again with a clean install and set the file to be pup100-none-40960 ie a 40Mb file. Everything is much quicker now.

I haven't checked yet but I hope I can extend this further as needed. I'm also hoping I can recover my old files from the other pup100 file.

Malcolm

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BarryK
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#11 Post by BarryK »

Yes, you should be able to mount the old pup001 file and copy out the files. -- I think there is something about how to do this in the Wiki.

The "Utilities" menu has an entry to resize the pup001 file, but as was mentioned above, only to make it bigger.

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everettattebury
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Re: shrinking the puppy

#12 Post by everettattebury »

MwPhoto wrote:I use puppy on a USB 256Mb device and at present the pup001 file is 186Mb. I don't need all that space right now and it's taking a long time to load and unload. Is there a way I can safely reduce the size of this file and increase it again later if I need the space?

Malcolm
Hi Malcolm.

I just had a thought reading this thread. If you want to keep your pup001 file small after you resize it, consider storing files you don't use very often, (such as mp3's, saved documents, etc) in a separate directory on your USB key. Then when you want to access them, you can just mount the key to get to them.
This is also a good way to be able to access them from other operating systems.

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