Where to Install a Second Puppy?

[Sky Aisling]

Hello,

My question is where to install a second Puppy to be most efficient?

Here are the machine specs: (I can provide more machine specs if needed.)
HP HDX-18 4GB RAM, 64bit, no DVD/CD drive
(Monitor screen replaced by NEC 23" Multiplex high definition free standing screen)

▶—— CPU ——◀

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.53GHz
Socket Designation: CPU
Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
Voltage: 1.6 V
External Clock: 1066 MHz
Max Speed: 2533 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:2533 MHz, 1:800 MHz

Currently, I have one puppy installed on internal HDD (Drive 1):

Puppy1 (Tahrpup64-6.0.5) is frugal installed on partition sda1 Ext4 with 10GB of space.
Partition sda2 Ext4 contains personal data storage with 30GB of space.
Partition sda3 is a swap of 5GB.
Remainder of drive is unallocated space of 253GB.

Currently, internal HDD (Drive 2) is unused with this format:

sdb1 Ext4 10GB empty.
unallocated 288GB empty.

HDD Drive 2 is setup in the same format as HDD Drive 1 sans the swap and storage space as seen in Drive 1.

I can frugal install Puppy2 (Xenial64-7.5-uefi.iso) to partition sdb1 but I will need to put a boot flag on the partition.

Will both boot flags be recognized at bootup time? If so, will a choice be given of which Puppy to initiate?

I intend to use YAPI as the installer.

Xenial64-7.5.0 ISO is downloaded to sda2 in HDD Drive 1.

My question is where to install second Puppy to be most efficient? HDD1 or HDD2 or other?

Thank you for any suggestions.

Sky

[Mike Walsh]

@ Sky:-

I'm curious. Why, with such a (relatively) large drive, did you make your partitions so small, and leave so much unallocated space?

--------------------------------

So: you appear to have a pair of 320 GB drives. If it were me (and this is only my personal viewpoint, you understand), I would have done the following:-

Use one disk, with a single large partition, to install multiple Puppies by means of sub-directories. Grub4DOS searches two layers deep, something most bootloaders either can't, or don't seem to want to do. I would have the bootflag on this drive - it only needs to be set once, regardless of the number of Puppies - and set up my swap partition at the end of it

(This way, you don't need to set multiple boot flags, although Grub4DOS is certainly capable of booting from multiple drives. Remember; in Linux, everything (including files, directories, devices, mountpoints, whatever) is considered as simply 'a file'.....and part of one single contiguous file-system.)

I would use the second drive purely for personal storage/data. I would create whatever directories I needed on this drive; having done that, you can then sym-link those directories into each Pup wherever you want to access them. It's the easiest way to ensure access to common data from multiple different locations.

It won't make any difference as to which 'installer' you use; personally, I no longer bother with installers, and much prefer the 'quick & dirty' method. The only thing I would stress is the benefit of always using Grub4DOS as the bootloader, since it's specially optimized & 'tweaked' to work with Puppy; using Grub4DOS, with two or more Pups you always get a 'boot menu', which offers you the choice of what to boot into. (In fact, you still get the 'boot menu' even with just a single Pup....)

------------------------------

Don't just take one individual's ideas on board, however. Do wait until you've received further advice before deciding what to do.....there are many different ways of installing Puppies, and lots of different ways to set them up.


Mike.

[Sky Aisling]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the quick reply.
You ask:

Why, with such a (relatively) large, did you make your partitions so small, and leave so much allocated space?

Well, I only need one puppy to get my email, play videos, research the web, save small documents, save photos.
I don't download videos or music or any other big files. The current setup works fine for me, always has for years.

But, after all the kerfuffel about installing the latest Slimjet64 browser see http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114770
After all the dust settled around updating v20 of Slimjet it seems Slimjetv20 update is ok on Xenial64 but is problematic on Tahrpup64.
I thought it would be wise to keep my current setup of Tahrpup64 and then install Xenial64 to HDD to play with installing the most recent version of Slimjet64.
I did make a flash drive of Xenial64, but, it's a nuisance to use as the machine only has 3 USB ports and two are taken up with other USB devices.
I do want to update to recent Slimjet but I don't want to risk screwing up my current tahrpup64.6.0.5 again.
This way I can sit around in the coming misty winter days and tinker with Xenial at ease. My Tahrpup will be undisturbed by the fireplace and I can pop back over to her for my daily computer use.
Also,
My landlord frowns on his tenants having pets. So, the one virtual puppy I sneak in is ok with him.

[Sky Aisling]

Oppps, double entry...

Flash, can you delete this post?

Thanks,

Sky

[mikeslr]

Hi Sky Aisling,

As is often the case, my thinking is along the same lines as Mike Walsh. With all that hard-drive space there's little reason to limit the amount of a Puppy's Home Partition to 10 Gbs. And there's a couple good reasons to give it, and yourself, more room to work with.

I'd use sdb2 for data storage --maybe partition it with storage on the 2nd partition, leaving the first 40 -100 Gbs or so for later exploration of Puppies or other Linux Distros. After moving your data from sda2, resize sda1 giving it the entire drive (other than your swap partition).

Your question concerned efficiency. As the two systems you currently intend to run are Xenialpup64 and Tahrpup64, both as Frugals, you should know that many SFSes created for Tahrpup64 can be run under Xenialpup64 (avoiding duplication). Slimjet seems to be an exception. My Xenialpup64 and Tahrpup64 currently share LibreOffice, Gimp, and Google-Chrome.

Similarly, many external/portable programs --such as fredx181's Firefox Quantum can also be shared by those systems. Occasionally, some external programs in order to run may require dependencies, which may differ from one system to another. An example is masterpdfeditor which depends on Qt libraries. Masterpdfeditor uses about 60 Mbs of hard-drive. The Qt libraries for each of Tahrpup64 and Xenialpup64 are much smaller than that, and as they are installed (into the respective SaveFile/Folders) provide the qt libraries for several applications which need them.

Also shared is portable-wine.

Although ultimately storing your datafiles on a different drive or partition is a good idea, having space on your Puppy's Home partition for projects currently being worked on is both convenient and more secure. With datafolders on your Puppy's Home partition, there's no reason to mount any other partititon/drive while you work on those datafiles: the other drive receives less "wear and tear" and less opportunity to be contaminated by injection of malware from a running system. With a datafolder on your Puppy's /mnt/home, you can easily create files in it, open them and edit them. Just drag such folder into /root and select Link(relative). You're applications will see such files and folder as being in /root. And with both Xenialpup64 and Tahrpup64 on the same partition, you can start your project under one OS and continue it under the other.

I run (and test) various Puppies. The great thing about Puppies is that they are designed to run as Frugal -- each only requiring a folder of its own. My usual practice is to locate all 64-bit Puppies on one partition and 32-bit Puppies on another. That's just to make it easier for me to figure out which SFSes can be loaded.

Before I forget, although you can set the boot-flag on sdb1 as bootable --it won't hurt-- a computer can only use one Main bootloader. With bootloaders on both sda and sdb, you'll have to either (a) go into bios each time you want to boot using the other one or (b) chainload one bootloader from the other.

What is your current bootloader? If it is grub4dos, with your bootloader currently on sda, it can be easily modified to boot operating systems on both sda and sdb. If it is not grub4dos, it probably also can be easily modified.

[Sky Aisling]

Mike and mikeslr,
Thank you! Yes, I see the logic in your words. I like your suggestions. I will seriously consider doing your style of file organization.

One of the reasons I was mentioning that the machine has two HDDs is that I'm assuming that HDD2 doesn't get much physical wear and tear as HDD1 gets. This machine is going on ten years old. I'm assuming it's true that HDDs get worn out because of constant use.

I could setup HDD2 similarly to your setup with multiple small partitions to hold other puppies as the need arises.

If I like Xenial64pup (now that I've learned how to pronounce 'Xenial' and I know it's not a squirrel) then I could have a several puppys on the main HDD2 drive in case whatever main puppy I'm using needs repair.

Last week, when I screwed up Tahrpup64, I was scrambling to keep connected to the outside world. We have a family emergency going on and email is our communication method. Luckily for me, I have a second machine set up with Tahrpup32 that acts as a backup but with a small screen. Me 78 year old eyes squint to read the fine print quickly. lol.

I am studying both your suggestions now.

Current boot loader is Grub4dos.

Again, thank you.

Sky

[8Geee]

In response to the first post...
What happened to the Blu-Ray Drive? I would imagine a DVD might fit in there, or with USB, an external DVD (about US$30-40). This would fix most snags with multi-puppy.

Regards
8Geee

[Sky Aisling]

Hi 8Geee, long time no talk
Re: Your Hardware Question
I'd like to keep this thread to my original software question of where to install a second puppy. I'd prefer that it didn't disintegrate into a technical hardware thread.

The BD-ROM/DVD/CD rewritable drive 459175-400 BC-5500S-H1 makes a repeated clicking noise when activated. The drive appears not to be able to mount any DVD or CD. I took it to our local computer repair store. They said 'broken' which was my assessment also. About my original question concerning where to install software, I am concerned that the heavily used hdd1 may wear out soon. So, I asked the hardware geeks in the 'Hardware' section of the forum. See:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=114805

Now, back to the original thread topic...

PS - 8Geee, do you still work with the little Asus E machines? Send me a PM if 'yes'.
PSS- A replacement of the DVD/CD drive is about $70 to $75. The machine isn't worth it as it is ten years old, second hand, given to me in a very used condition.

[Sky Aisling]

Hello again,

I received an answer from my thread in the 'Hardware' section of the forum from dancytron and nosystemdthanks.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 72#1011572
Looks like the drives can function separately if one of them goes down.
Putting a Grub4dos boot on either or both drives seems a logical way to go.
Since I'm guessing that HDD1 has got a lot more mileage on it than HDD2, I'll consider using HDD2 for the boot and extra puppy partitions.
I definitely like the way you have your system set up.
Particularly now that the DVD/CD drive is down.*

So, Thank you all for helping out. Much appreciated.
I'll cogitate on when I can set up the file system like you suggest.
The outcome of that decision may take a while to implement.
I'll leave this thread open so others can chime in as well.

*8Geee, you got me thinking about the busted DVD/CD drive.
So, I took it apart to see what it looked like inside.
A small blue belt was loose in the main case.
So far it's place in the mechanism eludes me.
The belt is about 1/4 I.D. and about 3/16th. in height.
It shows no sign of wear.
But, here we are back talking about the mechanical issues .
My apologies for shoeing you away from a hardware conversation.

Sky