How to make a cloned Puppy use the whole flash drive?

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nvmos007
Posts: 81
Joined: Sun 20 Dec 2015, 20:51

How to make a cloned Puppy use the whole flash drive?

#1 Post by nvmos007 »

Currently running Puppy 6.3 (I believe-it's been a while).

Previously installed on an 8GB USB key which subsequently quit working.

Had imaged the setup using Clonezilla.

Purchased a 16GB key and restored the image. It took up just under 8GB on the key.

What tool/commands should I use to resize my Puppy partition to the full capacity of the key, ie 16GB?

Suggestions/help appreciated, as always.

PS - I tried using EaseUS Partition Master 13.0 on a Win7 Pro 32 bit box but Puppy wouldn't boot when I resized the partition to the full 16GB.

peterw
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed 19 Jul 2006, 12:12
Location: UK

Partition Tool and Resizing

#2 Post by peterw »

If you have a frugal install (Essentially just copied the contents of the iso to the USB stick and after its first boot created a save file) then the assembly of files can be moved to any other USB stick or hard drive. Might have to run grub4dos again. So set up the USB stick as you want with what sized partitions you need and put the assemble of files on it.
If you have done a full install then you can use Puppy's Gparted to resize the partition. And that will also work with a frugal install.
Various ideas on what file system to use on USB sticks and the need to reduce the amount of writes to them. I tend to use Ext2 on USB which is simple and does not have journaling. Others go for Ext3, etc. However, it is best to keep a partition with FAT32 so that you can dump files in that if you want them on a Windows machine.

ITSMERSH

#3 Post by ITSMERSH »

I tend to use Ext2 on USB which is simple and does not have journaling.
Do NOT use ext2 format.

If there's one or more .sfs modules, that won't properly unload at reboot/shutdown the drive can't be unmounted.

This will cause some or many errors like:

- inodes having zero day time
- wrong group summaries on blocks

- etc.pp.

These errors requesting to do a e2fsck -y /dev/sdXX (where XX is the drive), though you won't get any information about .sfs modules not being properly unloaded at reboot/shutdown. There's a info in new puppies at the end of shutdown, saying:

Unmounting stray file systems...

Though, this info is not a secure info about .sfs modules not being properly unmounted, since this info appears also if there's just the drive not unmounted before executing the reboot/shutdown.

The command e2fsck -y /dev/sdXX is to be used from terminal input and it can't be executed with a save file in use, since the drive needs to be unmounted for that.

Use ext3 to avoid the above mentioned errors/issues.

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bigpup
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#4 Post by bigpup »

What tool/commands should I use to resize my Puppy partition to the full capacity of the key, ie 16GB?
I will assume Puppy is a frugal install and using a save.

Boot Puppy not using the save, so the drive is not mounted.

Gparted will not work if drive is mounted.
Start Gparted, choosing the USB drive as the device to look at.

What does the partition setup look like?
Is there is one partition and some unallocated space?
If yes.
Should be able to right click on the Puppy partition (I assume the first one) and choose resize. expand it to use the unallocated space.
That should make one partition using all of the drive.

If you see two partitions on the drive.
I assume Puppy is on the first one.
Delete the second partition making it unallocated space.
Do as stated above.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

musher0
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Location: Gatineau (Qc), Canada

#5 Post by musher0 »

ITSMERSH wrote:
I tend to use Ext2 on USB which is simple and does not have journaling.
Do NOT use ext2 format. (...)
There is a way -- that BarryK knows -- to format a USB thumb drive in ext4,
but without the history logging. It's the history logging that creates
premature wear on the USB. Otherwise, ext4 is the most solid of the "ext"
bunch.

Perhaps try to track down Barry's post about this. He explained it well.

Just a thought.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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mikeslr
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Ext4 > turn off journaling >But Why?

#6 Post by mikeslr »

Hi musher0 & All,

My flaky memory recalled this question. Thought I had saved a note about it on my hard-drive, but couldn't find it. Google did. Seems the post was mine. But, as you'll notice, even then I didn't recall where I obtained the info: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 469#930469

Three things, however. Turning off journaling gives you the functional equivalent of Ext2 with the overhead of Ext4. It is journaling which reduces the potential for corruption (IIRC, indexing twice, once at the beginning, once at the end).

Recently manufactured USB-Keys are more robust than older ones. The estimate of how many writes before it wears out is now up to 1,000,000. With 100 writes per day, that translates to 27 years: http://cfgearblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/ ... st_22.html.

The major concern about wearing out a USB-Key arises under Windows and almost all Linux (and Mac?) systems which treat Random Access Memory and Storage (USB/Hard-drives) as a unity, constantly reading and writing what's in RAM to Storage and vice-versa. A frugally installed Puppy by default only writes to storage once every 30 minutes. You can change the default to Never and only write to Storage manually when you decide to.

There was a recent thread on this Forum discussing the various merits and drawbacks of the various partition formatting types which can be used. Unfortunately, I can't find it. But my take-away was that any advantage Ext3 had over Ext4 was more than compensated for by the improvements Ext4 provides. So my current recommendation is that Puppies should be booted from an Ext4*. [But, it's not worth the effort to change if they are already on an Ext3].

However, I also recommend that if you are going to use your USB-Key to transfer files to a Windows computer you should partition the Key to have an initial Fat32 partition followed by an Ext4 partition. The initial partition will hold the bootloader (could be 20** Mbs or less) plus such space as you want to make available to transfer files; the 2nd partition Ext4.

Windows can not natively read Linux Ext partitions. There was a recent post by someone who plugged his/her 'fully formatted as as Linux Ext' USB-Key into a Windows system. Windows saw it as corrupt. Inadvertently (s)he clicked the wrong box to Windows' notice and it valiantly 8) recovered what it could --of course, destroying the Puppy and all data in the process :roll: .

With an initial Fat32 partition, Windows will ignore the rest of the USB-Stick. :D
-------
* DO NOT allow other distros to format as Ext4. They use a 64-bit version which Grub4dos can't read. Puppy's gparted Ext4 formatting is the 32-bit version.

** gparted shows mine as 14.95 Mbs actually used. But, 'just in case' give it some room to breath/grow. Who knows? What's a 100 Mbs on a 16 Gb stick gonna' cost you?

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