Control over which Puppy files are copied to RAM at bootup

[nic007]

By default Puppy copies the Puppy files i.e.: base sfs, zdrv, adrv, ydrv, fdrv to RAM at bootup if you have enough RAM. This behaviour can be changed by specifying pfix=nocopy in which case none of the files will be copied. It would be nice if one could choose which of these files be copied to RAM and which not. For instance it may be useful to allow for copying of the base and zdrv to RAM but you may not want to copy your ydrv (which could be massive and contain files which are only accessed occasionally). The bootup time will be affected by the size of these files being copied, which is another reason one should be able to choose which to copy or not to copy. Any ideas?

[greengeek]

Great idea.
I am guessing that this would require a modified initrd.gz

Gyro did a huge amount of work with initrd - i think more work in that area is needed as it could open the door to better modularity within pups and make it very easy to boot the user's preferred pup in either micro mode or full blown mode (or anywhere between)

A little bit similar to RSH's work using text files to specify which components to load during boot.

[nic007]

Okay, I've managed to isolate my ydrv from being copied to RAM which was my objective. Base sfs, zdrv and adrv (which only contain system configurations) are now copied to RAM at bootup but my big ydrv is only mounted and not copied.

[Dry Falls]

Hi Nic. How did you do this (in init script I presume)? Very interesting. I'd have thought it couldn't be done!
df

[nic007]

Yes, made modifications to initrd.gz.

[s243a]

Yes, made modifications to initrd.gz.

Please publish your changes. This sounds quite useful. I would also ask you to do a merge request with woof-CE but if you are dong this on an older system, you'll probably get flack for that

Maybe, though you could submit it as an issue and some dev running the latest woof-CE code can make the changes with the latest initrd.