Too Many SFS

Using applications, configuring, problems
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orbisvicis
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed 07 Mar 2007, 01:09

Too Many SFS

#1 Post by orbisvicis »

I have been reading many threads explaining how to prevent puppy from loading certain sfs into ram. Then the sfs will be read off the media - slower, true, but the user gains more ram.

If you have a swap partition, then after boot puppy will do some memory management, and most likely major contents of some sfs will end up in the swap partition. Same thing, ends of being slow (read/write).

I use a usb drive portably - on some computers with a swap partition, on some without. I'd like to avoid the issues arising from both these cases; this is the solution I envision:

Ignore certain sfs files at boot. perhaps if you press a key while in boot - say f2 - puppy will show a list of all sfs and give you the option of which to load. All others perhaps get their names changed so puppy ignores them, ie dev_xxx.sfs to dev_xxx.sfs_old

I dont need to load compile every time I boot. Nor do I need open office. I like to use beryl, but sometimes do not want to use all kde's applications, so I'd have a kde35mini_214.sfs with only the two required .tar.gz (80 Mb) and a kde35XL_214.sfs with all the packages (400 mb). Then I could selctively chose.

This not only frees up ram, but also swap space. It lets users bypass the constraints on number of sfs, or that the more you have, the slower they'll run. Of course you couldnt remaster this puppy. And it might play weird with the menus, but I think its worth it.

Question is, how to do it?

Perhaps, this gives puppy distro more modularity. Easy options to switch between bloatpups and skinnypups. Reduce the amount of isos in favor of sfs. Continue distributing small pets through repository.

sincerely,
orbisvicis

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bostonvaulter
Posts: 269
Joined: Wed 27 Sep 2006, 03:41

#2 Post by bostonvaulter »

orbisvicis,

That sounds like a great idea. Try this new link http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16486

It's not ready yet but it looks like exactly what you want. You should also keep your eye on aufs because it should be less buggy than unionfs

Jason
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/BostonVaulter/avatar/puppybar.png[/img]

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sunburnt
Posts: 5090
Joined: Wed 08 Jun 2005, 23:11
Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

#3 Post by sunburnt »

Yep, Puppy should have more user fine tuning control over the loading of
the SAVE file as well as ALL the SFS files, the main boot SFS file included.

The boot GUI I made has the idea that an amount of free ram is set, the
SAVE & SFS files are loaded into ram in a set order until the limit is reached.
Then if the remaining unloaded files are on slow media CD, DVD, or USB,
then if it's possable they're copied to HD to speed things up.

And I agree... loading big files like these to ram, only to have them dumped
back on the HD again in the swap is just plain stupid.
This makes for 2 copies of the file on the HD, & it really runs no faster at all!

Bruce B

#4 Post by Bruce B »

It seems to me this topic applies to users with limited RAM?

If so why not an option 2 install, where none of the aforementioned files get loaded to RAM or the hard disk for that matter?

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bostonvaulter
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Joined: Wed 27 Sep 2006, 03:41

#5 Post by bostonvaulter »

bruce,

as i understand it it may apply mostly to low ram users now, but in the future it could have big benefits for users with high ram as well.

If you have a huge .sfs file. say one for beryl, you wouldn't want it to load up automatically so it would be nice to have a way to decide at bootup what .sfs files to load.

Jason
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/BostonVaulter/avatar/puppybar.png[/img]

Bruce B

#6 Post by Bruce B »

Sorry Jason, I was obviously not on the same page with you. I wondered, if I was, that's why I put the ? after RAM.

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sunburnt
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Joined: Wed 08 Jun 2005, 23:11
Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

#7 Post by sunburnt »

Yep, MU's MegaPup for Puppy-1 is +300MB in size, THAT needs management.
Ideally there'd be lots of SFS files & many combinations of those files.
In general the SFS files would be "groups of like apps.", games, media, office, etc.

Large ram PCs would benefit also, as anything loaded into ram runs FAST.
So you could choose which apps. have the speed & which ones aren't as important.

In contrast, low ram PCs couldn't run at all with out some kind of SFS file management.

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