Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

ecomoney · Last edited by ecomoney on Mon 11 Feb 2008, 10:39; edited 2 times in total

Hi, Ive recently installed puppy (ecopup) for a friend in a frugal install that boots linux when the cd is in, windows when the cd is out (with the network card disabled!). Shes been using this system for about a week.

Although she is aware of the advantages in terms of security, speed and stability, today and yesterday she had a bad experience. Her camera unfortunetly is a windows only (a IMHO misnamed kodak easyshare). Today and yesterday she was wanting to upload her pictures from her camera (stored in her windows "shared" folder) to facebook, but was unable to find them in the linux menu structure.

One of the first things that people want to do when they first boot puppy on a windows system is to try and open their windows files and see if they can still use them (Ive seen this so many times). I think, if puppy detects it is running on a windows computer, it should put a prominent link on the desktop to their "my windows documents" files and perhaps from their /root" directory.

Anyway, I told her a little about how open source works, and said that she could get back to the people that develop puppy, and perhaps they will listen. Ive let her use my account to make this comment, quoted below!

Everitt · Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2007, 16:06 Post subject:

That's a fantastic idea!
I guess the first thing to test for would be ntfs/Vfat partitions, then look inside them for a 'my documents' folder? I'd have thought it would be possible to do this during the initial search for pup_save.2fs etc, so it shouldn't add too much to the boot up time.
I'd take a look (This machine has windows on it), but I can't seem to find the init script in my frugal install. Perhaps I have a copy elsewhere...
Still, brillient concept, really hope we can get it working!

WhoDo · Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2007, 16:37 Post subject:

cb88 · Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 1169 Location: USA

does windows write the location of the mydocs folder to the registry? and can linux read the registry? if so then the my docs folder should be possible without searching (maybe not easy though)

I always point the mydocuments folder to a partition that way if i loose windows my docs are still there....(loose windows a lot LOL)

cb88 · Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 1169 Location: USA

also does her camera have a memory stick if so get her an adaptor in my experience puppy is better with plain'ole memory sticks than any MS product.... XP just locks up when accesing my SD card....

Pizzasgood · Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2007, 17:45 Post subject:

I'd personally detest such a feature, as I tend to not like the OS to go snooping around and mounting things without me telling it to. But, that's just me and I could easily disable it, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Anyways, I don't know about 98 and Vista, but on my XP install, all the "My Documents" folders are located like this:
/mnt/sda1/Documents and Settings/<usr_name>/My Documents

The issue I see is that there are multiple users on many systems, and even a single user might have himself, an administrator, and a guest account.

Maybe it would be better to just have a link to the Windows drive, or maybe just to the Shared Documents:
/mnt/sda1/Documents and Settings/All Users/Documents

As for the init script, the part that does the scanning for the pup_xxx.sfs and pup_save.2fs files is in the initrd.gz file. In Puppy 3.xx, it's /init. In 2.xx it's at /sbin/init, but symlinked to /init.

After that script finishes, it passes control to /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit inside the pup_xxx.sfs file, which in turn calls several files in /etc/rc.d/.

EDIT: Since Puppy 3.00 changed to the cpio archive, editing initrd.gz changed. This is how you do it now:

gunzip initrd.gz; mkdir initrd-tree;cd initrd-tree;cat ../initrd | cpio -i -d
< now do your editing and what not >
find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip -9 > ../initrd.gz
^-that gets run from inside the initrd-tree directory

Also, there are no longer restrictions about keeping the initrd outside the pup_save.2fs file, and as you can see, the issue of size never comes up. So I'm definitely sold on the cpio archive.

Lobster · Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2007, 19:38 Post subject:

a development of pfind?

google desktop for Linux?
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8313017510.html

Wine + freeware explorer clone?

richard.a · Posted: Tue 16 Oct 2007, 08:40 Post subject:

cb88 · Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 1169 Location: USA

yeah there are a lot fo really smart people out there that just don't want to know (unlike me...I' smart and want to know LOL)

I think it would be a much better option to offer to create a my documents partition for the user and copy all the file from the windows one or if there are too many make a link in the puppy docs folder to the windows docs folder ...more like a script that mounts the winslozzz partiton if it needs to then opens the folder in rox or whatever (is there a way to make it work for the "default file manager"?).

as far as the google desktop I was not impressed and could care less about google searching through my files.... therefore I use pfind it is awesome...

Everitt · Posted: Tue 16 Oct 2007, 12:28 Post subject:

Pizzasgood · Posted: Wed 17 Oct 2007, 21:03 Post subject:

Yes, the /mnt/sda1 would change depending on which partition Windows is on. Generally it would be easy to find. It would be the non-linux partition with a windows directory, although that could also be a Wine partition.

A "link my Windows!" wizard would be fine by me. Also, I suggest that any auto-mounting be done with /etc/fstab, unless there is fear of corrupting it.

Everitt · Posted: Thu 18 Oct 2007, 08:41 Post subject:

ecomoney · Posted: Thu 18 Oct 2007, 13:28 Post subject: Everitt

Hi Everitt, thanks for offering to tackle this one. Perhaps the script could check to see if any of the partitions on the computer were of the fat32/ntfs file type, and if so, edit the rox desktop script (cant remember what it is or where it is installed) to put a desktop icon. Pizzasgood has a point and perhaps if the script had a check in it to see that, if puppy was running in live mode (pupmode?) asked the user if it was ok to mount the windows drive and have a look around. Otherwise if the partition was already mounted (because the pup_save was on it) I think it would be safe to assume that its ok to browse (that way the dialog wouldnt become an annoying nag).

Im looking forward to seeing your work, and have even got a new laptop with a guinea pig version of xp on it to test it on (my first windows installation in nearly three years lol!!!).

Pizzasgood · Posted: Thu 18 Oct 2007, 20:34 Post subject:

Everitt · Posted: Fri 19 Oct 2007, 07:47 Post subject:

Sorry, progress is a little slow. I didn't get anything done last night. I ended up getting far to drunk instead. Embarassed

Still, I wouldn't be a student if I didn't drink too much occasionally!
Probepart lists all partions, and the filesystem on them. It's a simple bit of grep work to list vfat/ntfs partitions.
My plan is to have a script that offers to scan, or allow the user to locate the files manually if run without arguments. It will accept an argument, the device name of the partion. If the partition is not mounted it will mount it and open rox. If it is mounted then it'll simply open rox. When the scan is run all it'll need to do is add an icon to the desktop containing the path to itself, and the partition name.