Puppy drive partition mappings go where with frugal install?

[scsijon]

Firstly, having looked through multiple messages and tried the things sugested, I still can't do it.

I am building an intranet webserver as part of another training project "i've been asked to run" next year.

I've decided to use puppy in it's Frugal format as it supplies everything I need. Using frugal means the / partition can be ro and therefore nearly the safest.

But I have hit a problem

I need to be able to map /dev/hda4 as /opt/wwwroot (apache2's default web root) somewhere, so that it will be mounted on the server's startup.
I can do it with a full install, but can't seem to be able to do it in frugal.

They will only have a hard drive (old Hp eVectra's) and I want them as possible idiot proof.
I am allowing three user partitians
/dev/hda1 as /
/dev/hda2 as swap
/dev/hda3 (not available to students but a backup of hda1)
/dev/hda4 as /opt/wwwroot


any ideas or leads please?

(crumpets with honey and tripple cream for the winner)

regards

jon

[Pizzasgood]

Have you tried editing /etc/fstab? That's the conventional way of doing things. I'm nearly certain Puppy uses it correctly nowadays (in the Puppy 1.x.x days, that file got replaced by a pristine version each boot, so you couldn't use it). You'd need an entry similar to this:

Code: Select all

/dev/hda4      /opt/wwwroot    ext3   defaults                      0 0

Of course, replace ext3 with whatever the partition's format is, adjust the options field from 'defaults' to whatever you need it to be, make sure the /opt/wwwroot directory already exists, etc.

Otherwise, you could just add a couple lines to /etc/rc.local:

Code: Select all

[ ! -d /opt/wwwroot ] && mkdir -p /opt/wwwroot
mount /dev/hda4 /opt/wwwroot

The first line will create /opt/wwwroot if it doesn't already exist.


The only reason I can think of why any of these would behave differently with a Frugal from a Full HD install is if the pup_save.2fs file was on /dev/hda4. Because then Puppy would mount it automatically, at /mnt/home. You could symlink /mnt/home to /opt/wwwroot, then your save-file will still be on the same partition as your apache root.

But if the save-file is on any other partition you should be able to mount /dev/hda4 wherever you want it.

[scsijon]

sorry,
will try again just to make sure i'm right, but i've tried these things but they didn't work.

1- /etc/fstab is not accessable for change in frugal

2- /etc/rc.local was ditto (on reboot it was back to default)


maybe I just have to create a full pack and reburn a cd, then go frugal frm that.

thanks anyway

jon

[Pizzasgood]

On Puppy 2.x and newer, I'm relatively sure that editing /etc/fstab should work in a Frugal install. I know that editing /etc/rc.d/rc.local works with Frugal, on all Puppies newer than 0.9.1 (the first one I used). I don't know about any older than that though, but I assume it worked until maybe some of the first Puppies.

So, that means your installation isn't saving any changes. (Sounds obvious, but it's an important distinction, as opposed to Puppy deliberately deleting and replacing the files with pristine versions, which was the default behavior for certain files in older Puppies.) Puppy should have asked if you wanted to create a save file after you first rebooted it. If you chose yes and it was successful, then I don't know why it isn't working. Unless it's a flash drive, or shows up as sd*, in which case it could be a glitch with Puppy's write-reducing features.

On the other hand, remastering with it built in might actually be better in the stability department, because if you configured everything, and had any small things that require persistence stored out in the partitions, you could then just disable the request to save on reboot and have Puppy start up pristine on each boot. The stuff stored on the other partitions could still be altered, but the OS itself would be solid. Anything gets messed up, just reboot it and it's restored.