On keeping Puppy up-to-date

Using applications, configuring, problems
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willhunt
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On keeping Puppy up-to-date

#1 Post by willhunt »

Dear Puppy:
I have a couple of questions could we not use something like debian jigdo downloader that way once you had the iso you would not have to dload the whole thing again just the updated
parts I'm sure this would save just ton's of bw!

I don't know about anyone else but I've got just about every
pup file available what would be the chance of a puppylinux binary newsgroup sortta like p2p only better depending on server latency (some news groups on my local server have 100+ gb available)

curious in cyberspace

lol
Last edited by willhunt on Wed 26 Oct 2005, 13:46, edited 1 time in total.

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#2 Post by Guest »

There's 3 files that are Puppy linux so to say.

1. vmlinuz - the kernel
2. image.gz - the initial ramdisk
3. usr_cram.fs - all your /usr files

Would not be worth the effort as every file can be updated for each release but usually it's image.gz and usr_cram.fs.

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Pizzasgood
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#3 Post by Pizzasgood »

Well, actually there are several other files on the cd. isolinux.cfg, for example, which contains the boot menu. Then there's goofy.16, which is the boot image. boot.msg is the file that chooses the image (or something like that). There's also boot.cat and isolinux.cat. So, there are really eight files.

I believe what he meant was the actual stuff within image.gz and usr_cram.fs.
This has been suggessted before, and is highly unlikely due to Puppy's nature. The updates would have to exist within the pupfile, which would mean they would no longer be within the ramdisk, thus slowing Puppy slightly with each upgrade. Eventually, the entire thing would exist in the pupfile, and nothing would run from ram.
Also, some things can't be overwritten as they are copied freshly from the cd each boot.

Good thing Puppy's a chihuahua, eh? Those gnasty gnomes and kdelephants take a while to download, but not Puppies :)
(Relatively speaking, of course. I had dialup for quite a while, and Puppy was about the only linux distro feasible for me to download. Zipslack wasn't too bad, but it was about twice Puppy's size.)
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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willhunt
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to be more percise

#4 Post by willhunt »

the way jigdo works is to update the iso file it's self when puppy 106 comes out it will not be a complete rewrite (I assume :oops: ) with jigloo you just keep the iso and it mods your old iso to bring it upto date so if you have a iso file for puppy it inspects the iso and adds the files to that iso bringing it up to the next revision level without having to dload the whole iso file. it also has the ability to dload from multi sources which spread the bw consumption across several servers making it possiable to use more "free" servers (.edu ect) thereby bringing the cost of new distrubutions to almost nill. this tool was devloped when debian went to distroing DVD's and found the bw useage to be way beyond there means :oops:

just a thought :D
Last edited by willhunt on Wed 26 Oct 2005, 13:47, edited 1 time in total.

GuestToo
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#5 Post by GuestToo »

could we not use something like debian jigloo downloader
yes, but i don't think jigdo would be useful to download an iso

the iso contains a few small files, but mostly Puppy consists of 3 files ... vmlinuz (the linux kernel), image.gz (/bin, /sbin, /lib ...), and usr_cram.fs (/usr)

it is very likely that a new version of Puppy will have a different version of usr_cram.fs, so usr_cram.fs will always need to be downloaded ... usr_cram.fs is almost as big as the entire iso (45.4M for Puppy 1.0.5)

if usr_cram.fs is different, then image.gz will be different, because the init program in it checks to see if it found the right usr_cram.fs ... so image.gz will almost always need to be downloaded too ... for Puppy 1.0.5, image.gz is 6.7M

vmlinuz may not need to be downloaded if the kernel hasn't changed, but it is about 1 meg ... less than the size of a floppy

so there is almost no advantage to using jigdo ... there are only a few files in the iso, and you would have to download all of the big files anyway, then build the iso from the files

you could use jigdo to efficently download the Unleashed packages ... it would just download the packages that changed, and automatically check their checksums

and of course, there are various ways to mirror files like isos and packages, and to use p2p

Guest

#6 Post by Guest »

Yeah Pizza's right...didn't think of the boot files as I never use 'em.


But it's a lot of work to what amounts to a 60MB or so download, time could be better spent in other areas

GuestToo
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#7 Post by GuestToo »

no, i'm wrong
jigdo can be used to download an iso in pieces (using split)

there are advantages and disadvantages

the main disadvantage is you have to download the entire iso anyway ... it's just that jigdo can download it in pieces, with the pieces spread on different servers ... and it checks the checksums automatically ... and jigdo can run on Linux or Windows

a simple script downloading the iso using wget (wget runs on Windows as well as on Linux), and then checking the md5sum, would work almost as well

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Pizzasgood
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#8 Post by Pizzasgood »

Isn't that more or less what the axel download accellerator does?
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GuestToo
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#9 Post by GuestToo »

axel can split a file and download each part of the file seperately, either from the same server or from different servers

for example, ibiblio usually throttles my download speed to 100k ... i could download at 300k (the speed that my isp throttles my downloads to)

with axel, i could download a file with 3 simultaneous connections to ibiblio, the first third of the file downloaded with one connection, the middle of the file with another connection to ibiblio, and the last third of the file with another connection ... i don't like doing this, because it really isn't fair ... it's taking more than your fair share of the bandwidth

or if the file was on 3 different servers, axel could download each of the 3 parts of the file from a different server, which is good, because the total download speed could be faster, and the bandwidth is spread over the 3 servers

i prefer downloading large files using wget, with one download connection ... it's more fair to the server and to other downloaders, i don't have problems with servers that block multiple downloads from the same ip address, and i can resume downloads more reliably (when you start a download with axel, you pretty much have to resume downs with axel ... i find what often happens if you download from 2 or more servers simultaneously, is that one server will download a lot slower than the others, and you have to wait for it to finish downloading it's part long after the other parts have finished downloading)

i've downloaded Debian isos using jigdo, and i thought it worked very well ... it's more powerful than axel ... it works the same way, the file is downloaded in pieces ... for file systems like isos and tar files, the pieces can be individual files in the iso or tar file, so if only one file is changed, it can be downloaded directly to the iso, which is much more efficient than downloading the whole iso again

most of space in the Puppy iso is usr_cram.fs, which is a squashfs file, so you can't really use jigdo to just download just the individual files that were changed in usr_cram.fs ... you could use jigdo to replace individual files in the puppy iso, but there is not much point, since you would have to replace usr_cram.fs and image.gz anyway, which takes up most of the space used in the iso anyway

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Nathan F
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#10 Post by Nathan F »

I could get technical and point out that there are a few people running a hard drive install, who could benefit by the idea of individual package upgrades. I seem to recall something written somewhere in goosee.com saying why Barry won't, however.

Other than that, G2 is 100% correct. It's not really feasible to try and upgrade individual packages on the live cd.

If you're industrious and have limited bandwidth, you could go with Puppy Unleashed, download only the upgrades for each release, and remaster the disk yourself. This might pay off long term, but in the short term it's a lot smaller of a download to just get the iso than to get the individual packages.

Nathan

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