Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[dejan555]

I wonder if SFS files can be "loaded" using unionfs/aufs for full install users instead of copying files to system. That way they would be usable as in frugal install. I read something about adding branches and merging directories but I can't really figure this out. Any thoughts? If this is possible I could make script for "loading" SFS's, now there's task for some advanced users here
Can't be hard...

[dejan555]

Come on ppl, any clues? rxd from #puppylinux showed me examples of how easy is to mount modules with aufs on slitaz and i guess it can be used with unionfs, but commands i found don't really work, I guess that's because of how puppy's system is layered. Does anyone know if Barry is planing to use aufs in next puppy releases?

[tazoc]

The only thing I'm aware of is Pet_Maker by trio. I haven't tried it but it probably copies files. Says you can uninstall with PETget if I read correctly. http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=299118&sid=9d3e6cea69f59e09cebd679bd61304ac
Part of Pet_Maker-1.7-3 is SFS Installer http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44765
I don't know about aufs...
-TazOC

[Bruce B]

[dejan555]

ok yes you can mount office on /opt cause your sfs is made that way, but my sfs already has /opt/openoffice in filesystem so if I did that I would have /opt/office/opt/openoffice right? Every SFS is made with full paths. Thanks for links, I did try to mount sfs in /mnt then merge dirs with
mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/mnt/office=rw unionfs /
but it doesn't seem to work even that command is documented everywhere.
tazoc, thanks for links too I know about SFS installer I also made one I just wondered if there's a way not to copy everything from SFS to system since unionfs has option to mount filesystems together so you can use SFS as module on full install too, uncompressed.

[trio]

[dejan555]

Well my point is exactly that it should be merged into main filesystem:

mount -t squashfs OpenOffice-3.0.sfs /mnt/office -o loop

^^^First mount sfs to /mnt/office

mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/mnt/office=rw unionfs /

^^^merge contents of /mnt/office to / and make it pseudo read-write

[trio]

dejan,

sorry for my ignorance as i said, i'm novice

just to give alternative to you -- install but you can remove installed files only

[dejan555]

I'm not expert either, and yes your SFS installer does the work good if it uninstalls only new files, sounds good.

[disciple]

Of course it isn't really a solution, but if most of the files in an sfs are in folders that aren't a normal part of your filesystem e.g. /opt/openoffice AND you don't need these folders to be writeable, you can always just mount the sfs and create symlinks where these folders should be.

[dejan555]

OK, thanks guys, there are more SFS installers and tuts how to "install" SFS manually, but I'm pushing this cause I see that it's possible to do in linux and would make system ultra-modular and easy even for frugal installs, you could mount sfs with few commands without rebooting system and without puting sfs to /mnt/home or renaming to your puppy version.
But maybe it needs some tweaking for it to work in init, I guess only Barry would know if this can be done with unionfs and if it can be tweaked.

[rexterd]

I tried using the latest Fatdog with aufs as the root filesystem, it works ...
modified init script inside initrd.gz

root should be aufs at least one writable branch on top and one read only branch for pup_112.sfs

mount -t squashfs /mnt/sda3/wine.sfs /wine
mount -o remount,append:/wine /

than should layer your wine squashfs file, the slash at the end is your root
directory

mount -o remount,del:/wine /

that should detach the wine squashfs file from your root

[dejan555]

OK, but current puppy systems use unionfs, I don't wanna use some old release just because it has aufs.

[rexterd]

deejan555 its me rxd

Latest Fatdog-logrow has aufs squashfs sqlzma unsqlzma so that qualifies to try aufs as root filesystem (2.6.29 kernel with aufs2)

[dejan555]

Yeah I figured out it's you OK, thanks, I guess it will be usefull in new releases that have newer kernel with that support.