How do we deploy an empty pupsave at 1st boot in frugal?

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musher0
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How do we deploy an empty pupsave at 1st boot in frugal?

#1 Post by musher0 »

EDIT, March 2 2014. -- 4,32 Gb worth of pupsave files for Linux citizens, here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#762020
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDIT, Feb. 21 2014. -- Are you a Windows refugee? Then, please go to p. 4, here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#760340
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDIT, Feb. 17 2014. -- Are you already a Puppy or Linux user? There's a beta1 solution
on p. 2, at:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#758938
Thanks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello all.

This is a question for experienced Puppy or Linux developers.

Puppy has had the problem at least since 2008. Sometimes creating a pupsave file for
frugal mode fails. Nobody knows for sure if it's the timing of the script, the way it
interacts with whatever else is going on in the Puppy sytem, the number of partitions,
the state of the drives, or the patience and skill of the user. At least as I write these lines.

One solution is to have a ready-made pupsave file zipped and tar-gized. (For ex., a
960 Mo empty pupsave file packed this way is a little over 3 k.)

In frugal mode, Is there a moment during the first boot, when we could deploy (I mean
de-tar and de-zip) such a file so it's all ready to use when we get to desktop?

Another way is to use a script that does the same thing. (+/- 2 lines). Again is there a
moment when we can execute such a script so the pupsave is already in place, ready
to use, by the time the user gets to desktop?

The advantage is obvious: no scratching of head as to the meaning of the questions,
no slippery fingers, and best of all, this method never fails. The target is a 100 %
success rate; not 90, 95 or 99,5 %. One hundred percent.

A reasonable default size could be used; the user can easily increase it as needed later.

Some consider that Puppy is losing users because of this bug. Indeed some newbies
who fail at creating the pupsave file do not bother enquiring on this forum and simply
turn to another distro.

I feel that playing the ostrich serves no purpose. Burying one's head in the sand
regarding this bug is not helping Puppy's popularity and/or Puppy newbies at all.

Many thanks in advance for any insight.

musher0
Last edited by musher0 on Sun 02 Mar 2014, 22:08, edited 5 times in total.
musher0
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mikeb
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#2 Post by mikeb »

Its the init in intrd.. I even found one cause/fix on puppy 4 but it never got included.

Shame we are left with workarounds instead.

Actually most systems are configured during install...how its set up, save methods... Puppy tries to do it after a first run then guesses the layout during boot or more usually now with a host of parameters...so is neither one nor the other with a pile of quirks to keep you guessing since its guessing itself.

It would be far more structured to configure yer pup as part of the install and forget this setup at shutdown business altogether. (I probably grew from the multisession method)
I think I am endorsing your move. :)

Compare the slax init and you will see a short simple boot since the user sets up his install and save before running anything as an example.

mike

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saintless
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#3 Post by saintless »

Hi, musher0.

I use puppy 2 years now and I think having puppy save file working from first boot has more disadvantages than advantages.
For example if something goes wrong on first boot it will be saved and it will make more difficult for new puppy user to fix it.
Maybe having empty save file compressed in tar or zip as optional (recommended) question to unzip this file or to create new one after first boot can solve the problem you pointed.

Toni

musher0
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#4 Post by musher0 »

mikeb wrote:Its the init in intrd.. I even found one cause/fix on puppy 4 but it never got included.

(...)

Compare the slax init and you will see a short simple boot since the user sets up his install and save before running anything as an example.

mike
Hi, mikeb.

Point 1) Time to dust off your script and publish it to the world! :D

Point 2) slax does it, eh? Ha-ha! That sounds intelligent! Care to explain a little more?

Thanks in advance.

musher0
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#5 Post by mikeb »

point 1...did at the time of 4.12 release...it got revisited recently too so 4.12 users have a 'fixed' init...later pups are probably a little different...whether my fixes were included is anyones guess.

point 2... well although there was a simple script to create a save file within slax it could be done independantly.

A save file gets loaded and used with the boot parameter changes=savename ... it would be located in the slax folder. Format would be any posix one of your choice . Thats it...no need for any save first session scipt.

By the way changes=/slax would use a save folder ie the whole partition ..again decided when the install is done.

I added changes=archive.tar to use a tar save file... again this is done when installing not after a first run.

if changes is not specified a ramsdisk is used.

No scripted guesswork whatsoever.

mike

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#6 Post by musher0 »

saintless wrote:Hi, musher0.

I use puppy 2 years now and I think having puppy save file working from first boot has more disadvantages than advantages.
For example if something goes wrong on first boot it will be saved and it will make more difficult for new puppy user to fix it.
Maybe having empty save file compressed in tar or zip as optional (recommended) question to unzip this file or to create new one after first boot can solve the problem you pointed.

Toni
Hi, Toni.

I disagree that it has disadvantages. In frugal mode, everything is easily "correctable",
especially at this early stage (language and screen configurations, etc.). We just warn
the user NOT to install anything on first boot, only do the needed configurations.

As to recommended option of un-packing compressed file, it's been covered here
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#754552,
and a script variant is here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#755724
(I have no particular merit, I was inspired by previous posts on this forum and by the idea of the zipped swap files that slax provides.)

When do you deploy the persistence file on your "debian-porteus dog-cat" fork?
Before or after? It has to be before, no? Otherwise no personal configs are saved?

Best regards.

musher0
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#7 Post by musher0 »

mikeb wrote:point 1...did at the time of 4.12 release...it got revisited recently too so 4.12 users have a 'fixed' init...later pups are probably a little different...whether my fixes were included is anyones guess.cipt.

(...)

mike
Hi, mike.

Well, if you can find it again, it would be appreciated. I would like to find a way to deploy
a pupsave file ahead of getting to desktop, and suggest it as an alternative to the Puppy
user, but 1) I'd like to give credit where credit is due, if previous work was done
(meaning: your work); 2) co-operation (even sequential co-operation) allows for faster
development.

Just a couple of thoughts. BFN.

musher0
Last edited by musher0 on Mon 17 Feb 2014, 18:06, edited 1 time in total.
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#8 Post by mikeb »

The fix was to do with a save file creation not being offered if there was more than one initrd.gz present or non (ie renamed)..so not really concerned with premaking a save file.

Hmm premade safe files too... avoids the need for partitioning those sensitive windows installs.

Puppy seems to have a plethora of boot parameters now..if those are, as now, commonly used why not use it fully rather than having a hybrid mess of config at shutdown/config at boot as it is now. One or the other for a simple life.

mike

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saintless
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#9 Post by saintless »

musher0 wrote:When do you deploy the persistence file on your "debian-porteus dog-cat" fork?
Before or after? It has to be before, no? Otherwise no personal configs are saved?
Hi, musher0.
In debian live the save file deploy happens after loading 01.sfs ( +02..03..sfs if there are ones) and after /live/cow is created
I think /live/cow = /initrd/pup_rw in puppy.
At least this is my understanding while reading init and live scripts in initrd file.
I'm not sure this is the way it works with puppy also.

Cheers
Toni

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#10 Post by musher0 »

saintless wrote:
musher0 wrote:When do you deploy the persistence file on your "debian-porteus dog-cat" fork?
Before or after? It has to be before, no? Otherwise no personal configs are saved?
Hi, musher0.
In debian live the save file deploy happens after loading 01.sfs ( +02..03..sfs if there are ones) and after /live/cow is created
I think /live/cow = /initrd/pup_rw in puppy.
At least this is my understanding while reading init and live scripts in initrd file.
I'm not sure this is the way it works with puppy also.

Cheers
Toni
Thanks, Toni.

A live cow?! :D I gather you live on a farm?! :D (Just kidding!)

Image
Nine Debian persistence files... ;)
musher0
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#11 Post by musher0 »

mikeb wrote:The fix was to do with a save file creation not being offered if there was more than one initrd.gz present or non (ie renamed)..so not really concerned with premaking a save file.

Hmm premade safe files too... avoids the need for partitioning those sensitive windows installs.

Puppy seems to have a plethora of boot parameters now..if those are, as now, commonly used why not use it fully rather than having a hybrid mess of config at shutdown/config at boot as it is now. One or the other for a simple life.

mike
Thanks for those infos, mike. I'll chew over :) them.
In particular, I'll go back to the boot parameters and see if anything fits.
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#12 Post by mikeb »

well since puppy parameters can include the save file name and where it is you must get pretty close ;)

Perhaps you could do all this as an extension of the gub4dos wizard.... which could just as easily handle a frugal install too... so wizard...
frugal installs,, adds grldr, makes requested save system and configures menu.lst to run it happily.

And best of all not leave the user in mid air :D
That all sounds too sensible and though I never used it nimblex (slax clone) had a script to do a very similar task...imagine a real installer made for puppy...

mike

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#13 Post by musher0 »

Hi, mikeb.

Thanks for the additional info. I was tempted by Nimblex way back when but I find KDE too
complicated. (My opinion only.) Nimblex's install script is no doubt worth looking at.

For the record, and out of fairness, "ASRI éducation" has made a Puppy installer.
I've never tried it, though.

BFN.
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#14 Post by mikeb »

KDE is too restrictive ..and the over use of the letter K is even more rife than P for puppy...and yes its very confusing to do simple things.

It tries to be windows and does succeed in mimiking the sludginess. KDE4 is just a painful shiny thing that makes vista look slimline.

The answer I found was to use xfce4 instead..halfs the size of the iso and doubles the performance. :) At least the modular nature of slax makes it dead easy to change.

mike

ps ..I have featherweightlinux and it used kde 3.2 I think...that was actually quite sprightly in comparison...something happened along the way (feature stuffing)

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#15 Post by musher0 »

Hi, mikeb.

Maybe I need new glasses, but I couldn't find anything close to the subject in the
Nimblex docs.

The status of research now is to open the initrd.gz, find the proper line in BK's init script --
maybe just before it shows the multiple pupsave files (when you have more than one) --
and introduce there a couple of pupsave creation lines with some sort of checking.

BFN.

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#16 Post by mikeb »

Maybe I need new glasses, but I couldn't find anything close to the subject in the
Nimblex docs
pretty sure it was a boot option in extended boot menu... but don't quote me.

mike

have fun with the init...

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#17 Post by musher0 »

Hello, people!

On the other hand, there is a way to put a pupsave-create script in /root/Startup that is
executed only if you do not have a pupsave file. It could end with a "reboot", and there
you go, you have a 100 % chance of getting your pupsave file created on 1st boot.

On 2nd boot, this script is ignored and you've got a flaming new frugal Puppy all ready
for you.

So maybe fiddling with the init is not necessary. The above is less elegant, but it does
the job.

BFN.

musher0
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#18 Post by mikeb »

I would think rc.sysinit would be a better idea.... indeed thats where creating a swap file used to occur ....suppose you want a shiny gui for it though :)

Auto or manual its like the slax way of create a file and use on reboot which works just fine...

mike

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#19 Post by technosaurus »

Its been a while since I tried it, but the process went something like:

1. use dd to create a file full of zeroes using /dev/zero as the input file
2. format the file to your filesystem (ext2,3,4 for puppy, but it could be others)
3. use bzip2 to compress the file (it works the best for zero-files)
4. repeat steps 1-3 for different save file sizes
5. modify init to bunzip one of the image files to the save file location if one isn't found (feel free to add boot parameters for this)

^6... if you have time, remove all of the insane crap dealing with the old, stupid way

NOTE: Using bzip an empty multiple gigabyte filesystem compresses down to a couple kb and decompression to disk is extremely faster than generating the filesystem on the fly. ... of course this will take more time up front for whoever does it, but it will make the Puppt experience much better thereafter.
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#20 Post by amigo »

"remove all of the insane crap dealing with the old, stupid way" HeHe, that means starting with a completely blank filesystem in the case of puppy.

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