Set of ready-made pupsave and swap files,

Using applications, configuring, problems
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musher0
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#21 Post by musher0 »

Hello, everyone.

If the resize script doesn't work and you're stuck, here's a simple way to
extend your pupsave file:

Open xcalc or other calculator.

Calculate the number of Mg's you need as 32 x A x 1024
32 is 32 Mg's, A is the multiple of 32 Mg's you need, and 1024 is the number
of single bytes.
Example : 32 x 6 x 1024. Result : 196608, i.e. 192 Mg's.

Now open your editor. You insert that number in the following file, like so:
  • # 1 -- Example for new pups, after Puppy 5.7 series:
    KILOBIG=196608
    PUPSAVEFILEX=/slacko-6.0_beta/slackosave-21juin2014.2fs
    As you can see, the 2nd line has to have the path and the name of the pupsave.
    Another example, to make it clear:
    KILOBIG=32768
    PUPSAVEFILEX=/vividpup-6.5/vividsave-cl150319.2fs
    The name of this file has to be pupsaveresizenew.txt.

    #2 -- Example for Puppy versions 5.7 and earlier: simply type the result in
    your editor and save it as file pupsaveresize.txt.
    196608
Either file has to be saved | put in /mnt/home. Your Puppy will pick up
the number in the file at reboot and boost the size of your pupsave
accordingly.

I hope this helps.

musher0
Last edited by musher0 on Thu 16 Jul 2015, 11:49, edited 1 time in total.
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Mike7
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Re: Swap does not work on USB pendrives..

#22 Post by Mike7 »

Pelo wrote:Swap does not work on USB pendrives.
Why not?

Mike7
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#23 Post by Mike7 »

musher0 wrote:if your swap file above doesn't seem to load automatically. . .
How would I know this?

M.
Last edited by Mike7 on Thu 16 Jul 2015, 10:33, edited 1 time in total.
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rcrsn51
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#24 Post by rcrsn51 »

Mike7 wrote:
musher0 wrote:if your swap file above doesn't seem to load automatically. . .
How would you know this?M.
Type the "free" command. It will show if you have any swap in play.

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Re: Swap does not work on USB pendrives..

#25 Post by musher0 »

Mike7 wrote:
Pelo wrote:Swap does not work on USB pendrives.
Why not?

Mike7
Hello, Mike7.

Swap files are known not to work for hibernation of a running Linux,
and especially if they are smaller than the total RAM your computer has.

For regular use (i.e. catching the overrun from RAM), they work fine and
perform as well as swap partitions, whether they are on a thumb drive or a
hard drive.

I have used swap partitions and swap files on USB drives without problems
over the years.

Perhaps pelo misinterpreted my post at the top of this page.

I hope this clears matters. BFN.

musher0
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#26 Post by musher0 »

rcrsn51 wrote:
Mike7 wrote:
musher0 wrote:if your swap file above doesn't seem to load automatically. . .
How would you know this?M.
Type the "free" command. It will show if you have any swap in play.
You can also use "swapon -s".
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nic007
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#27 Post by nic007 »

I got hibernation to work without a swapfile. Total RAM = 384MB, Base SFS = 60MB. So given that figures i would say if you have 1GB of RAM and a base SFS of 180MB, hibernation will be possible without using a swapfile.

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#28 Post by musher0 »

nic007 wrote:I got hibernation to work without a swapfile. Total RAM = 384MB, Base SFS = 60MB. So given that figures i would say if you have 1GB of RAM and a base SFS of 180MB, hibernation will be possible without using a swapfile.
Hi, nic007.

Maybe you have a swap partition, then?

BFN.

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#29 Post by nic007 »

musher0 wrote:
nic007 wrote:I got hibernation to work without a swapfile. Total RAM = 384MB, Base SFS = 60MB. So given that figures i would say if you have 1GB of RAM and a base SFS of 180MB, hibernation will be possible without using a swapfile.
Hi, nic007.

Maybe you have a swap partition, then?

BFN.

musher0
Nope none of that. Saves to RAM when the computer goes to sleep and switch off. I'm at a total guess how much RAM will be enough in a certain scenario though. Also, I think I'm forcing it to save to RAM with the echo mem > /sys/power/state command. BIOS is set to S3 (which may be some hybrid hibernation state).

To expand further - my BIOS settings for standby/hibernate is very confusing. It only has two options, ie. S1 which is described in the BIOS as "Power on Suspend". Using Windows with the S1 setting puts the computer in standby mode (screen and hard drives switch off and work is saved in RAM). Machine is still on and wakes up almost simultaneously when pressing a key or moving mouse. Same can be achieved running Puppy and using the echo mem > /sys/power/state command.

S3 state is described as "Suspend to RAM" but nothing of the sort happens when using Windows. In Windows using this state actually puts the machine in hibernation mode ie. work gets saved to hard drive before the screen and machine switches off. Waking it up takes a bit longer. Using echo mem > /sys/power/state in this state with Puppy results in hibernation but the work is saved to RAM before shutdown. I think one needs to use echo disk > /sys/power/state if one wants to save to disk, but I haven't done so because I don't have a swap partition for this. Saving to RAM will of course result in loss of the saved state if the power cuts off.

So, all a bit confusing with my setup.
Last edited by nic007 on Fri 17 Jul 2015, 10:30, edited 2 times in total.

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Mike7
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#30 Post by Mike7 »

rcrsn51 wrote:Type the "free" command. It will show if you have any swap in play.
Thank you for reminding me. Temporary brain fog. :~[

M.
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Re: Swap does not work on USB pendrives..

#31 Post by Mike7 »

musher0 wrote:For regular use (i.e. catching the overrun from RAM), they work fine and perform as well as swap partitions
On a pendrive, one of the two must be better (faster) than the other. I haven't looked inside your swap files, but off the top of my head addressing to a swap file could be more difficult than addressing to a partition because, unlike a partition, the file has no fixed memory location (the pendrive controller has to search). No?

M.
Carolite-1.2 w/FF38 on bootable 16G flash drive; Asus eeePC 1000HA, Atom CPU, 2G RAM, 160G HDD.

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#32 Post by musher0 »

Good point.

I don't know technically how pendrives are addressed. I know from
experience that on a hard drive it's true. On the pendrive I've used it on,
I didn't notice a difference between the two.

IMO, the important thing to remember is that, when the system starts
using the swapfile, you always notice a performance hit because disk
access is what, 100 times slower than RAM access? And a slow system
is no fun... We obviously need some swap space to avoid a system
freeze, but we still try to avoid getting to the point where it gets used.

BFN.

musher0

~~~~~~~~~
PS. As a note, maybe you've heard of the f2fs file system for pendrives?
Here's an article that's not too technical.

You use f2fs on a flash|thumb|pen-drive instead of ext2 or vfat or udf.
Prolongs the life of your pendrive. There should be a pet for the f2fs
utilities, if your Puppy doesn't have them already in /sbin as mkfs.f2fs,
in /usr/lib as libf2fs, etc.

Ref. on micko's blog
And here's a copy of the f2fs-tools-1.4:
-- https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr ... f2fs-tools --
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#33 Post by Mike7 »

musher0 wrote:when the system starts using the swapfile, you always notice a performance hit because disk access is what, 100 times slower than RAM access? And a slow system is no fun.
Don't I know it. I'm fighting a slow system all the time with Carolite-1.2 on a pendrive. I still don't know what's causing it. I've tested by booting pfix=ram and pfix=nocopy, but nothing seems to make a difference. Maybe Firefox38 is just too heavy for Carolite, I don't know, and it's driving me nuts. And why is my save file 537Mb? No idea, nor what to do about it all. If you have any ideas, they would be most appreciated.
We obviously need some swap space to avoid a system freeze
I just suffered a system freeze while watching a video in Firefox and had to do a hard poweroff. Lost all my additions to bookmarks. I hate it when that happens. Time lost.

It could have been because I sill don't have a swap file or partiton. I was waiting to ask you: Can I format a swap partition in that 3rd, unallocated, 1.25Gb partition even though the pendrive has already had Carolite installed on it? Formatting an unallocated partition won't mess with the partiton table or the MBR? Also: if the 3rd partiton can be formatted as a swapfile, should I do it while in another OS so that the Carolite pendrive isn't mounted? Or is it OK so long as the new partition isn't mounted? (Sorry to sound like a boob but I'm pretty new to partitions and formatting.)
maybe you've heard of the f2fs file system for pendrives?
I did read about it somewhere, but I thought it was too experimental and maybe wouldn't support all of Puppy Linux's files. (Unless it's been perfected since that Samsung article was written.)
There should be a pet for the f2fs utilities, if your Puppy doesn't have them already in /sbin as mkfs.f2fs, in /usr/lib as libf2fs, etc
.
I did a search for anything with "f2fs" and came up dry. But the Package Manager says that the Carolina repo has f2fs-tools-1.2.0-i486.pet. Would I use that or v.1.4 in the archlinux repo? (Being new to all this, I'm hesitant to use .pets that weren't adapted specifically for my OS.)

But is it really okay to install a Puppy, say Carolite, on f2fs? Are the f2fs tools all that's needed to make everything work right? What about all those weird Puppy system files and the terminal commands?

Anyway, my immediate chore is making that swap partition and seeing if it helps things. Plus if you have any suggestions about Carolite's slowness (or my excessively large save file, or the ff38 question).

Sorry to burden you with all my problems, but I've gotten bogged down with Carolite just like I did with Puppeee-4.4. I find Puppies that I like, but there's always something important that doesn't work and I can't fix. It seems like the developers went from one Puppy to the other without ever perfecting any of them, leaving them all half-finished, like broken toys.

Frisbee in Carolite is a good example of this. It's posterior to Pwireless2 but doesn't have Pwireless2's functionality, and actually doesn't even work right (no way to switch wifi connections without deleting the current profile). The only advance of Frisbee over Pwireless2 was that it resolves the more recent WPA keys. Carolite has certain improvements over Puppeee-4.4, but other things like Frisbee slipped backwards.

But if you will help me out here a little more with Carolite, maybe I can get it to work for me.

Cheers.

Mike
Carolite-1.2 w/FF38 on bootable 16G flash drive; Asus eeePC 1000HA, Atom CPU, 2G RAM, 160G HDD.

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#34 Post by musher0 »

Hello, Mike7.

Yes you may format your unallocated 1.25Gb on your pendrive as swap.
You use Gparted to do it.

But first: don't you have a hard drive on your machine? Unless you have
to be entirely portable -- meaning: you don't have a computer of your
own, and you always use a friend's computer or one at the public library
--, I'd check if the HD on your computer already has a swap partition.

Judging from your video incident, I'd say your problem may be one of
browser cache as well. But one thing at a time please.

First check if you already have a swap partition somewhere on your
computer by typing

Code: Select all

swapon -s
in a terminal, and tell us the results below.

We'll deal with the browser cache later.

Finally, to be fair, for all things Carolina, forum member Geoffrey is your
man. I've never used Carolina, so I can't help you with any specifics.

BFN.

musher0
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#35 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, musher0.

I got a little hung up there with the forum server switch, but at least I learned how nscd works <grin>.
Yes you may format your unallocated 1.25Gb on your pendrive as swap.You use Gparted to do it.
Okay, did that, and it seems to have worked:

Code: Select all

# free
                    total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:       1024388      462688      561700            0      24676
-/+ buffers:                438012       586376
Swap:      1048572            0         1048572
# 
don't you have a hard drive on your machine?
Yes, but the basic reason for swtching from Windows on the HDD to Puppy on a pendrive is to use the HDD as little as possible. It's old and on its last legs. I've had a couple of HDD failures in the past, on other machines, and I want to avoid it happening again.
Judging from your video incident, I'd say your problem may be one of browser cache as well.
Quite possibly. I reduced the cache (in Preferences) to 50Mb, but that may still be too much. And I wonder what the consecuences of having too little cache are.
for all things Carolina, forum member Geoffrey is your man.
I haven't been able to snag his attention for some reason. Maybe he can't be bothered with my irritating newbie questions <grin>.

Mike
Carolite-1.2 w/FF38 on bootable 16G flash drive; Asus eeePC 1000HA, Atom CPU, 2G RAM, 160G HDD.

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#36 Post by musher0 »

Hi, Mike7.

That's great! Congratulations! :D

About your HD: that's a wise solution, given the age of your HD.

Now to tackle the browser cache problem.
-- I read through your messages and you don't seem to indicate what
browser you're using. So I'll give an example using a mozilla-type
browser (i.e. Firefox, Seamonkey). But the concept is the same if you
have Opera or PaleMoon.

First, open your /root folder with your ROX-Filer.
__ In your /root folder you should have a folder named ".mozilla".

Second, again with your ROX-Filer, open the disk & folder where you
have your pupsave_xyz.sfs.
__ You now have two ROX windows open.

Third, move the ".mozilla" folder in the first ROX window alongside
your pupsave_xyz.sfs in the second ROX window.
__ (Second option in the ROX sub-menu)

Fourth, once the move is finished, bring the ".mozilla" folder back as a
"absolute symlink" to where is was in your /root folder.
__ (Fourth and last option in the ROX sub-menu)

That's it.

Now you can give your web browser 100 Mg's of cache again: the cache
will be directly on your pendrive, not in the pupsave file. No danger now
of choking your pupsave file when viewing a movie on youtube, for ex.

I hope that helps. Bye for now.

musher0
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#37 Post by Mike7 »

musher0-
you don't seem to indicate what browser you're using.
Firefox 38.0.5.
First, open your /root folder with your ROX-Filer.
I could be wrong, but there doesn't seem to be any ROX-filer in Carolite-1.2. The file manager is Thunar.
In your /root folder you should have a folder named ".mozilla".
Yes.
Second, again with your ROX-Filer, open the disk & folder where you have your pupsave_xyz.sfs.
/mnt/home/carolite>carolitesave.2fs
Third, move the ".mozilla" folder. . . alongside
your pupsave_xyz.sfs in the second ROX window.
There is an entry in the context menu for "move to", and it brings up a save window called "YAD". Is this different from a simple copy-and-paste?
Fourth, once the move is finished, bring the ".mozilla" folder back as a "absolute symlink" to where is was in your /root folder.
There's a symlink entry but no absolute symlink. Is that OK?
Now you can give your web browser 100 Mg's of cache again: the cache will be directly on your pendrive, not in the pupsave file. No danger now of choking your pupsave file when viewing a movie on youtube, for ex.
This is a little confusing. Are files from applications continuously copied into the pupsave file? Or are the system files like .mozilla actually being read from the pupsave file? This question also gets back to the question of whether or not Puppy is being run from RAM (in which case the apps would have to be copied to the pupsave file; and if I only do a Save at shutdown, what's the difference?

Mike
Carolite-1.2 w/FF38 on bootable 16G flash drive; Asus eeePC 1000HA, Atom CPU, 2G RAM, 160G HDD.

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#38 Post by musher0 »

Hello, Mike7.

Sorry if I'm going to be a little dry. Someone on another thread is trying
to defend a really bad script, and it's really irritated me.

No ROX? Thunar only? Ouch.

In any case, try to follow the instructions I gave you as best you can.

I know there's not much of a difference in practice between a regular
symlink and an absolute symlink, so go for a regular symlink.

YAD I don't know.

The answer to your questions in your last paragraph is : both!

What I'm having you do with this "move-and-bring-back" technique is a
hybrid between the regular pupsave file and the "folder" pupsave. You'll
have part of your Puppy in the pupsave file and a couple of folders in the
general Puppy folder.

And it may or may not respect the principle of running Puppy all in RAM.
Depending on your amount of RAM, your Puppy may run half from RAM,
half from disk.

(Me, grumbling: :)
"And frankly, I don't care much about theories: what I know is that the
hybrid technique above works! Stop being finicky about it and apply it!
You'll see!

[grumble] Now the man is not using a run-of-the-mill Puppy. [grumble]
No ROX. [grumble] I'll really have seen everything in my lifetime!") :twisted:

Sorry for the tone. :) BFN.

musher0 out
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#39 Post by Mike7 »

musher0-
Someone on another thread is trying to defend a really bad script, and it's really irritated me.
Try not to take it personally.
No ROX? Thunar only? Ouch.
Carolite is very pared-down.
I know there's not much of a difference in practice between a regular symlink and an absolute symlink, so go for a regular symlink.
What's an absolute symlink?
YAD I don't know.
It's a builtin. The Package Manager says "GUI frontend for shell scripts", whatever that means.

Seriously, though, is "move to" different from copy-and-paste? If so, how?
The answer to your questions in your last paragraph is : both!
Oh, no.
What I'm having you do with this "move-and-bring-back" technique is a
hybrid between the regular pupsave file and the "folder" pupsave. You'll
have part of your Puppy in the pupsave file and a couple of folders in the
general Puppy folder.
Understood.
And it may or may not respect the principle of running Puppy all in RAM.
Depending on your amount of RAM, your Puppy may run half from RAM,
half from disk.
Sure. Why not?
I don't care much about theories: what I know is that the
hybrid technique above works! Stop being finicky about it and apply it!
You'll see!
It's actually not new to me. When I was fooling around putting Linux distros on single-partition pendrives, I would put all my personal files into a "MyFiles" folder next to the SFSs in /mnt/home. Otherwise they would go straight into the savefile and end up clogging RAM up unnecesarily.
Now the man is not using a run-of-the-mill Puppy. . .
No ROX. . . I'll really have seen everything in my lifetime!
Variety is the spice of life. But, blame the Carolite developers. It is a pretty weird Puppy, in all respects. As someone in another thread said, it doesn't even look like a Puppy. And you can copy, cut, and paste files from the context menu, just like in Windows, which is un-Puppy-like (or at least un-Puppeee-like).
Sorry for the tone.
Not at all. I am amused.

Mike
Carolite-1.2 w/FF38 on bootable 16G flash drive; Asus eeePC 1000HA, Atom CPU, 2G RAM, 160G HDD.

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#40 Post by mikeb »

You could alter the profiles.ini file in the home folder of firefox to point to wherever you like so avoiding symlinks and then just copy and paste.

eg
IsRelative=1
Path=preset.default

change to 0 an then put in whatever path you want and move the folder to there.

Otherwis e the command is
ln -s /path/to/source/folder /path/to/symlink

soo you have first parameter as new home and second as original mozilla profile.

My oddball pups load entirely to ram including save but if you have a polluting browser then thats not going to help much..If you want the latest and greatest you get the fattest and largest profiles plus flash may be steaming to ram with the later versions depending on the cache config..I lost track of how much ram you have though any swap space would add to the save space...ie with a 512MB machine I have 512MB swap which gives a total of around 750MB working save space.

In spite of a comment about my mentioning this I am getting no notifications since the server change so may not reply so promptly.

mike

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