Puppy Remaster Program needs updated from 18th Century

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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fredx181
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#61 Post by fredx181 »

dancytron wrote:At least in the case of Debian Dog, the reason that Fred can make his remaster program so simple is that it attempts to do much less than the Puppy equivalent.

The puppy remaster attempts to return the /root and /etc folder to their defaults (with the new stuff you added) while giving you a chance to modify that pre-programmed stuff manually. For /etc it gives you the choice of your own hardware configurations, the defaults, or modify it manually.

Fred's version doesn't do any of that. It just deletes the stuff it knows you don't want in the remaster and lets you delete more stuff manually. That reduces the complexity a lot.
Yes, that's right, on DD for to make a remaster for "To share with friends" (or how it's called) it expects that the user knows exactly what to remove and it needs to be done manually (to avoid personal stuff left inside).

Fred

belham2
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#62 Post by belham2 »

...and here is the beauty of anti-X/MX-Linux remastering:

1) click on remastercc in Menu, up pops the box below

2) Click "Remaster", up pops the next box, click whether you want a "Personal" remaster or a "General" (non-personal) remaster.

....and away the remastering goes. You can even re-size both your /root and /home directories if inclined to, which there is no need really running frugally live......


.....but ooooooooooh my goood heavens, that was too hard to do, making those two clicks above.....struggle to understand the science behind making two clicks....where is Stephen Hawking when you need him....my God, two clicks compared to this following:

.... the effed up Puppy ReMastering Situation System, yes Dr. Feyman, is sooooooo obviously much easier, of course it is, you only have to go through 4-5 popups, and----wait for it----and, and, and if you want to "Personalize" your remaster (which 99% people want to do, like nic007 and me and others) you've got to open two different file managers, one for current running /root, the other finding the puppylivecdbuild folder, and then start dragging, dragging, DRAGGING--did I mention DROPPING too?--- everything over from the existing running /root and /etc---from your desktop settings, program settings, email settings, browser settings, redshift settings, every GAWDAAMN thing---then close up the /root while the ancient, relic remaster script then asks if you want to touch up your /etc folder---which of course you F#CKING want to, because you just spent 10 minutes dragging everything from /root over, then after finishing /etc, you've still got to go through 2 more popups answering arcane bullcrap before finally your remastering starts.

Yes, indeed, this way in Puppy Remastering is sooooo much more easy, concise, simple to understand---especially for new users---and so much better than something like what Anti-X/MX-Linux provides (detailed above, pics below), or what Fred of DDogs provides for "Personal" remastering ease & clarity & simplicity.

Keeping working on those carburators, all you puppy Remaster Daddy Defenders, 'cause it's still most definitely the way to go....oh wait, carburators don't exist anymore.......

..............except, except, of course, except in Puppy Land. Long live the Carburator!!!!

P.S. Lord, I've never asked for anything once in my life, but please grant me the coding skills for 48 hours to completely rectify this 'remastering disaster' in PuppyLand so that I can lead your peoples out of the valley of stubborness & obtuseness and into the land of openess & clarity.
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musher0
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#63 Post by musher0 »

You're very late with the pics, belham2... This is page 5 of the thread.
Why so late? Did you do it on purpose?

Expect a demand from the Wild Goose Council, Canadian chapter, to
appear before their Court for setting in motion unneeded Goose Chases.

Your tirade in favor of supposedly simple remastering interfaces is a lot
of bla-bla because in so doing you are fostering laziness in users, NOT
intelligence in users. Sure, they clicked only twice on that interface,
yippee! -- but did they know what they were doing?

Finally, the Debian-style persistence files and hierarchy are not the same
as the pupsave / puppy_xxx.sfs relationship. I find the Puppy Linux
approach to be much more flexible if a bit less user-friendly in
appearance. Let's compare oranges with oranges, shall we, not oranges
and tomatoes.

Regards.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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fredx181
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#64 Post by fredx181 »

musher0 wrote:You're very late with the pics, belham2... This is page 5 of the thread.
Why so late? Did you do it on purpose?
Maybe it's me, but I can never understand people being unfriendly or aggressive.
This is a community forum, so act like it !
It doesn't do any good to anyone reading it, IMHO. Better use PM for it, so we (readers) don't have to be annoyed or get a headache.
Also you, Belham, are you afraid your message doesn't come over if you just say things calm and polite ? If so, I think you are wrong.

Fred

musher0
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#65 Post by musher0 »

fredx181 wrote:
musher0 wrote:You're very late with the pics, belham2... This is page 5 of the thread.
Why so late? Did you do it on purpose?
Maybe it's me, but I can never understand people being unfriendly or aggressive.
This is a community forum, so act like it !
It doesn't do any good to anyone reading it, IMHO. Better use PM for it, so we (readers) don't have to be annoyed or get a headache.
Also you, Belham, are you afraid your message doesn't come over if you just say things calm and polite ? If so, I think you are wrong.

Fred
Fred?

I'm not being agressive, I am stating facts. And we do not have to be
friendly on this forum, only polite.

Besides I was the one belham2 made fun of almost every time he could
in this thread. I see you have also sent a remark to this person. Thanks.

Regards.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

belham2
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#66 Post by belham2 »

fredx181 wrote:
musher0 wrote:You're very late with the pics, belham2... This is page 5 of the thread.
Why so late? Did you do it on purpose?
Maybe it's me, but I can never understand people being unfriendly or aggressive.
This is a community forum, so act like it !
It doesn't do any good to anyone reading it, IMHO. Better use PM for it, so we (readers) don't have to be annoyed or get a headache.
Also you, Belham, are you afraid your message doesn't come over if you just say things calm and polite ? If so, I think you are wrong.

Fred

The only nastiness here, Fred, since the very first time I have posted in this thread, comes from Musher. It has been like this for over 18 months now.

Worse, Musher has done it in other threads, to other people, I have pointed out before (and I know two have PMed FLASH about Musher's behavior in the past).

He keeps bashing people if they do not have a viewpoint that agrees with his.

I only asked if we could make puppy remastering better, more modern (obviously: the answer is yes), but Musher started in right away.

I have made Flash aware of this beahvior. I know others who PMed Flash about Musher's behavior.

Musher has taken over the mantle of Pelo, and become arguably an even bigger problem. The funny part is he slinks away, goes to other threads, and tries to pretend to be nice & to help people.

No matter how many times that I, and others, have asked Musher to stop his attacking & snide taunting, he continues.

Whether Flash acts on this latest stuff, evidenced in over multiple posts from Musher alone in this thread, is only a question Flash can answer.

Musher reminds me of GCMartin, who eventually badgered people so much (even Barry, which I was dumbfounded about when Musher did this in the past, it was unbelievable)..but Musher reminds me of GCMartin, and in spite of GC's near 15,000 posts to murga, he finally badgered & berated people so much that Flash permanently banned him.

And the board became better for it.

As much as it pains me to say this about Musher, someone who I believe means well but in his isolation, old age, and whatever, bitterness & nastiness has overcome him, to the point where he ruins others threads, and others attempt to do anything different than what might be his own point of view....as mush as it pains me, I think is possibly what should happen to Musher.

You've asked me before, Fred, why I haven't been around Murga more. Do you remember? You are right now staring at the very reason i have not been around as much as I used to: Musher & his behavior over anything I post.


I am surprised, Fred, this should remind you personally of something you went through, and that I watched you (and others) participate in for over a year while the rocks & spit flew back and forth.

With Musher, I don'tr exchange anything with him (again, notice this thread).....not anymore....I learned my lesson early last year you can no longer engage directly with him. And he cannot hide behind the language barrier (again, reminiscent of Pelo) because Musher, like Pelo, knows full well what he is doing when he taunts people, when he badgers them, and genuinely acts like the worst Canadian person (of the several Canadian friends here) I have ever known. In essence, engaging with him is not worth the headache. Even praising him, he will still attack.

Don't blame me if he cannot control his tendency to be like this. What's perplexing is the more I ignore him, or I've watched others ignore him, the worse he gets.

Just like now.

There is nothing else to say except that salient fact.

musher0
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#67 Post by musher0 »

That is so far afield that it does not require an answer.

In any case, any interesting people interested in pursuing a discussion
about remastering and similar operations on Puppy, in a moderated
fashion, please PM me. We can continue this thread on QuickTopic or
some other private chat room -- until the dust settles.

Further, I have received news from a knowledgeable Internet specialist
that he should be opening an alternative, content-moderated, Puppy
forum in the coming weeks, a forum where character assassination
attempts, such as what belham2 is trying to do to me, will be nipped in
the bud.

Regards.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

musher0
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#68 Post by musher0 »

I can't see anything ugly or complicated in the attached, sorry.
Ref.: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... ost#780345
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musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

hamoudoudou

Where do we jump for Updating remaster-x

#69 Post by hamoudoudou »

then ? Everything Is stopped or Where do we jump for Updating remaster-x
"The order of loading an old puppy would be in order of layers (preference) - savefile, base sfs, zdrv, extra sfs'
I just learn that has been changed in last puppies.. First installed was the rule.. The fact that pupsave is no longer first installed disturbs me....

hamoudoudou

just to inform Dpup stretch has an Adrive included

#70 Post by hamoudoudou »

just to inform Dpup stretch has an Adrive included. If you remaster, don't create one, but add your stuff to existing
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cthisbear
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#71 Post by cthisbear »

Hey Flash!. No need to thank me.


Device that can cut noise pollution by half developed by NTU researchers


https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/si ... u-10188538

Chris.

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nosystemdthanks
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#72 Post by nosystemdthanks »

i take it no one wants to just run puppy, run refracta tools, and then be happy?

im not saying theres any reason you should, i dont know if it would even work (i would be willing to check if you like)

but refracta tools has worked in so many places, in different distros, you might get it working as a puppy package? not a request, just a thought that might be easier and-- its very lightweight and simple, the kind of thing i think puppy likes to add to its collection. again: not a request.

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8Geee
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Remaster bugs/features

#73 Post by 8Geee »

The only bug/feature I've found is the sparse alowance for remastering (dot).abcde files. For Example

1.) Doing a remster in Slacko5.7, the most recent dot mozilla file does not migrate to tmp/root. I MUST drag n drop from root. The tmp/root version is older- before the last update. (Kinda suxors when changes are made to the bookmarks, or a security app.)

2.) Same thing happens with (dot).etc having the same fix... I had to replace the whole etc file after loading a printer and desiring a remaster to save my settings. Fortunately foomatic/gutenprint were preserved.

Perhaps in the larger scope of things Puppy, these are nit-piks, but in general Remaster does well and keeps me informed about whats going on.

Regards
8Geee

If it ain't broke, theres a new app for that.
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tallboy
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#74 Post by tallboy »

I have another thread where I search for a recent Puppy that can save to a live CD, for use in old PCs, and in that thread I had some input regarding saving to a new session on a multisession CD, vs. remastering. I finally was able to make a multisession burn of Xenialpup 7.0.6-k4.1.30, which I then tuned to my liking, the few additions I made were totally in the 20-30Mb range. My modifications to the existing setup were extensive. I saved the session to CD, and rebooted. It would not load properly, and gave the reason as not enough space in the ramdisk. I discovered that the session I had saved to the CD was a whopping 321Mb! Huh?

I am writing this from a Lucid 5.2.8.7, remastered several times before I - at the time - was satisfied. Why several times? Because belham2 is right! There are many remarks in the forum from people who remastered, only to discover that all the prefs they thought were included, are gone from the remastered version. There are also some programs that use unusual and different locations for pref files, which are not caught by the remaster program. So you have to do it again! And again!

belham2: I am bald now! :lol:
Moat wrote:dancytron wrote:
... there is some discussion upthread, that the remaster program should leave the puppy.sfs file alone and just create a whatever.sfs with the changes in it. While that seems like a great program to have, to me that isn't remastering and shouldn't replace what we have. It is something totally different.

I agree - the fundamental reason for remastering in the first place is to modify the main puppy .sfs. Installing or removing wanted/un-wanted applications, for example, naturally involves modifying system files - remastering allows "baking" those system changes permanently into the main puppy .sfs, instead of relying on layered changes via savefile/folder or adrv/zdrv/ydrv/etc. to apply those system changes.

Otherwise, for example, removing say Seamonkey, Abiword and Gnumeric in favor of Firefox and FreeOffice would mean that the massive binaries/libs/blobs for Seamonkey, Abiword and Gnumeric would stay put in the main .sfs, adding greatly to it's size - completely unused and undesired. The current remastering removes 'em (by reading .whiteout files in the save, I believe, and applying those deletions during rebuilding of the main .sfs).
Of course, that is what remastering is all about. I have thrown out a lot of flashy programs that were bigger than the old and not very flashy favorites, that I replaced them with. I have also registered that there often are several ways to accomplish the same from the menu, so a careful 'cleanup' save some space. I have always supposed that having 2-3 programs that basically do the same, are placed there to give the user a possibility to weed out those not in use. I see that as a necessary remastering to shrink a Puppy as much as possible, for my use.
True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

ITSMERSH

#75 Post by ITSMERSH »

What remastering would need is a program with a GUI, where you can setup all options BEFORE starting the remaster process.

There should be lots of options to setup to keep all the significant stuff from /root and /etc related to the settings made of installed programs (default and later installed).

I have such a program: the LazY Puppy Remaster Suite. I can choose in the GUI e.g. to remaster a DE localized version just by a single checkbox. No need to make a stop at /tmp/root and/or /tmp/etc and to copy over the files. 8)

tlchost
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Simple Requirement

#76 Post by tlchost »

I'd love to have a very simple way to remaster a puppy that includes all the applications I've added...you know, the ones that eat space in the save file. I use a bootable usb drive...

My lastest attempt using the simple remaster script was totally unsatisfactory...I copied the contents of etc and root into the same directories in tmp...low an behold, the custom iso was much bigger...but my video settings and scripts/menus in root never made it over.

It seems to me that there should be a way to remaster puppy in such a way that it retains all the customization I made.

ITSMERSH

#77 Post by ITSMERSH »


mfb

#78 Post by mfb »

....RSH

I have just tried your remaster application (using the link immediately above).

In "puppy_tahr64_6.0.5" it seems to have worked perfectly - I only write "seems" because subsequently I only made the briefest of tests.

Unimportantly, because it's ease of use that usually matters, it took 135 seconds to remaster after set up (v 35 seconds using the code I posted on page 1 of this thread).

I especially liked two aspects:
(1) the ability to make, then actually use, a new name for the remastered sfs
(2) when I tried it using radky's Dpup Stretch 7.5 (RC-2) using pupmode=13 I got the message to abort - so good to be clearly informed.

It had a well designed and helpful gui - but to be fair, I recall I was also impressed with a nic007 remaster version which I tried a long while ago.

EDIT
....RSH
I don't remember where I first saw it, but the shot comes from "puppy_tahr64_6.0.5"

EDIT(2)
.....RSH

I've now tried it using pupmode=13 (with a separate z drv and with z drv included in the main sfs) and I remain extremely impressed.

It looks like a major success which retains your most recent settings - and it is likely to gain huge popularity if more extensive testing goes as well as anticipated.

An xz option - would be a nice addition for those who are happy to wait (perhaps 5 times longer) if they want maximum compression.
.
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ITSMERSH

#79 Post by ITSMERSH »

Hi mfb.

Thanks for testing.

I had a look at your script; it's pretty small. :D

I think the difference in speed of remastering is mainly caused by -comp gzip (in my script) and -comp gzip -Xcompression-level 1 (your script). I never saw that option -Xcompression-level 1.

Checked mksquashfs and gzip (--help) for that option, but couldn't find it...

There's been some scripts already wherein I'd found similar options used by the script's developer, that I couldn't find by using --help on a function.

So how/where did you get such information on these options?

hamoudoudou

what would be nice is that we had one remaster tool.

#80 Post by hamoudoudou »

what would be nice is that we had one remaster tool. why do several exist, because existing tools are judged not to be efficient..
Please tell us why woofy is bad ... or remasterx.. and so on..
i Use 0_pupbuild_tools_2.tar.gz to create my Puplets, nothing wrong with it
I suppose it does not fit your needs, why ?
Some of you have developed tools (scripts) and after discussion script was yet existing... well..

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