Remastering correctly is about asking the user the following questions:belham2 wrote:Every time I do a remaster in a puppy, I want to scream and pull my hair out at the idiocy of not being able to easily incorporate all my personal settings into the remaster (constantly dragging and dropping everything is 18th century stuff, people!!).
- Do you want to keep the original puppy.sfs identical to what the developer released? (the answer IMHO should always be Yes, but in the case of current puppy remaster utilities is "NO - lets fiddle with it but call it the same name - despite the confusion this causes".
- Do you want to create a "personal sfs" which adds your personal preferences as a new layer on top of (ie dominating) the main puppy.sfs?
- Do you want to add some new personalisations on top of the previous "personal sfs created at some prior time"?
- Do you want to add some other fware, software or mods/scripts etc as an experimental layer below the main puppy.sfs just to see if they work (but withut crippling your system)?
Unfortunately there is no one remaster script that is able to work properly in all puppies because the "layering" of puppies has changed over time.
Originally the main "puppy.sfs" was the "top" layer and nothing else could superceed it (except temporarily loaded sfs files).
More lately puppies can have "xdrvs" which may sit either above or below the main puppy.sfs depending on how the initr.gz specifies the layering.
What is needed is more clarity around which layer is "top dog" and whether or not a remaster script alters the main puppy.sfs released by the dev (it should not) or only alters the other "super layers" that sit higher than the original puppy.sfs
Until the layering of the main puppy.sfs, and the personal.sfs, adrvs, zdrvs, fdrvs, and the programatically loaded sfs files is better defined there is no way that a remaster script can give the newbie (or even mildly experienced) user what they want.
It is currently "DIY"
(many thanks to nic007 for his remaster scripts - I use modified versions of them to remaster my Slacko 5.6 based system which is structured according to JRB's "empowering the zdrv" method. Newer pups have xdrvs that Slacko56 lacks so I had to follow JRBs unconventional method)
For me the system that works is:
- Keep the basic puppy.sfs pristine. Don't change it (after all that is what the dev released!! Don't bastardise it !!)
- Add your personalisations on top (steal the /initrd/pup_rw contents and make an sfs)
- Add any further personalisations (in future sessions) by also grabbing the new contents of initrd/pup_rw and adding them to the initrd/mnt/tmpfs file (which is the sfs containing your previous personalisations).
The only issue is - what is the layering system of your current pup?
If you don't know what it is then you have no chance of getting a good outcome.
So many puppies...so many layers!
But what about save files? I have no idea how best to handle them during a remaster. Why would anybody use them? What is the purpose of having a "system critical" file space that can be permanently and instantaneously corrupted by loading a single bad pet or piece of malware ???$%#!????