Understanding mounts/memory/RAM & filesystems/_save file

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canbyte
Posts: 264
Joined: Sat 10 Jan 2009, 20:20
Location: Hamilton, Canada

#16 Post by canbyte »

Interesting perspective on MSFT - this link compares MSFT to linux
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NOVL&t= ... &c=rh.msft
Too bad we can't bet on Puppy! Better than an electric car imo.

Haruumph! Why is html off?? My preference is set 'html on' All the links are dead. Sorry :-(

RJB:
best to be cautious when dealing with "lunatic fringe Alex Jones" type stuff.
Compared to this mainstream stuff
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&l=on ... &a=&c=&s=c
i'd say the lunatic fringe is looking better all the time:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GLD&t=5 ... z=m&q=l&c=
Who is the crazy really??!!

I'm surprised at the longer startup time for frugal, seems counterintuitive - any thoughts why?

Your sequential install method sounds interesting/ practical - should post in the (underused) wiki.

Curious- what is rc in 4.2rc. What does 4.2 fix/add cf 412?
---
I tried to create a swap file on a flash drive without any success, at least using Gparted. Would accept the command but made error during operation. I'm hoping that setting the flash back to original fat16 will not lead to future errors (appears to work). Thread here confirms flash swap is not a good idea
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=29755
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=19176

I'm now wondering about the advisability of a swap File as described here. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 0b6746714f
and
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28174
for very large swap files

This wiki is a bit old (v2) but may still be a good description of the operation? Quite technical, needs 'rule extraction' for us newbies.
How Puppy Works
http://www.puppylinux.com/development/h ... works.html
Barry says
"However, PCs with less than 128M really do need a swap partition for Puppy to work properly. Even though Puppy can boot up from live-CD on a PC with only 32M RAM, some of the applications are memory hogs -- Mozilla for example. Mozilla is not viable on a PC with less than 128M RAM. However, as mentioned above, a swap partition increases the effective size of the ramdisk, so you can get Mozilla to work on PCs with very little RAM, albiet slowly. It is also a good idea to add a swap file, if you have some spare space on the hard drive."
Q. Is v4 = v2 for our purposes?

I've sorta run out of questions other than still wondering what the real size of puppy is - does it really vary between 80 and 234mb depending on space available? Can other folks have a look at their ram with Filesystem>Gdmap and record their results here?

Finally, to complete an earlier thought - summary for file symbols
Maybe this has been done elsewhere???
Mostly i'm browsing and guessing so please add others & change/fill in type
open brown box = zip file
open box blue = dotpup?
hand under folder = shared
eyeball icon = jpg
meadphones = sound file
typed page = text file
typed page + A = (Adobe) pdf file
printer? (.ps) = ??
binary page (.swf))= compiled binary file
color film (.avi,.mov,.mpg)= multimedia
film abc =
console page = script (unix)
gear = ?
i encircled = help
wrench in monitor = wizard
target = save to usb
dard drive icon = drive drivers
cd symbol =
plug symbol =
! in orange triangle = core?
=
=


Cheers
Last edited by canbyte on Wed 11 Mar 2009, 18:27, edited 1 time in total.
[color=orange]1. Dell Dimension E521, AMD Athln 64, 2 GHz 1.93GB ram,
Puppy 533 on CD, accesses flash drive only,
FFox Nightly12.0
2. Compaq P3 733Hz 375RAM
Printer: Oki C3400 > LAN [/color]

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rjbrewer
Posts: 4405
Joined: Tue 22 Jan 2008, 21:41
Location: merriam, kansas

#17 Post by rjbrewer »

Canbyte;

About the size of puppy: Using live cd its' compressed image is
under 100mb and can run in 128mb ram.
With a full install the image decompresses on the hard drive to
about 220 or so mb.
Hard drives are very slow compared to ram; swap files or par-
titions help a little, but not much. Doesn't hurt to have some.

A swap partition the same size as ram is also used for hibernation
or suspend to ram by some Linux distros for laptops.

One swap partition will be used by all the O.S. installed on the
system; swap files need to be on each partition AFAIK.

Puppy 4.2 boots a little slower; has a lot of "widget" action
going on. It really is beautiful though.

I'm putting together a little piece for the "how to" section on
my newly discovered install method. Haven't seen anything
exactly like it before.

Bill Gates is buying 500,000 shares a day of a waste manage-
ment company.

edit
When you copy a link to the post, highlight it before you
push the URL button.
I still haven't mastered the "short-link" version.

rjb





rjb

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

Bruce B

#18 Post by Bruce B »

Puppy's core files

vmlinux
initrd.gz
pup_xxx.sfs
zdrv_xxx.sfs ( not used after 4.00 )
boot files

overview of the core frugal files

vmlinux

is the Linux kernel, which is expanded and loaded into memory. it is read from the boot media, which could be a variety of media types such as cdrom disc, usb stick, hard drive and etc.

once the kernel has been read, it is no longer needed during that session.


initrd.gz

it has the script and files necessary to determine your session type, additional parameters and give you the working operating system. could be conceptualized as the 'glue' to put the necessary parts together. once used, it is not needed or used again during that session

pup_xxx.sfs

where xxx corresponds to your version number. the vast majority of Puppy's files are contained in pup_xxx.sfs. unlike vmlinux and initrd.gz; pup_xxx.sfs is in continual use during your session and can not be removed. the session depends on this file being mounted and available


it is mounted as a squash file system

the mount point is typically /initrd/pup_ro2

it is mounted read-only

it is not decompressed and is used as a compressed file system

when files are needed from it, they are copied out of it (and decompressed) into memory, after the program and files have been closed by the user, they might remain in memory cache. if they are and Linux needs the memory, it will drop various caches to make room for the next program you want to run

if you have sufficient RAM, Puppy allows pup_xxx.sfs to be copied in its entirety to RAM, thereby freeing the dependency on the original pup_xxx.sfs file. if the original was on a CD Disc, by copying it to RAM the CD Disc can be freed as no files, (vmlinuz, initrd.gz and pup_xxx.sfs) are needed any longer, everything necessary to run Puppy is in RAM. The CD disc can be removed

boot files

there can be different kinds of boot files, the only thing I wish to say is Linux is not self-booting and depends on an external boot process to get anything up and running. Depending on the install type, the user has a lot of say regarding what system he uses to boot Linux

=====================

Looking back at vmlinuz, initrd.gz and pup_xxx.sfs, please note that none of these files are written to or writable in normal operations. they are all read only.

If we want to write any information at all it will not be to these files. This is where the convience of the pup_save file comes into play.

pup_save.2fs

it doesn't come with Puppy and is not essential to its operation. it is a user option for the purpose of being able to 'write' and 'keep' changes.

the pup_save is simply a file which has been formatted as an ext2 Linux format (the default format anyway)

it is not compressed

it is mounted as a read/write filesystem at /initrd/pup_rw

it is not copied to RAM or moved

in the boot process initrd.gz locates it and 'glues' it in as part of the total operating system

when using a pup_save file the user sees a layered hodgepodge of pup_xxx.sfs, (other user mounted devices) and the pup_save file, although it may be a literal hodgepodge, it appears as a nicely organized directory tree and files

unbreakable rules

a session doesn't write to our three core files ( a user could )

we cannot have duplicate files or directories

we cannot for example; have two files, one file and one directory, or two directories of the same name under the same parent directory

but we do have many duplicates and we can't. we can't have two /root directories for example but we do

layered filesystems

considering we break unbreakable rules, the way it is done is by layering the various filesystems, directory trees and files.

naming conflicts of which there are many are resolved in favor of the contents of the pup_save file.

example: pup_xxx.sfs has /usr/bin/leafpad and that is the file we are using, (the file inside pup_xxx.sfs), which is the source of the file we use. if we install a newer version of /usr/bin/leafpad . . .

. . . we introduce a naming conflict . . .

. . . we do not make an overwrite, the first /usr/bin/leafpad is in a readonly filesystem. we can't write to it. we can't delete it

we can add another /usr/bin/leafpad to the pup_save file, but that breaks the rule. you cannot have two files of the same name in the same place, which in this case is /usr/bin/leafpad

when using prioritized layered filesystems, giving top priority to pup_save we can break the rule. the /usr/bin/leafpad in the pup_xxx.sfs is made invisible and inaccessible and unknown, pup_save wins the naming conflict and the leafpad we are using is the one we put inside the pup_save file

====================

some conclusions

while you can't modify the core files in normal operation, except pup_save, it's still an erector set of sorts, one, you can take apart, and put back together as you wish.

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potchan
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Potchan's view and search for enlightnment on mem' stuff

#19 Post by potchan »

Hi Dennis, Bruce B and Team,

Take a look at this:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37660

Any help for you ? :roll:
Timmo', the potchan (=opener) team at - [url]http://potchan.org[/url]. Taste it, love it, code in it.

Bruce B

Re: Potchan's view and search for enlightnment on mem' stuff

#20 Post by Bruce B »

potchan wrote:Hi Dennis, Bruce B and Team,

Take a look at this:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37660

Any help for you ? :roll:
Only I noticed amigo referenced the swapon -s switch and
it doesn't exist in Puppy's swapon. I've attached the full
featured swapon if you want it.

Code: Select all

Usage:
 swapon -a [-e] [-v] [-f]             enable all swaps from /etc/fstab
 swapon [-p priority] [-v] [-f] <special>  enable given swap
 swapon -s                            display swap usage summary
 swapon -h                            display help
 swapon -V                            display version

The <special> parameter:
 {-L label | LABEL=label}             LABEL of device to be used
 {-U uuid  | UUID=uuid}               UUID of device to be used
 <device>                             name of device to be used
 <file>                               name of file to be used

~
Attachments
swapon.gz
(19.52 KiB) Downloaded 2031 times

Brown Mouse
Posts: 564
Joined: Tue 09 Jun 2009, 21:06

#21 Post by Brown Mouse »

Could somebody explain what happens when the pup save file is full.Can another one be added and how?

Bruce B

#22 Post by Bruce B »

Brown Mouse wrote:Could somebody explain what happens when the pup save file is full.Can another one be added and how?
Apologies for a late reply if you will.

Don't fill it.

About 80 to 90 percent full, decide what to do.

Maybe some house cleaning is all you need to do.

If house cleaning (deleting and moving files) is not
sufficient, then use the Puppy utilities to enlarge the
pup_save file.

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SilverPuppy
Posts: 143
Joined: Fri 29 May 2009, 02:21

Re: Potchan's view and search for enlightnment on mem' stuff

#23 Post by SilverPuppy »

Bruce B wrote:
potchan wrote:Hi Dennis, Bruce B and Team,

Take a look at this:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37660

Any help for you ? :roll:
Only I noticed amigo referenced the swapon -s switch and
it doesn't exist in Puppy's swapon. I've attached the full
featured swapon if you want it.

Code: Select all

Usage:
 swapon -a [-e] [-v] [-f]             enable all swaps from /etc/fstab
 swapon [-p priority] [-v] [-f] <special>  enable given swap
 swapon -s                            display swap usage summary
 swapon -h                            display help
 swapon -V                            display version

The <special> parameter:
 {-L label | LABEL=label}             LABEL of device to be used
 {-U uuid  | UUID=uuid}               UUID of device to be used
 <device>                             name of device to be used
 <file>                               name of file to be used

~
Groovy, man! I thought that swapon was a kernel module that had been stripped down and couldn't be easily restored to full functionality. I now have fully-functional swapon and hence have double the swap speed with 2 physical swap devices of equal priority! Before it was impossible. Bravo!

danna
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue 17 Nov 2009, 12:09

#24 Post by danna »

To me memory means RAM

To Puppy memory means in most cases 'physical storage space' and some times might mean RAM.
Basically, this. Thanks for the info btw. I understand it now.


Regards,
Danna
Ordinateur portable pas cher

gonkbag
Posts: 29
Joined: Thu 07 Jan 2010, 17:32
Location: uk

#25 Post by gonkbag »

Hello
I've jusy read and (mostly) digested this entire thread, as it sort of answers some questions I have (paricularly post by DMcCunney).
Noteably my pupsave file never gets any smaller no matter how many files are deleted, I particularly noticed this yesterday when I thought I'd try vlc and mplayer to see if they where any better than xine, now if I install them both on my fedora 12 laptop and then uninstalled, my hard drive free space would return to it's original size.

I decided to keep mplayer and plugin and delete vlc using the add/remove software facility that I used to install, only when I looked in /usr/bin vlc is still there, so deleted manually, any ideas why that is so ?
Also I had 18Mb free vlc is 7.8Mb, after installing and playing a dvd my free space dropped alarmingly to 1Mb, I decided to do a hard shutdown (no pupsave) after restarting I had my 18Mb back and tried vlc again, again the same drop to 1Mb.
I had to increase the pupsave by 16Mb had a restart and installed mplayer, decided to keep mplayer and got rid of vlc, once again removing vlc and a couple of other unused downloads the pupsave has exactly the same amount free.
Reading this thread I'm thinking my 1Gb memeroid stick must have some "slack space" anyone know of a linux equivalent to CHKDSK or am I going to have to use a windoze machine to try and restore ?
My pupsave file is now 192Mb (firefox 3.6+a few addons and mplayer+plugin only additional software installed) which is sort of going away from the point of puppy for me, i.e small and fast
Any help is appreciated
btw I'm usng 4.3.1 on an old hp compaq laptop with 2Gb ram and my son's 1001ha eeepc 1Gb ram

DMcCunney
Posts: 889
Joined: Tue 03 Feb 2009, 00:45

#26 Post by DMcCunney »

gonkbag wrote:Hello
I've jusy read and (mostly) digested this entire thread, as it sort of answers some questions I have (paricularly post by DMcCunney).
I'm glad it helped you.
Noteably my pupsave file never gets any smaller no matter how many files are deleted, I particularly noticed this yesterday when I thought I'd try vlc and mplayer to see if they where any better than xine, now if I install them both on my fedora 12 laptop and then uninstalled, my hard drive free space would return to it's original size.
I'm not an expert on pup_save files, but I think you misunderstand how they work.

On your Fedora system, you have a full install to disk. The total space is the size of the partition on which you did the install As you add files or remove files, the amount of available space on the disk shrinks or grows, but the total size remains the same.

Think of your pup_save file as a disk. It has a fixed size, determined when you create it. It is treated as a file system and mounted by Puppy. If you add applications, the free space in the pup_save will decrease by the amount the applications took. If you remove the applications the amount of free space in the pup_save file will will increase, but the overall size of the pup_save file will be the same.

There are utilities in Puppy to resize a pupsave file, such as making it larger if you decide you need more space in it, but it does not grow and shrink dynamically. It's whatever size you specified when you made it.
Reading this thread I'm thinking my 1Gb memeroid stick must have some "slack space" anyone know of a linux equivalent to CHKDSK or am I going to have to use a windoze machine to try and restore ?
The Linux equivalent of CHKDSK is fsck, but "slack space" isn't your problem, and fsck isn't the cure.

Slack space is an artifact of the FAT16 file system used by MS-DOS and Windows 3.X. (Windows 9.X introduced FAT32, which is a different matter.)

The smallest unit of disk space on a FAT16 system readable/writable in one operation was the cluster. Each cluster had to have a unique address. FAT16 used a 16 bit integer to hold the address, so there were a maximum of 65,536 clusters available on a FAT16 volume. (2^16=65,536) How big a cluster was was determined by the size of the volume. 2GB was the maximum possible volume size under FAT16, and on a 2GB volume, a cluster was 32KB.

Only one file could be on a cluster, so if you saved a 1K text file, it used 32K of disk space. The unused space in the cluster was the "slack space" referred to.

On Linux systems, the standard disk block size is 1K, so slack space isn't really an issue.

You need to discover what the applications you want to run need in terms of space, and resize your pupsave file accordingly. You need more than just the actual space taken by the program. Many programs need to create temporary files as part of what they do, and those will be in the pupsave. (It sounds like that was wht vlc was doing.) Some programs will remove temp files they create when they exit. Others may not, and it will be on you to clean up if needed after they are run. (And it will depends on where they are created. If they get written to /tmp, for example, that is normally cleared on shutdown and reboot.)
My pupsave file is now 192Mb (firefox 3.6+a few addons and mplayer+plugin only additional software installed) which is sort of going away from the point of puppy for me, i.e small and fast
Any help is appreciated
btw I'm usng 4.3.1 on an old hp compaq laptop with 2Gb ram and my son's 1001ha eeepc 1Gb ram
RAM isn't the issue. You have more than enough for Puppy on either machine. I don't play media files on my Puppy box, so mplayer isn't an issue, but I do use Firefox 3.6 and addons. It's a fairly large program. For that matter, I also use Open Office 3.2 (which is something like 160MB for the programs themselves) and other large things like IBM's Eclipse programmer's IDE, which is another 170MB or so.

Puppy itself and the bundled applications that come with it are relatively small and fast. Other things I run are big and slow. I knew that going in.

I run Puppy in a Full install to an 8GB partition, so space isn't a worry. If I ran a Frugal install I'd look at using a different strategy. I might get the big apps like Firefox as SFS files, and only mount them when I planned to use them, instead of having them as part of my pupsave and loaded every time.
______
Dennis

gonkbag
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Joined: Thu 07 Jan 2010, 17:32
Location: uk

#27 Post by gonkbag »

Hello
thanks for the reply, although no linux virgin I must confess to not quite understanding how the pupsave file works, and am still not quite understanding why my available free space never gets any smaller.
Having 18Mb free and deleting an 8 Mb file I'm still left with 18Mb free, it's as if the pupsave file cannot be overwritten or space on it freed up, or there's another trash file somewhere (other than ~/.trash) full of junk, if so could anyone direct me to it ?
I may just delete my pupsave file and create a new one with just firefox and mplayer, I prefer youtube etc without flash
thanks again

zbys
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon 06 Apr 2009, 13:04

pupsave files

#28 Post by zbys »

Deleting a pupsave file works well for me - I first create a new pupsave and then copy over various stuff such as the Mail directory in /root/.mozilla/default/"randomfilename"/ this keeps my old emails. There are other files in this "randomfilename"/ directory that hold bookmarks and addresses too. I also copy the my-* directories in root where I have placed things like the skype bins and libs (though skype also needs /var/lib/dbus copied to work and the sounds from usr /share/skype/sounds. Its easy enough to do by copying complete directories though you can get more than you really need. All my documents, pictures, sounds (which is the vast majority of the files) I keep on a separate partition.

I don't do this anymore- reason I used to copy the pupsave file like this was that every now and then it would crash and be corrupted - this is true for usb sticks and a usb harddisk and for at least 3 versions of puppy (4.1.2 , 4.2 and 4.3.1). I have since found that by rebooting with another pupsave and running e2fsck -y on on the unmounted original pupsave file the corruption goes away . I intend to add this to the rc.shutdown script but first want to see if there is a way to stop the corruption happening in the first place.

There is a lot of very useful information in this forum but it does seem to indicate a pattern that though puppy/linux is the best way to run a old/small pc (that's why so many use it), it does have many quirks especially with the filesytem and booting.

Zbys

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RetroTechGuy
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Location: USA

#29 Post by RetroTechGuy »

gonkbag wrote:Hello
thanks for the reply, although no linux virgin I must confess to not quite understanding how the pupsave file works, and am still not quite understanding why my available free space never gets any smaller.
Having 18Mb free and deleting an 8 Mb file I'm still left with 18Mb free, it's as if the pupsave file cannot be overwritten or space on it freed up, or there's another trash file somewhere (other than ~/.trash) full of junk, if so could anyone direct me to it ?
I may just delete my pupsave file and create a new one with just firefox and mplayer, I prefer youtube etc without flash
thanks again
I find that deleting files within the pupsave doesn't immediately clear the space (perhaps a result of the union filesystem). However, typically upon reboot, it shows the space cleared. And that may also be an artifact of running the pupsave on a flash drive, versus HDD (as Puppy avoids thrashing your flash, by storing in memory)...

Other things that help with internal pupsave space is moving large files/folder outside of the pupsave, and symbolic linking them back in. For example, I moved my entire .thunderbird folder out onto /mnt/home/, then dragged the folder back to produce the symbolic link to it (my Email folder is larger than my pupsave). I have also pushed the 2 big firefox index files (.sqlite?) out to /mnt/home/, as they annoy me. And my ClamAV virus defs now sit outside as well. These latter 2 examples, the files themselves are symbolically linked in.

These last two changes pushed my available free space to about 200 MB (and my pupsave is still less than 512MB -- I could probably go back to my original 256MB size, with the changes above).

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RetroTechGuy
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Location: USA

Re: pupsave files

#30 Post by RetroTechGuy »

zbys wrote:Deleting a pupsave file works well for me - I first create a new pupsave and then copy over various stuff such as the Mail directory in /root/.mozilla/default/"randomfilename"/ this keeps my old emails. There are other files in this "randomfilename"/ directory that hold bookmarks and addresses too. I also copy the my-* directories in root where I have placed things like the skype bins and libs (though skype also needs /var/lib/dbus copied to work and the sounds from usr /share/skype/sounds. Its easy enough to do by copying complete directories though you can get more than you really need. All my documents, pictures, sounds (which is the vast majority of the files) I keep on a separate partition.

I don't do this anymore- reason I used to copy the pupsave file like this was that every now and then it would crash and be corrupted - this is true for usb sticks and a usb harddisk and for at least 3 versions of puppy (4.1.2 , 4.2 and 4.3.1). I have since found that by rebooting with another pupsave and running e2fsck -y on on the unmounted original pupsave file the corruption goes away . I intend to add this to the rc.shutdown script but first want to see if there is a way to stop the corruption happening in the first place.

There is a lot of very useful information in this forum but it does seem to indicate a pattern that though puppy/linux is the best way to run a old/small pc (that's why so many use it), it does have many quirks especially with the filesytem and booting.

Zbys
For some reason, the pupsaves don't cleanly umount. I also think that this occurs more often on the HDD, than on the flash drive (my suspicion is that Puppy _thinks_ that it has synced the HDD, and so it spends less time making sure it syncs and umounts correctly -- my flash drive version takes MUCH longer to umount and shutdown).

On my frugal install, I added pfix=fsck to the kernel line. I have also remastered the Puppy 4.3.1 CD and added pfix=fsck to the boot sequence (so those machines I boot from CD have that feature). I haven't had a trashed pupsave since.

To do this, I created a fresh, new pupsave (or pfix=ram), so you don't add any of your personalized, goofy crap into the CD. Then use the remaster command (under Menu, Setup, Remaster). Select all defaults, and edit the isolinux.cfg, and follow Pizza's answer:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 7&start=60

adding pfix=fsck on the "append" line, save it as an ISO and/or burn it off.

This is now the version that I'm giving to people (I want it to check their pupsave on every boot, so they don't have issues).

I'm hoping that Barry will make this the default, in the next official release (I don't want newbies to need to learn too much, too fast -- make it easy for them to "join the club" ;) )

Bruce B

Re: pupsave files

#31 Post by Bruce B »

RetroTechGuy wrote:
I'm hoping that Barry will make this the default, in the next official release (I don't want newbies to need to learn too much, too fast -- make it easy for them to "join the club" ;) )
Yes, there are good reasons a person would not want to run the operating system on a filesystem in need of repairs. Good reasons.

Nevertheless, I highly doubt what you are 'hoping' for will happen at the developer level (i.e. Barry) The reason why is he already did it and guess what? Lots of complaints because users were having to wait for the e2fsck to complete. (I think it was version 3.1)

However, if you can, it's easy to modify initrd.gz to have this option and other options as you please.

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RetroTechGuy
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Re: pupsave files

#32 Post by RetroTechGuy »

Bruce B wrote:
RetroTechGuy wrote:
I'm hoping that Barry will make this the default, in the next official release (I don't want newbies to need to learn too much, too fast -- make it easy for them to "join the club" ;) )
Yes, there are good reasons a person would not want to run the operating system on a filesystem in need of repairs. Good reasons.
Indeed. Critical reasons! It's particularly bad practice to mount a damaged FS in read-write mode.

I personally had several pupsaves become corrupted to the point of being unusable. A colleague of mine has a similar problem, and he was rather disappointed in Puppy at that point (he also tinkers on a good deal of old equipment -- he's not a "newbie" when it comes to this).

Puppy looks really good, and works really well...and then it commits suicide, after a couple dozen reboots.

At least the M$ Windows OS's take several months, to several years, before committing suicide.

Let me say again, that I am a big fan of what Barry and others have done here! We just need a couple tweaks to make Puppy "ready for prime time".

On my frugal install, I patched the menu.lst to "pfix=fsck". On the live boot CD, it is more difficult (I did this also, but this may be beyond what a newbie could do). Prior to this CD patch, I had been typing "puppy pfix=fsck" on every single CD boot...very tedious.

If the point of Puppy is to make things hard for newbies, and discourage them from using Linux (after they lose all their data in their pupsave, which they yet haven't learned to back-up), then the status quo is the right method. Otherwise, a simple patch will help keep them out of trouble. (if I sound a little grumpy about it, I am... I like systems that "just work")
Nevertheless, I highly doubt what you are 'hoping' for will happen at the developer level (i.e. Barry) The reason why is he already did it and guess what? Lots of complaints because users were having to wait for the e2fsck to complete. (I think it was version 3.1)
OK, so we add it as a query, whose default answer is "yes", with a timeout (if you're not sitting there waiting, and only have 1 pupsave to load, it continues booting without waiting for your answer... fscking the pupsave in the process).

Let's be realistic here. Most pupsaves are small. In fact, I read somewhere that it wasn't recommended that you exceed 2GB for the OS (i.e. pupsave). Even a 2GB partition doesn't take very long to scan. And given the data integrity issue, it's worth the wait. Even with the fsck on my pupsave, the boot time is shorter than loading Windows 98 on my machines (I currently have 3 machines which regularly run in Puppy, and it's true on all 3).

Part of the problem here is that Puppy does not cleanly umount the pupsave (I found this in in several 4.x versions). This seems to be more common for pupsaves stored on the HDD, than on a USB flash (my HDD shutdown is very quick, and ALWAYS corrupted. My USB shutdown takes MUCH longer, and only occasionally shows corruption).

So the fsck is simply a bandaid for this larger issue (I might agree that fsck is somewhat unnecessary on every boot, if the partition is cleanly umounted).

The "speed" complaint reminds me of a copy issue I had in an early version of Linux. The "cp" command was really fast. Unfortunately, it didn't copy correctly a substantial fraction of the time, so it was often faster to reboot into Windows98 and perform the copy, then reboot back to Linux (as I often stored files on a Fat32, so they were accessible to both OS). Otherwise, you had to copy the files, then perform a CRC on them, to make sure that they had copied uncorrupted...then recopy the corrupted files. Bad...bad...bad...
However, if you can, it's easy to modify initrd.gz to have this option and other options as you please.
Actually, you remaster the CD and follow Pizza's instructions:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 7&start=60

placing pfix=fsck on the isolinux.cfg append line.

In a frugal install, you can add it on the kernel line, in menu.lst

BTW, I am now distributing my "fsck" modded CD to the folks that I give it to (i.e. the same as the original, with only this change).

Bruce B

Re: pupsave files

#33 Post by Bruce B »

RetroTechGuy wrote: To do this, I created a fresh, new pupsave (or pfix=ram), so you don't add any of your personalized, goofy crap into the CD. Then use the remaster command (under Menu, Setup, Remaster). Select all defaults, and edit the isolinux.cfg, and follow Pizza's answer:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 7&start=60

adding pfix=fsck on the "append" line, save it as an ISO and/or burn it off.

This is now the version that I'm giving to people (I want it to check their pupsave on every boot, so they don't have issues).

I'm hoping that Barry will make this the default, in the next official release (I don't want newbies to need to learn too much, too fast -- make it easy for them to "join the club" ;) )
If you work careful and want to save time, you can use a hexeditor to make some modifications to the boot args. The reason this is possible is because it is in plain text.

Use overwrite and not insert mode, which is default with most hexeditors. We don't want to add any bytes.

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Béèm
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#34 Post by Béèm »

I just started to use .3fs save files, as it seems they are more stable.
Not long enough to give valuable feedback yet.

I used information from two posts to do this
  1. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51410
  2. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 296#293296
Time savers:
Find packages in a snap and install using Puppy Package Manager (Menu).
[url=http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HomePage]Consult Wikka[/url]
Use peppyy's [url=http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html]puppysearch[/url]

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Béèm
Posts: 11763
Joined: Wed 22 Nov 2006, 00:47
Location: Brussels IBM Thinkpad R40, 256MB, 20GB, WiFi ipw2100. Frugal Lin'N'Win

Saving to ext2, ext3, ext4, etc..

#35 Post by Béèm »

Saving to ext2, ext3, ext4, etc..

Good news from Barry.
Time savers:
Find packages in a snap and install using Puppy Package Manager (Menu).
[url=http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HomePage]Consult Wikka[/url]
Use peppyy's [url=http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html]puppysearch[/url]

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