Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

nooby · Joined: 29 Jun 2008 Posts: 9386 Location: SwedenEurope

Shinobar, how I am not derailing your thread too much.

Did there exist something named TCX to Sfs convert? or Sfs to Tcz convert?

I am trying to learn TCL now and did remember something about being able to use Tcz files converting them to sfs files and loading them when Puppy starts?

They had the Virtual Digital Piano something as an Tcz file and maybe that one can be made into an sfs and used in puppy?

ICPUG · Joined: 24 Jul 2005 Posts: 1277 Location: UK

Yes Nooby - you are derailing the thread. Why cannot you ask your own questions on a new thread rather than going off topic? You've done it on the sfs.exe thread as well.

To answer this one I think you might consider sfs tcz linker here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=47976

Of course all these guys (shinobar, goingnuts, seaside) creating new 'on the fly' loaders might also consider whether they can be extended to load tcz files.

nooby · Joined: 29 Jun 2008 Posts: 9386 Location: SwedenEurope

Thanks ICPUG, you are right. Thanks for the link to sfs/Txz thing. I did refer to that one but did not remember enough to really get it.

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

0.6 fails on Puppeee because AUFS is built into the kernel rather than built as a module. Sfs_load assumes that means we're using Unionfs.

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2252 Location: Japan

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

Yeah I figured that out no problem - you really don't even need to worry about it - I just thought I'd mention it.

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

Just finished testing 0.6 and it's working very well. I think it would be good to tell the user that they have reached the system SFS limit when you run out of loop devices, instead of just saying that mounting the SFS failed.

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2252 Location: Japan

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

I was able to create one extra loop device, but when I tried to create the second one I get the error "failed to create new loop-back device". I can look in /dev and see that the new device was in fact created successfully.

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2252 Location: Japan

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

The actual limit is hard coded in the init script. I bumped the limit in Puppeee up to 11 for testing.

I think it should work fine to just create the loop device and mount point. If there are more SFSes in the list than the limit in the init script, it will just ignore the extra ones.

I'm not sure what maximum number of branches you can have in AUFS is. I guess lighthousepup supports 40 SFSes or something so the limit must be pretty high.

"losetup -f" returns nothing on my system after I run out of loop devices. I'm not sure what's going wrong exactly.

jpeps · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 2421

Experimenting with this a bit, I've found that SFS's are not just a simple substitute for PETS. Sometimes they don't work. For example, I tried making an SFS for TOR network-browser. The PET loads the network, while the SFS only partially loads it. Making a PET for directory of gmail phone plugins worked fine, but the SFS of the same directory didn't (they weren't seen in gmail). There may be a good reason to limit the number of AUFS loops. Perhaps there's something I'm not doing to make them work better.

jpeps · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 2421

Think I see what's going on. The PET overrides the whiteouts and loads all the files, while the SFS doesn't.

Edit: There was something like "initrd/pup_rw/opt/.wh..wh..opq" that prevented plugins in /opt from loading with the SFS, although the PET loaded. Worked after deleting. (there were also a few more that need deleting).

jpeps · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 2421

The solution I've come up with is a script that gets rid of whiteouts. I'll have to see if there's any problems with it, but it's enabling my SFS to load and haven't run into any problems.

USAGE: whiteouts [ -d ] ## just view them, or delete with option "-d". Whiteouts to leave alone are listed in script.