Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Dave_G]

Hi all.
Anyone one know what kernel parameters to use when booting Puppy4.3.1
from a USB flash drive to make it load to RAM and make the USB flash
that Puppy booted off read-only?

Thanks,
Dave.

[seaside]

Dave,

I'm not sure what you're after here...... but you can make your pup-save file "read-only' when booting from a usb flash drive by this -

[Dave_G]

Hi seaside

What I'm trying to achieve is Read-Only for everything at boot.
I have several machines acting as kiosks and they are often disconnected
at the wall socket as the night cleaning staff need somewhere to plug in
the floor polishers.
A few times I have had the contents of the USB flash drives get corrupted.
Since no changes are required, why not make the whole thing Read only.
That way no problem when power goes down.

I know it would be easier to just boot off a CD, but the computers are
mini-ATX form factor and space is at a premium so no go for CD/DVD drives.

The machines all have 1GB of RAM, so it shouldn't be a problem loading everything to RAM.

Dave.

[seaside]

Dave,

I don't know enough about kernel params to say if this could be done, but if the puppy initrd file were altered to mount "/initrd/mnt/dev_save" as readonly, it should work.

Cheers,
s

[01micko]

Dave..

Have you thought about net booting? Of course your clients must be capable of PXE boot.

It works with most late model puppies, Slacko has the pets for it in PPM.

All you need to do is remaster an image that cuts out all the startup junk, and the shutdown junk so you boot straight to a desktop and shutdown just kills everything with out saving.

Amazingly, there seems no conflict with dhcp as I just tried it.

My main machine (server) is connected to the modem/router in the 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.200 scope through a 5 port switch. It starts dnsmasq which broadcasts dhcp on the machines IP. The client is connected to the same switch, PXE enabled, it boots as quickly as CD boot and once the booting is finished it picks up the router broadcast and is already online by the time X starts.

For more information see here and here.

Shouldn't cost you anything unless you need a separate switch. Other Linux should be capable of serving the Puppy image too in case your server doesn't run Puppy.

HTH

Cheers

[Dave_G]

Hi 01micko

Sorry about the late reply, been away.

PXE did cross my mind but there is no wired network connection near
the computers in question and wifi is too unreliable.

I also tried seasides suggestion of remounting the save file as read-only
but puppy refuses and says that it's in use by puppy.

Dave.

[01micko]

Ok, here's another idea...


Do the remaster as mentioned, load onto usb sticks, add "pfix=ram" to the kernel line, and disable saving, should be a matter of just commenting out the calls to "shutdownconfig" (this is in late model woof pups, wary,-5.3, racy-5.3, slacko-5.3+.). I think you'll find it in /usr/bin/wmpoweroff and /usr/bin/wmreboot.

[bigpup]

Maybe this will work for you.
Save-Pup-Lock
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=67341

[Dave_G]

Nice ideas, will give it a go.

Thanks, 01micko and bigpup.