How to uninstall .sfs files?

Booting, installing, newbie
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Haplo
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue 20 Nov 2012, 16:15

How to uninstall .sfs files?

#1 Post by Haplo »

Greetings all,

I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, I have searched the forums but come up empty handed... perhaps bad search terms since it seems like it would be a pretty normal question for a noob :)

Ok so I want to delete a .sfs file I have installed i.e. click the pet icon on the pinboard, pick say 'gimp' from the list. Grab the sfs and *install* it, don't choose to use it during startup.

From my understanding (I could be wrong here) Choosing to install it means that all files needed are now present and persistent. The .sfs is no longer needed.

Now then, I have deleted the .sfs file and rebooted. File reappears upon boot.
I have deleted, used find to search for the file (none found), forced a save and rebooted... file is present once again. I assume then that there is some special status of these files that allows them to persist (for 'use' rather than 'install' purposes).

Is there a way to entirely discard them and reclaim the space?

Point: I installed Precise Puppy using the wizard to USB stick, formatting the stick and using it entirely. Puppy is running (aside from RAM) entirely from the stick. I want to learn everything I can to keep it as clean as possible since I do want to add some packages here and there.

Thanks tons for any help!!
- Hap

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8-bit
Posts: 3406
Joined: Wed 04 Apr 2007, 03:37
Location: Oregon

#2 Post by 8-bit »

Did you use either SFS-Load-on-the-fly or the Boot Manager configure bootup?
If so, get/download the SFS file again to /mnt/home.
Then go to one of those two utilities and select Remove/Unload the SFS file.
You can then reboot and the SFS file will not be loadedl.
From there, just delete that SFS file and it should stay gone.
Of course if you are booting from a USB flash drive, you have to select to save before rebooting.

Haplo
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue 20 Nov 2012, 16:15

#3 Post by Haplo »

Well, I was unable to accomplish this using any mentioned methods... for some reason no matter what I tried - selcting sfs, then deselecting it before trying to delete it, etc. - it still just kept on reappearing.

So... I just booted my regular system, manually deleted the file from the thumbdrive, rebooted off of the thumbdrive and presto - no more nagging sfs file. LOL

Doesn't seem to have affected operation at all. Not sure why it persisted after any number of deletions / saves. Have to research it more later.

Just thought I would post the beginner's hack solution :)

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