Questions re running Puppeee from a pen drive

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Mike7
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Joined: Tue 19 Feb 2013, 00:31

Questions re running Puppeee from a pen drive

#1 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Puppy Linux Forum members.

A couple of weeks ago. after a lot of difficulty, I succeeded in installing Puppeee 4.4 to a USB pendrive (using Windows) to run my Asus 1000HA netbook. (No HDD install). I got help from people in the Puppy Derivatives thread for that.

I chose Puppy Linux from a bunch of other netbook-oriented distros because, among other things, it's supposed to operate in RAM and be resource-light. When I boot it, though, I get a list of choices that includes putting system files in RAM. How come? Doesn't the whole system run in RAM normally?

Second question: Every now and then a notice appears on the screen saying it's saving the save file. As I understand it, the save file is part of Puppy's persistence. But why does it need to save the file while I'm working? Wouldn't it be better to just save it once when I shut down? Aside from being distracting, it's wearing on the pendrive. Is there a reason for the periodic saves?

Use of my 4Gb pendrive. How much space does Puppeee actually need and use? I didn't make partitions before installing it, and I'm wondering if I'm not wasting a lot of unused space on the pendrive. For example, could I still make some new partitions without damaging the Puppeee operating system, which is working very nicely? On the other hand, can I use space on the pendrive that Puppeee isn't using without making new partitions, like for keeping personal files? Do I have access to the unused 3Gb (?) on the pendrive?

I'm a little confused by all the File Managers and Desktop Managers and such in Puppeee. It's not easy to figure out what they do and how. Do I really need them? I like the way things are by default. Everything’s fine the way it’s set up. Can I just ignore all those mangement and control programs?

Last question: A file named ze505332.sfs appeared in my root directory. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there when I first installed the operating system. Any idea what it is?

That’s all for now. I hope you can help me out. I really like Puppeee. It’s a great relief to me having this marvellous operating system running my computer from a pendrive.

Cheers!

Mike

capicoso
Posts: 172
Joined: Fri 13 Jan 2012, 23:38
Location: Argentina

#2 Post by capicoso »

I didn't use Puppeee, but, i suppose it asks you because for machines with 256mb and lower, it's better to not load them(i'm not sure though, none of my puppies ever asked me for that)

For the 2nd question. What if you made changes, in the last 8 hours, and all of a sudden the power goes off...? You can change this though, open console and type, eventmanager . Go to save session tab, and where it shows a box with probably 30 on it - minutes, change that 30 to 0.

Does puppeee install frugal like all others?
The size depends on what you do with it... i never used more than 3gb... You could resize and partition the filesystem, it won't damage your puppy, but it's always good to make a backup, at least of your savefile. You could symlink your documents, downloads, and other folders inside puppy, to the pendrive partition, so you don't fill up your puppy with downloaded things or documents that are irrelevant to puppy. This is my experience using other puppies, never tried puppeee, but i suppose it works similar to the others...

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Mike7
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#3 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, capicoso.

You wrote:
i suppose it asks you because for machines with 256mb and lower, it's better to not load them (i'm not sure though, none of my puppies ever asked me for that)
My machine has 1Gb of RAM. I don't know how big the save file is because I can't find it <grin>.
What if you made changes, in the last 8 hours, and all of a sudden the power goes off.
I see your point. As a matter of fact, I changed the interval to 120, but it didn't seem to take effect. Maybe the underlying program isn't working right in Puppeee 4.4, or got corrupted. I'll see if I can change it in the terminal (kinda scary).
Does puppeee install frugal like all others?
I have no idea. I never understood what "frugal" means.
i never used more than 3gb
Was that mostly personal files, or did you download a lot of pets?
You could resize and partition the filesystem, it won't damage your puppy
I started Gparted one day in order to do this, but it gave a warning about maybe damaging the existing file system, so I did nothing.
it's always good to make a backup, at least of your savefile.
I'd love to do that, if I could just figure out where the save file is and where to put a copy of it <grin>.
You could symlink your documents, downloads, and other folders inside puppy, to the pendrive partition, so you don't fill up your puppy with downloaded things or documents that are irrelevant to puppy.
That sounds like a very good idea. Let me see if I've got this straight. I would create a new partition on the same pendrive, taking up around half the space (2Gb). Then transfer over to that new partition my personal files and downloads. Then symlink them back to the partition where Puppeee is. Is that right?

Cheers!

Mike

capicoso
Posts: 172
Joined: Fri 13 Jan 2012, 23:38
Location: Argentina

#4 Post by capicoso »

hey
Frugal means that you don't need an entire partition for the OS like windows or other linux. A frugal can be installed for example, in the C:\ of Windows. It just uses 4 files, the savefile, the .sfs file, vmlinuz, and initrd.gz . All in the same folder. So you wouldn't need to repartition your pendrive, if you have just 1 partition, with puppy frugally installed, you can use the rest of the partition for your personal files or whatever you want(windows will see this partition with no problems)
Also, to know if it's frugally installed, if you go to /mnt/home you'll see your pendrive partition with the puppy folder on it. Can you see anything in /mnt/home?

How is it partitioned your pendrive?

Gparted as any other partition manager, will always warn you, it shouldn't happen anything bad, but in case something goes wrong they warned you. The most usual thing that goes wrong is because of human errors... or if your power goes off in the middle of a resizing...

My 3gb was because i had tons of multimedia programs for my college, all audio video and graphic programs, like an ubuntu studio, plus the QT4.8 libs(huge), JRE, KDE, etc. No personal files, all of my puppies have the Downloads folder symlinked to the same one outside all of puppies. So whenever i download something in any puppy( i have 4 o 5 that i use a lot) they download to the same common folder.

If you have no HDD, then your savefile MUST be in the pendrive, somewhere... Do you remember the name?... the file extension should be .sf2, .sf3, or .sf4.
That sounds like a very good idea. Let me see if I've got this straight. I would create a new partition on the same pendrive, taking up around half the space (2Gb). Then transfer over to that new partition my personal files and downloads. Then symlink them back to the partition where Puppeee is. Is that right?
Again, how do you have your pendrive partitioned? You could post a pic of gparted showing your partitions, and the folders on the filemanager. Like i said you shouldn't need to resize, if it's frugally installed(which i suppose because you're using a savefile). All in the same partition. If your puppy savefile is 1GB, it'll always be 1GB even if you're just using 256MB, so you're not eating the partition space, if you get to the limit of 1GB you have to resize it.
The symlink part is just like you said.
You'll see that puppy apart from using .pet files, also uses .sfs files. They're like .pets, but they don't get installed inside puppy, they're downloaded to /mnt/home(recommended) (your pendrive outside puppy filesystem) and get loaded by puppy on each boot. This way, you can have huge programs, eating the partition space, but not puppy's savefile so it stays low and clean.

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Mike7
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#5 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, capicoso. I really appreciate your help with all this!

My 4Gb pendrive with puppeee 4.4 on it is all one partition (E:\), formatted in FAT32. I installed Puppeee on it from within Windows.

I am in Windows now and have made a copy of the pendrive directory tree:

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

Volume in drive E is PUPPEEE4-4
Volume Serial Number is 08D2-39EC

Directory of E:\

02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> boot
09/03/2010 08:00 PM 126,832,640 eee-505.sfs
08/25/2010 04:51 PM 1,005,294 initrd.gz
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 2,453 syslinux.cfg
06/29/2010 10:15 PM 3,289,584 vmlinuz
08/29/2010 11:18 AM 5,713,920 ze505332.sfs
02/18/2013 03:21 AM 536,870,912 eeesave-first.2fs
7 File(s) 673,714,803 bytes
1 Dir(s) 3,326,361,600 bytes free

Directory of E:\boot

02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> .
02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> ..
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 200,417 puppeee.png
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 111,864 mt86p
02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> syslinux
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 144,392 vesamenu.c32
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 12,372 chain.c32
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 176 bootinst.sh
02/19/2013 11:43 AM 1,263 bootinst.bat
7 File(s) 470,484 bytes
3 Dir(s) 3,326,357,504 bytes free

Directory of E:\boot\syslinux

02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> .
02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> ..
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 24,592 syslinux
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 70,196 lilo
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 404 mbr.bin
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 26,624 syslinux.exe
06/18/2010 01:04 PM 27,268 extlinux
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 21,528 syslinux.com
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 93,260 rxvt
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 4,019 linuxinstall.sh
9 File(s) 267,891 bytes
2 Dir(s) 3,326,361,600 bytes free

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

When I first booted the pendrive I was aked to name the save file, and I named it eeesave-first.2fs, as you can see. It has grown quite large (536,870,912 bytes). I do not know why it is so large. Perhaps the iso files of other Puppy versions and other distros are in it. I probably need to get them out of there by doing as you suggested and putting them, together with downloaded pets, into /mnt/home (right?). Also, I don not know what ze505332.sfs is or how it got into my /root folder.

I am going to reboot into Puppeee now, so I can look into /mnt/home, and then will be back. . .

I am back, but still in Windows. I can no longer boot the Puppeee pendrive! Something must have happened to it when I was making text files of the directory tree, which got put into the Puppeee folders.

I did it with the command line, redirecting output to a text file, like this:
E:\ dir > E_root.txt
I did the same for the other two directories in E (boot and syslinux), and the three text files went into each of the three directories in E (those three text files are not in the directory and file trees you see above because I deleted them afterwards).

That seems to have screwed up the pendrive so it won't boot!

Can you help me? I'm very upset about this. It took me so long to get Puppeee installed and booting, and now I seem to have lost it. Will you help me fix it?

Mike

capicoso
Posts: 172
Joined: Fri 13 Jan 2012, 23:38
Location: Argentina

#6 Post by capicoso »

Hey,
When I first booted the pendrive I was aked to name the save file, and I named it eeesave-first.2fs, as you can see. It has grown quite large (536,870,912 bytes). I do not know why it is so large. Perhaps the iso files of other Puppy versions and other distros are in it. I probably need to get them out of there by doing as you suggested and putting them, together with downloaded pets, into /mnt/home (right?). Also, I don not know what ze505332.sfs is or how it got into my /root folder.
When you made the savefile, you also chose the size, the default is 512mB so, yours is 512mB. That's not big. And it didn't grow, the first time you made it 512mB, always ocuppied the same space. It's like a container, 512mB to be used within puppy, it won't grow when you install new programs. For example, your recently installed puppy savefile may be 512mB large, but you're using just 128mB of it. When you install let's say, VLC(around 30mB) your puppy savefile won't be 512mB+30mB. You'll just use more space inside de 512mB container. So if you were using 128mB, with VLC installed it'll be 158mB, so less space left on the savefile.

This is your /mnt/home:
Directory of E:\
. /mnt/home is where your savefile is. /root is inside puppy, so that ze505332.sfs is actually in /mnt/home... not puppy /root. I don't know what that .sfs is.

Now if you wanted to make a backup of your savefile, on windows, just copy that eeesave-first.2fs to your windows machine somewhere, and there you have your backup.
I am going to reboot into Puppeee now, so I can look into /mnt/home, and then will be back. . .

I am back, but still in Windows. I can no longer boot the Puppeee pendrive! Something must have happened to it when I was making text files of the directory tree, which got put into the Puppeee folders.

I did it with the command line, redirecting output to a text file, like this:
E:\ dir > E_root.txt
I did the same for the other two directories in E (boot and syslinux), and the three text files went into each of the three directories in E (those three text files are not in the directory and file trees you see above because I deleted them afterwards).

That seems to have screwed up the pendrive so it won't boot!

Can you help me? I'm very upset about this. It took me so long to get Puppeee installed and booting, and now I seem to have lost it. Will you help me fix it?
I'm no expert, but we'll work hard to fix it. And if we can't, someone else will come in and fix it.

Do you get any error? The pendrive just won't boot? Or puppy gets booted but there's an error in the console? Windows may have renamed something? How did you install puppy the first time to the pendrive?

1. Make a copy of your eeesave-first.2sf and put it on your local disk on windows or wherever you want, rename it to eeesave-first.2sf.backup to avoid confusion
2. Download this http://sourceforge.net/projects/unetboo ... irror=iweb
That's the best way(imo) to install any linux to a pendrive using windows. Select eeepuppy .iso, install it on your pendrive using the program. It's easy. And try again. You don't have to format before doing this, it'll ask you to replace the files. BUT it would be better to format it before... so it's clean... you could try without formating, if it works, the ndon't fix it,, if it doesn't work, format and install the .iso again.

hope you get it



ps:
looking at this:
Directory of E:\boot

02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> .
02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> ..
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 200,417 puppeee.png
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 111,864 mt86p
02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> syslinux
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 144,392 vesamenu.c32
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 12,372 chain.c32
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 176 bootinst.sh
02/19/2013 11:43 AM 1,263 bootinst.bat
7 File(s) 470,484 bytes
3 Dir(s) 3,326,357,504 bytes free

Directory of E:\boot\syslinux

02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> .
02/19/2013 03:29 AM <DIR> ..
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 24,592 syslinux
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 70,196 lilo
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 404 mbr.bin
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 26,624 syslinux.exe
06/18/2010 01:04 PM 27,268 extlinux
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 21,528 syslinux.com
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 93,260 rxvt
06/15/2010 09:27 PM 4,019 linuxinstall.sh
9 File(s) 267,891 bytes
2 Dir(s) 3,326,361,600 bytes free
i'm not sure if that's alright. I've never seen in my puppy pendrives that there was a /boot folder and another syslinux folder inside it.. I have both syslinux files, boot files, png files, in the same folder as the vmlinuz, initrd.gz... However, formatting and installing it again will fix it if it's wrong

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