My perfect 32-bit Puppy 6.3

[nvmos007]

Just completed building up a nice configuration in Puppy Linux 6.3 32 Bit installed on an 8GB USB key as per the attached screen capture.
I HIGHLY recommend anybody taking this on download the latest Clonezilla from Clonezilla.org and learn how to use it. Their website has excellent tutorials which serve to minimize the learning curve. Managed to blow up a build but had successfully imaged the key the day before and was able to restore it using Clonezilla.
Good luck in your endeavours with this operating system.

[Fossil]

A frugal install?

[nvmos007]

Frugal in the sense that I installed it on an 8GB USB key although on reflection I can't recall if I chose frugal or full for this build. I did establish a 4GB save file though.
I've also done a full harddrive install of version 5.2.8 on an IBM 390X notebook.
The USB key build is bootable on other machines and works fine (you will need to reestablish an internet connection though-wired or wireless based on the machine's networking hardware).

[starhawk]

Savefile = frugal.

[gcmartin]

Hello @Nvmos007

... The USB key build is bootable on other machines and works fine ...

Questions

• If its Frugal, are you saving your sessions to your USB, before shutdown?
• When booting on others, is the others laptops or desktops?
• And, when booting, at the boot manager screen do you hit F2 to make any changes?

Thanks in advance.

[nvmos007]

Thank you for your inquiry gcmartin.
I can respond as follows:
I initially had puppy saving during sessions but have since turned that off and now only save when I shutdown or reboot. This tends to slowdown the reboot/shutdown sequence, sometimes by several minutes-it's important to be patient here and not power down prematurely thinking your computer has hung up. Also, when you first install puppy on a USB key and create your save file it's important to be patient-it took almost half an hour to create a 4GB save file on my 8GB key.
I have successfully booted on another notebook-Dell Vostro 3500. Had some wireless networking issues with this box but with the help of this forum was able to work them out.
I will try my desktop tower tomorrow and report back.
When I booted on my Dell Vostro puppy loaded the same way it loads when I boot it on my T60p Thinkpad.
I also booted this key on someone else's T60 Thinkpad without difficulty (and it booted in the same manner as my home machines) and once I entered their network wireless key was able to achieve internet access.
I put this key together as a recovery tool for crashed Windows boxes and have already run virus scans on them from this key with success.
Overall, a worthwhile effort resulting in a useful tool.
What's also interesting is that I can clone this image to other USB keys using Clonezilla.
Hope this helps.
Postscript
I was unable to boot from the USB port of a desktop tower running a 1GB Athlon processor with 1.5GB RAM and a circa 2001 AWARD BIOS.
I was able to boot from the USB port of an HP Pavilion Media Center 1270n desktop box.

[rufwoof]

took almost half an hour to create a 4GB save file on my 8GB key

Sounds like you are using a old USB 1.0 usb port? (12Mbps (1.5MBytes/second)) ?

USB 2.0 provided speed increase up to 480Mbps (40 time faster 60 MBytes/sec) whilst USB 3.0 has increased that by ten-fold to around 5Gbps (around 640 MBytes per second).

If so then later USB choices would reduce that 30 minute wait down significantly.

[gcmartin]

The persistence that comes with Live CD/DVD or Frugal use is a great feature. Save-sessions is, IMHO, the greatest feature of PUP distros.

BUT there is a problem that one can run into unsuspectingly.

If I run Live, tailor my PUP, and save it, I am assured that when it reboots, it will find and use the distro with all/any specific needs for Linux on this computer. The caveat, I have learned, is "on this computer". Reason: While the base system (from the ISO) generally applies to most computers, My save-session(s) may have specific needs that apply to ONLY this PC. When this occurs, it could/would spell unsuspecting trouble when the save-session feature is used on a completely different PC.

But, PUPPY offers a boot option to get around this, so that at least, I can get the base to boot pristine on another PC; namely F2 upon seeing the PUP's boot splash and at the prompt type

Code: Select all

puppy pfix=ram

to achieve a pristine boot. AND one must be careful to NOT issue a save-session to the Live media as a session would corrupt the save-sessions that already exist on the media when you try to boot it back on its original PC.

To get around this, I have employed saving the session on the PC's permanent media such that I can F2 allowing me to enter the parms to allow PUPPY to find the session on the PC's permanent media. By doig so, I ensure that any hardware related dependencies for the particular PC is picked up at boot time.

Its just my way of ensuring that the save-sessions match the PCs it boots to. In most cases, on every PC, I have a folder named "/Sessions" where I keep sessions for each PUP which is booted on each particular PC.

This has proven to be safe use in most situations.

One of the best solutions is one from @Ted Dog (and others) where on permanent media (USB/SSD/HDD/SD) sessions are maintained as they are on CD/DVD. Reason: if a particular session is bad, you merely boot and delete it so that it is no longer considered.

Hope this is helpful.

[Sylvander]

I initially had puppy saving during sessions but have since turned that off and now only save when I shutdown or reboot.

Since your pupsave file is on a Flash Drive...
There aught to be a "Save..." icon on the Puppy desktop, and...
Even though you have disabled auto-saving during the session...
You can manually save during the session at any time of your choosing...
By clicking the "Save..." icon.
Since this is done during the session, you can continue working as it saves...
That is, provided what you are doing doesn't create any session changes [edit, config or install] that would affect/change what is in the process of being saved.
Hence, the save process doesn't hold you back or slow you down, and there is no need to save during shutdown/reboot.
I have my shutdown/reboot save/don't-save dialog set to don't-save by default, so only need hit <Enter> when the dialog displays, and shutdown/reboot continues.

[nvmos007]

The tower I referred to has onboard USB 1.0 ports and 2 USB 2.0 ports via addon card. I tried booting from a USB key from both sets of ports-no luck.
I was able to boot from my original puppy linux 6.3 CD though.

[rufwoof]

My old clunker doesn't boot from USB either. I frugal boot using grub4dos as that has a associated menu.lst that I can edit to add/remove pup's relatively easily. I just create a folder/directory on HDD, open the ISO (i.e. ROX) of a puppy and copy the vmlinuz, initrd.gz, puppyxxx.sfs and zdrvxxxx.sfs files from the ISO to that folder, and then create a entry in menu.lst for that. At next reboot that pup is then one of the possible choices to boot.

Code: Select all

color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
timeout 1
default 0

title HDD Tahr605PAE K4.3.3
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
kernel /TAHR605-K4.3.3-NV/vmlinuz pfix=ram,nocopy pmedia=idehd PDEV1=sda3 psubdir=TAHR605-K4.3.3-NV
initrd /TAHR605-K4.3.3-NV/initrd
boot
.
.
.

I boot pfix=ram,nocopy (pupmode 5) which doesn't read any savefile/folder. At shutdown it asks if I want to create a savefolder and I usually answer NO. However when I do want to record changes (i.e. usually after the first boot) I do create a savefolder. At the next reboot I then turn that savefolder into a adrv

mksquashfs tahrsave adrv_tahr_6.0.5.sfs

for instance in Tahr, then delete the savefolder and next time the pup boots it loads that adrv despite being a pfix=ram boot. If any later changes need to be preserved, then again create a (new) savefolder and merge that into the adrv by first unsquashing the existing one

unsquashfs -d savefolder adrv_tahr_6.0.5.sfs

and copy in the new savefolder content

cd savefolder
cp -rf ../tahrsave/* .

and recreate the (new/revised) adrv again using mksquashfs as before.

In addition to the standard zdrv, ydrv, adrv which I use for kernel firmware/modules, graphics card (nvidia in my case) and savefolder content respectively, I've extended my pup to include additional ldrv (for libre office sfs), kdrv for kernel sources and ddrv for devx. So all of those are automatically loaded at bootup.

As gcmartin noted earlier if you move the pup to a different machine then the savefolder might be invalid for that (as might the graphics sfs). So in my case I simply rename the adrv and ydrv to something else so that they're not loaded at bootup.

I prefer working without savefolders as once I have the pup set up as I like, its nice to have it boot the exact same way each/every time thereafter. I don't save anything inside puppy space i.e. I use portable firefox (and portable chrome) that runs from HDD, I save all docs etc outside of puppy also on HDD, and the only other thing I link out is osmo (calendar/contacts/notes/tasks) by moving the /root/.osmo directory onto HDD and then sym linking to that from under /root.

I find that with full installs or running with saves that sooner or later I'll corrupt the pup and have to start all over again at setting it up as I like. No savefile and read-only means that you can try out programs (pet's/SFS's etc) and a simple reboot has any changes made by such programs removed at the next reboot. Only when I find a program that I want to incorporate do I copy that into adrv (or leave it as a loadable sfs on HDD).

By booting with pfix=ram,nocopy nothing is copied in at bootup, just referenced, so bootups are quick. Only if puppy needs a file during a session is it read in ... and usually stays resident in memory for the remainder of the session thereafter. If you boot just pfix=ram alone the its all read into ram at bootup (slower boot), whether the content is used or not during the session (memory space wasteful). I use LZ4 compression for my sfs's which decompresses very quickly i.e. a file 'read in' during a session is very quick when the sfs is on HDD such that the delay when a program is first run (loaded from disk into memory) is hardly noticeable. And for subsequent runs of the same program - its already memory bound so near instant. LZ4 can utilise multi-cores and when doing so its fast decompression speed combined with multi-core usage makes it serve up decompressed data to the CPU at near ram speeds.

[rufwoof]

One of my older pup's is a barebone pup. Just enough to get to a desktop GUI and net connect, after which it downloads the main puppy from my googledrive. I'm on a relatively fast internet service, around 55Mbps such that downloading the main pup from the 'Cloud' isn't that much slower than if it were being booted across the local LAN (100Mbps). That pup is great for booting other household Windows PC's as the only requirement is for them to be able to net boot (via their network card). My main pup can serve up that boot image (PXE boot server) and switching the Windows PC on, pressing F12 during the initial boot switches the PC over to net boot. The small boot image is then transferred across the LAN and the PC fires up the puppy desktop on the Windows PC ... which then downloads/loads/runs the (main/large) puppy image as stored on googledrive.

The other thing to make a pup perfect IMO is to also have RDP server/client as that is also installed by default on Windows boxes and you can get RDP apps for android. I use a 32" TV screen as my puppy monitor and with RDP that pup can be accessed/run from a android device (smartphone) or Windows PC, or the pup can run RDP to control the Windows box or android. In effect the pup can run android apps or windows apps, or windows can run puppy .... etc. all natively. The benefit of puppy is that it can be run read-only, so if its open to the internet its pretty safe, especially if no HDD's are connected. Which make it a ideal choice IMO to have as a home 'server' that can be remotely controlled from anywhere in the world (such as smartphone RDP'ing into the puppy PC).