Filesystems in a File - Rolling your own Puppy

[Pizzasgood]

Well, I've been thinking about making my own flavor of Puppy lately (Not as different as Puplet, though. More of a practice run before I start Operation: CovertPups (yes, that's plural)), and I was wondering how you make filesystems in a file, like image(un-gzipped). I was also wondering how to make a compressed filesystem like usr_cram.fs. Yes, I know I could use the remastering script to do a bunch of this, but I don't have enough ram, and I'd rather do it this way anyway. This way I can set up a directory on my harddrive and have the full tree in it and won't dissappear when I shut-down, then write a script that will get the size, make the filesystems, and add the files. It would be much faster than running through the remaster script every time I want to test it.

Thanks!

EDIT: Okay, I found the first part. Once I get that sorted out, I'll try to figure out the squash stuff. Then I'll turn this into a howto.


EDIT 2: Did it, done it, done!
To make an ext2 filesystem (like image or pup001) of <X> kilobytes

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/hdimage bs=1k count=<X>
mke2fs -m 0 -b 1024 /tmp/hdimage

To make a squashfs (like usr_cram.fs) out of a directory (/tmp/usr, in this case)

Code: Select all

mksquashfs /tmp/usr /tmp/usr_cram.fs

[wscarl]

Do an HD install with grub then down load puppy-unleased to /root/
in Xtrem expand the tarball (x.x.x is version#)
# tar -zxf puppy-unleased-x.x.xtar.gz
repeat for update puppy-unleased
# cd puppy-unleased (note: read readme file for changes)

# ./createpuppy

[wscarl]

SO I have put to gether and old system out of junk parts and install puppy and puppy-unleased on the hard drive. Let me know how it goes!

windowsystemcomputers@yahoo.com

[Pizzasgood]

Nah, that won't work for me. I don't quite feel like messing with partitions yet, so I'm using a poor-man's install. Otherwise I'd be using the Unleased method. How I've got it running, I have a 256 megabyte partition image (yeah, you guessed it: an old pup001 file! I just deleted everything from inside) that I put the filesystem inside. I've actually figured it all out, I just have to finish setting up my scripts so I can test it. I'm probably doing things the hard way, but it is a good learning experience. I even learned how to use fdisk (I thought I needed to use it on a blank file to turn it into a filesystem. mke2fs was all I needed...).

EDIT: Woot! It actually worked! I now have a 1.0.1 Puppy with John's bootmenu and splash that starts in IceWM and comes preconfigured to run my wireless card. Not to mention starting with Firefox and GuestTwo's wallpaper roxapp. I figured the whole thing would blow up in my face while booting after trying to do so many things I've never done all at once! Now I need to smooth out my scripts. I'm keeping them separate so I can do individual parts instead of the entire thing, but I think I'll take that shell that Lobster created to combine them in an easy to access panel. Then I can proceed to trick-out Pizzapup. I edited my first post to say how to do the filesystems, too.

[Lobster]

I think I'll take that shell that Lobster created to combine them in an easy to access panel. Then I can proceed to trick-out Pizzapup. I edited my first post to say how to do the filesystems, too.

Ian is compiling a new version of GtkDialog - that MAY give us new features.

If you modify or add any items to the welcome.sh please share it - that way we can have both a common and specialist PizzaPup Welcome . . .

[Pizzasgood]

What I meant was that I'll edit it to be a "Make Pizzapup Control Panel" of sorts. One button to extract everything, one to recompress usr_cram.fs, one to recompress image.gz, one to form an iso, and one to clean up when I'm done. That way I can edit just /root0/ and not have to wait for it to recompress usr, or I can go back and edit isolinux.cfg and just remake the iso. Hmmm... Maybe I'll make the scripts more portable and upload them too. It is pretty useful.