Remaster Express

[pa_mcclamrock]

Hey David, can this work with the new woof builds barry is working on?

Sorry for the delay in responding, but you didn't miss much, because I don't know the answer. My best guess is that it will work if (1) you have Tcl, Tk, and Gnocl installed (all of which are built into the Puppy 4.2 RCs); (2) Woof still has 0pkgs_db, with lists of all files in all packages; and (3) it has the same format for listing "on" and "off" packages as before. Or, if you just want to remaster without uninstalling anything, there should be no problem as long as you have Tcl, Tk, and Gnocl. If you try the 4.2 version on Woof and get one or more error messages, let me know.

[pa_mcclamrock]

Although I haven't tried it, you apparently have a great little program that will be an awesome expansion of our remaster capability.

Thanks--I've tried it (as you might expect), and I think that's right, if I do say so myself.

Please consider one change, offer an option to read either from a directory or a CD at step one. The reason for this is that many of us create a frugal installation by mounting an iso and copying the files to a directory. This saves us from unnecessarily creating new coasters while checking out new programs.

It's probably too late to make that change for Puppy 4.2, but I'll keep it in mind for the next version. Meanwhile, you do have a live-CD you can use for the purpose, right? (Mounting a live-CD in the burner drive also serves the purpose of telling Remaster Express where the burner drive is with no fuss, which reading from a directory elsewhere wouldn't do.)

As for the coasters . . . I've never had any problem booting Puppy from a CD-RW, and I've never yet had one of them turn into a coaster.

[chuck5620]

Hi David. I tried to use the Remaster Express and got as far as the copy files step.
I left the computer on all night long but in the morning it said it was still copying.
I have a 3 gig cpu and 1.5 gig ram. Is the time required that long?

It might be helpful if you could insert a counter to display a file count as each one is copied. As long as it is increasing we would be able to see that something was happening.

I am using Lighthouse but would like to lighten it up a bit - looking forward to using your program. Unfortunately I am not a programmer - yet - although your site has got me interested in tcl/tk.

Thanks for your help.

Chuck

[pa_mcclamrock]

Hi David. I tried to use the Remaster Express and got as far as the copy files step.
I left the computer on all night long but in the morning it said it was still copying.
I have a 3 gig cpu and 1.5 gig ram. Is the time required that long?

Certainly not! I recently timed the whole process on my computer (2.6 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM) and it took about seven minutes.

By the "copy files step," do you mean Step Three, where the progressbar appears? Or Step Four, where there's only a bit of text that says the contents of /tmp/root are being added to the pup_420.sfs squashfile? Or what?

I've seen one other report of Remaster Express hanging (at Step Four), and I'm wondering if sym-links from /root to external directories under /mnt could have been the culprit. Please let me know (so far as possible) exactly where in the process things stopped progressing, and I'll try to figure out how to fix the program quick so they don't. Note: If the program hangs again, you can use Pprocess (under the System menu) to kill it (it's called "wish /usr/sbin/remax" there) rather than letting it do nothing all night again.

It might be helpful if you could insert a counter to display a file count as each one is copied. As long as it is increasing we would be able to see that something was happening.

Well, that's what the progressbar is for at Step Three . . . so maybe Step Three isn't what you're talking about?

I am using Lighthouse but would like to lighten it up a bit - looking forward to using your program. Unfortunately I am not a programmer - yet - although your site has got me interested in tcl/tk.

Great--if I figure out what the problem is and how to solve it, maybe I'll post the Tcl code I used to solve it. (Remaster Express is written in Tcl, but uses GTK+ widgets by way of Gnocl rather than Tk widgets.)

[chuck5620]

Dave the hang up was at step 4. Step 3 went through quite quickly so I was surprised at how long step 4 was taking. Since I also have Kubuntu installed and it is under /mnt
I thought maybe all of its files were the cause? I definitely need more experience with Puppy

Chuck

[pa_mcclamrock]

Dave the hang up was at step 4. Step 3 went through quite quickly so I was surprised at how long step 4 was taking. Since I also have Kubuntu installed and it is under /mnt
I thought maybe all of its files were the cause?

I have Mandriva under /mnt, and it didn't cause this problem. Nothing from /mnt would get into /tmp/root except by way of a symlink. Why don't you try this:

Run Remaster Express again, being ready to kill it with Pprocess if it hangs again. At the beginning of Step Four, view /tmp/root (including its subdirectories) with ROX-Filer to see if it contains any symlinks (ROX-Filer shows them with little arrows in little squares at the upper left corner of the file icons). If it does, delete the symlinks; see if you can get past Step Four and proceed to burn a CD (preferably a CD-RW) that doesn't have them; and report whether you can or can't. If you can, then at least I can put a warning into the text for Step Four, telling users to delete symlinks from /tmp/root and use actual copies instead if they really want the formerly symlinked files in /tmp/root. If you can't . . . well, at least I'll know one thing that didn't cause the problem.

[chuck5620]

Thanks Dave. I have been using a beta version and in trying to move files between partitions I have managed to generate a file not found message from grub. Putting in the CD and trying to use it to boot up I am getting kernel panics

Anyway I see that 4.2 is almost ready so I am going to give that a try and it will likely work better with your remaster.

Thanks for your help.

Chuck

[pa_mcclamrock]

Putting in the CD and trying to use it to boot up I am getting kernel panics

Anyway I see that 4.2 is almost ready so I am going to give that a try and it will likely work better with your remaster.

Not if I can't fix this problem, it won't! Let me see . . .

I've seen a report (in the Beginners' Help forum) about the same kind of thing happening with both Remaster Express and the previous remaster script (/usr/sbin/remasterpup2, "Remaster Puppy live-CD" in the Setup menu). I just ran Remaster Express again on my system and, lo and behold, it didn't happen; everything went well yet again. So, there must be something on some systems (but not mine) that neither Remaster Express nor remasterpup2 can handle.

Here. I'm attaching a revised version of the "remax" script (just untar the tarball to get the script; I had to put it in a tarball because I got a message saying "extension not allowed" when I just tried to attach it as "remax"). Copy the revised script to /usr/sbin (you might want to rename the original script "remax.old" or something first, instead of just deleting or overwriting it). The revised script is designed to catch and report any errors that arise when you click "Accept and Proceed" at Step Four; then, after an error is reported in a dialog box, the program should exit (not hang!) when you click OK. Please let me know if this works and, if so, the exact language of the error message you get in the dialog box. Thanks in advance!

[chuck5620]

Dave - I tried twice to remaster and each time there were no errors reported. However, the program APPEARS to be hung at the 'copying files to /tmp/root' step. I inspected the directory and in both cases there were 49 items in it. It seems that the program has copied the files but doesn't know it is finished the step in my case.

Here is a recap of what I have done.

I downloaded and burned the iso for Lighthouse Pupppy beta 4. and installed it. Then there was a patch to update it to beta 5. At this point I used Remaster Express and ran into the problem for the first time.

I messed up my system and decided to download and instell the beta5 iso. Since I have a frugal install I did not burn a CD but just replaced files. Then I tried the remaster program twice getting the same results.

The remaster program instructs us to insert the iso CD in the CD/DVD drive. In my case this would be the beta 4 iso (this applies to each of my attempts). Could this be the problem?

The remaster may have to ask where the iso can be found?

Also, I have also downloaded sfs files for Open Office, some KDE stuff, and Opera 10.
Should these be deleted before remastering since they can be added back later?

I hope this helps.

Chuck

[pa_mcclamrock]

Dave - I tried twice to remaster and each time there were no errors reported. However, the program APPEARS to be hung at the 'copying files to /tmp/root' step. I inspected the directory and in both cases there were 49 items in it. It seems that the program has copied the files but doesn't know it is finished the step in my case.

OK, let me try to make sure I understand exactly where this is happening. When the program hangs, do you still see the progressbar and it says "Now copying needed files to /tmp/root"? You don't yet see the "View with ROX-Filer" and "Accept and Proceed" buttons, which are supposed to appear at the beginning of Step Four? Or what?

I downloaded and burned the iso for Lighthouse Puppy beta 4. and installed it. Then there was a patch to update it to beta 5. At this point I used Remaster Express and ran into the problem for the first time.

What version of Puppy are these Lighthouse betas based on, and how big are the isos?

I messed up my system and decided to download and inst[a]ll the beta5 iso. Since I have a frugal install I did not burn a CD but just replaced files. Then I tried the remaster program twice getting the same results.

The remaster program instructs us to insert the iso CD in the CD/DVD drive. In my case this would be the beta 4 iso (this applies to each of my attempts). Could this be the problem?

I doubt it. What the iso CD is for is simply to provide the files needed for the new ISO (except boot.cat, which is automatically generated during the creation of the new ISO, and pup_xxx.sfs, which is created during Step Three). The other needed files should be the same, and if they weren't it still wouldn't make the program hang. (They're copied at the beginning of the actual remastering process, before the progressbar starts showing percentages of files squashed into the squashfile.)

The remaster may have to ask where the iso can be found?

It would have to ask where the needed files can be found if there's no live-CD in the burner drive, but (at least for this version) it's simpler to have the user put the live-CD in the burner drive.

Also, I have also downloaded sfs files for Open Office, some KDE stuff, and Opera 10.
Should these be deleted before remastering since they can be added back later?

You don't need to delete them, but you should use System --> BootManager to prevent them from being loaded at boot-up if you don't want a massive pup_xxx.sfs file including their contents for the new CD; then reboot so their contents won't be there. (By the way, where did you get the Opera 10 sfs file? Does it work well?)

You might want to download Puppy 4.2 RC4 (unless you prefer to wait for 4.2 Final) from one of the links near the beginning of the thread linked below, burn it to a CD, and boot puppy pfix=ram from the CD so you can see how Remaster Express is supposed to work:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=40158

Then, if your aim is to have a puplet that's like Lighthouse only lighter, you might see if you can achieve that by (1) creating a new pup_save file with a different name (Puppy will ask you at boot-up which pup_save you want to use if there's more than one); (2) adding on the packages you especially like in Lighthouse; and (3) using the (presumably still functional) Remaster Express from Puppy 4.2 to create a lighter-than-Lighthouse ISO.

[chuck5620]

Dave

OK, let me try to make sure I understand exactly where this is happening. When the program hangs, do you still see the progressbar and it says "Now copying needed files to /tmp/root"? You don't yet see the "View with ROX-Filer" and "Accept and Proceed" buttons, which are supposed to appear at the beginning of Step Four? Or what?

I see the copying to /tmp/root. I do not see the View with ROX-filer nor the Accept and Proceed buttons.

Lighthouse puppy is based on Puppy 4.1.1 and is 200 M in size

Thanks for the balance of your explanation. I think I will wait for 4.2 as you suggest.

I got Opera 10 at www.lhpup.org which is the Lighthouse Puppy site. That is where I found all 3 of the add ons.

Chuck

[pa_mcclamrock]

Update on debugging Remaster Express: I figured the problem probably had something to do with using up too much RAM, so I looked at the "Memory" section of System --> HardInfo while running Remaster Express. Sure enough, for some reason I don't yet know, the program was using up an incredibly large amount of free RAM (over 500 MB on my system!!) while showing the progressbar in Step Three. I then ran the previous remaster script, and it didn't use up nearly that much RAM. I'm going to have to hack out the code that makes the progressbar work, starting almost at once after I post this message. This, I earnestly hope, will solve the problem--and I'll test the program without the progressbar to make sure it does! Then I'll submit the no-progressbar version really fast for inclusion in Puppy 4.2 Final.

[technosaurus]

I have cut mine down to only use 1-2X the memory vs. 3X by requiring the use of a separate partition for the build directory and building in steps as opposed to using /tmp. ... but then again the build I did was only built on simple Xdialog messages and bash scripts that anyone can edit/modify ... it started off as mkaddonsfs ... just to build an sfs, but I added an iso option to it along the way - I will post it tonight when I get home.

[pa_mcclamrock]

Update: I tried a further experiment, rebooting before using Remaster Express, then rebooting again before using remasterpup2. This time, they both used up about the same huge amount of free memory (about 500 MB). I'm thinking I was misled before by the fact that remasterpup2 didn't use up a lot more free memory when I ran it without rebooting first. The real culprit appears to be mksquashfs, which both remastering programs invoke to create the big pup_xxx.sfs squashfile. I don't know yet why it uses so much memory, but I'd sure like to find out.

[technosaurus]

Have you experimented with the read and write queue for mksquashfs... the default values are 64MB and 512MB... thats quite a bit

maybe set the write queue values using the SIZENEEDEDM from remasterpup2?

[pa_mcclamrock]

Have you experimented with the read and write queue for mksquashfs... the default values are 64MB and 512MB... thats quite a bit

maybe set the write queue values using the SIZENEEDEDM from remasterpup2?

As I was just saying in the Puppy 4.2 RC4 thread . . . it sounded like a great idea, and I really wish it had worked, but I tried it and it didn't.

[bert07]

I haven't read the whole thread, but I respond to the first post.
1 have 2 computers: desktop and laptop, quiet different configurations.

I also installed Firepup and Notecase.

I tried to make a personalized remaster for my desktop.
After a few tries (hehe) I finaly got it when I copied all the files in tha root folder to the /tmp/root, also the hidden files.

For my desktop burn, the bookmarks didn't seem to be there afterwards. Did I forgot to copy something?

For my laptop burn, well, I first have to say that I use a rt2500 wireless pcmcia card.
This card has aproblem with speed for about a year now, but it is easily solvable by editing the rc.local file.
This file is not in puppy, put you can easily create one or copy one.

After I burned the disk, the rc.local file was not on the cd.
All my bookmarks were though.

Has anyone any suggestions?

[bert07]

Now I notice that this thread is rather old.
I'll make a new thread.