changing how puppy finds your pup_save / personal storage

[kuapao]

I have several pup_saves on different media/devices and I want the option to load any one of them, depending on my needs. If pmedia is removed from menu.lst or syslinux.cfg entries, I am able to accomplish this.

Question: Will I be causing problems to my Puppy 4.0 and 4.1 the pmedia parameter is omitted? I don't think so (it's working fine right now), but I thought I'd ask anyway.

Also, will someone, please verify my observations below?

It seems that during boot, Puppy restricts the search for existing pup_save files to the media type PMEDIA specifies. This all started because I was wondering why pmedia=usbflash caused my pup_saves on internal hard drive not to be displayed in the

Type a number to choose which personal file to use:

menu prompt. I have found that if I keep the pmedia=usbflash or pmedia=usbhd parameters (that Puppy Universal Installer included in my menu.lst or syslinux.cfg files), only pup_saves on USB devices are listed. This effectively excluded the pup_saves on my internal hard drive.

This was all that was written in the old wiki:

PMEDIA

Not specifying this should automatically detect the boot media. Manually specify the boot media and interface using one of the following: usbflash usbhd usbcd ideflash idehd idecd idezip satahd satacd scsihd. This would be where USB, IDE, SATA, SCSI are the accepted interfaces and flash memory, hard drive, CD/DVD drive, ZIP drive are the accepted drives, e.g. PMEDIA=idehd.

From the excerpt above, I did not draw the conclusion that "automatically detect the boot media", also has to do with how puppy locates your pup_save files!

Thanks in advance for feedback!

[Volsung]

I believe that the info from the wiki is slightly deprecated. Newer versions of puppy (3.0+?) do not need this option, I believe. I can't cite the source, but I seem to remember reading that. Your observations seem to verify this. To verify if there is any difference, you can check the pupstate. 12 is for an HDD and 13 is USB, I believe. Someone else may be able to verify this.

[kuapao]

I believe that the info from the wiki is slightly deprecated. Newer versions of puppy (3.0+?) do not need this option, I believe. I can't cite the source, but I seem to remember reading that. Your observations seem to verify this. To verify if there is any difference, you can check the pupstate. 12 is for an HDD and 13 is USB, I believe. Someone else may be able to verify this.

Volsung,

I checked /etc/rc.d/PUPSTATE and it shows my PUPMODE=12 (HDD). So, yes, it appears to have recognized the media correctly without having to specify pmedia.

The Puppy Universal Installer and GRUB Bootloader Config add the pmedia boot parameter by default. It would be nice if a note is posted that explains how it affects the pup_save listing at boot time.

Regards,

kuapao

[ICPUG]

kuapao,

Your understanding of how PMEDIA works is valid. Whether omitting it with Puppy 4 upsets things is dependent on how you want Puppy to work. In your case there is no problem.

There seems to be confusion on how and when to use PMEDIA, PDEV1 and PSUBDIR so I have written a little Howto here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35003

Hope it doesn't add to the confusion!

[Béèm]

Thanks ICPUG.
It's the most comprehensive explanation I found thus far.

[kuapao]

Thanks ICPUG.
It's the most comprehensive explanation I found thus far.

Yes, I agree. ICPUG, that has certainly helped to clear things up for me! Well done.

[Volsung]

Thanks. Very helpful and enlightening. I wish I had known this stuff a while ago...