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How to run more than one Puppy version from a drive?

Posted: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 16:55
by gymnart
Can you make puppy so that you can save your settings/savefiles to a sub folder so as not to interfere with another version? So, you'd be able to have 2 or more versions on the same pendrive but in different folders.

This way, I'd be able to have both puppy 4.1 and puppy 4.3 saved on the same pendrive and they shouldn't interfere with each other when I shut down and start up. Just have it ask me which file I want to use.

I would make the sub folders like so:
/puppy41/<savefiles>
/puppy43/<savefiles>

Posted: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 17:31
by sunburnt
Hi gymnart; Yes...! I just had an old Puppy216 Save file destroyed by installing 412.

Not to mention the calls to make even one Puppy version use separate Save files for user login.
This way each user would have their own Save space and settings.

Posted: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 21:01
by muggins
I can't recall when Barry introduced the psubdir boot parameter, but you can use it, in grub's menu.lst on the kernel line, as:

psubdir=puppy41

Older puppy versions, like p216, still need their save files in the top directory, but if you put 4-series in subdirectories then, using the psubdir boot parameter, they can happily co-exist.

Posted: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 22:08
by sunburnt
Your right Muggins, I forgot about that argument.
Of course if the boot had the option of making a new Save file the old one would be ok...

Posted: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 22:30
by gymnart
Exactly. I would like for Puppy to ask what directory to put the save files in right at the beginning when you first shut puppy down and it goes through the option of saving the session. Right now, it just asks about the drive, and does not include any folders as far as I've seen.

Posted: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 22:46
by sunburnt
HI gymnart; It use to be like that, sort of... Asking to make a Save file at shutdown.
But things just keep on changing, for good or for worse...
It would be nice if once it makes the Save file, it sets the psubdir= boot argument.

Posted: Mon 07 Sep 2009, 20:54
by gymnart
So then with that argument, you'd be able to switch between the two, right?

Posted: Mon 07 Sep 2009, 21:21
by mikeb
A long time ago I modified the initrd.gz so that puppy 2.12 looked for 212_save.3fs, puppy 202 looked for 202_save.3fs etc....well that approache is used for the pup_xxx.sfs so why not. Ease of co-existance and no attempted updating disasters

mike

Posted: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 01:53
by sunburnt
No gymnart, the boot argument only sets the Save file absolutely.
As mikeb said, it`s not hard to fix this stuff, it just gets lost in future Puppy releases.
As many have said; It`s frustrating to develop solutions only to have them lost.

Posted: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 02:02
by mikeb
It's an alteration of 3 characters...but the subfolder approach does sort of kill 2 birds with one stone
mike