HOWTO use Xdelta to upgrade isos and apps
Posted: Sat 06 Feb 2010, 00:32
Hello everybody
As of the advent of Woof, The Puppy Builder, BarryK has included Xdelta, file difference manager in all Puppies and Quirkies.
Barry will often upload a .delta file for upgrading an iso from one version to another, for example, Barry put up Quirky-005, then a week later Quirky-006 and also a .delta file to build the 006 iso from the 005 iso and the .delta file.. make sense? It saves you downloading a full iso of say 100MB, the delta may only be 3MB.
The reverse is also true. You can produce a .delta file from 2 different .iso images. Of course they need to be closely related, as in say from a beta1 to a beta2 of the same distro. I produced an iso file and uploaded it of Dpup by grabbing the .delta file.. when gposil was getting low on bandwidth.
Delta can also be used for apps, in fact any single file, but here we will only deal with iso images. For those not too sure, an iso image is the usual form of Puppy when you download it in official form or as a puplet.
________________
What to do... for upgrading an iso image.
For developers...
Providing a .delta file is a user friendly way of spreading your puplet. I know I use them whenever they are available, great for dial-up users too.
Xdelta is available for MS windows, however it is reported on Barry's Blog that the .delta files in puppy are failing on windows, or in a dos environment.. This is due to the "delimiter" being used. In future versions, Barry is changing the delimiter from ":" to "___" (three underscores).
________________________
If you don't have Xdelta in your Puppy the you can grab it from here.
_________________
Important note: If the delta file was created with the new xdelta gui, the file wil have three underscores as the delimiter. Most will only have the old xdelta which will not produce the correct filename of, for example, "pup_stardust-012.iso" but "newfile.iso" . If you have already done this then it should be ok to rename the "newfile.iso" to "pup_stardust-012.iso".
eg: To get around this remame pup_stardust-011.iso___pup_stardust-012.iso.delta to pup_stardust-011.iso:pup_stardust-012.iso.delta replacing "___" with " : ".
___________________
Attached is the latest xdelta_gui written by BarryK, dated 20100131. Just gunzip it in /usr/sbin and make sure it is executable
where, /root/my-documents is where you may have saved the file after download. Change this to suit.
NOTE: This depends on "xdelta3", type "which xdelta3" in a terminal. If you have it then there will be output of something like "/sbin/xdelta3". It is in all woof built pups and quirkies.
______________________
Cheers and enjoy,
01micko
As of the advent of Woof, The Puppy Builder, BarryK has included Xdelta, file difference manager in all Puppies and Quirkies.
Barry will often upload a .delta file for upgrading an iso from one version to another, for example, Barry put up Quirky-005, then a week later Quirky-006 and also a .delta file to build the 006 iso from the 005 iso and the .delta file.. make sense? It saves you downloading a full iso of say 100MB, the delta may only be 3MB.
The reverse is also true. You can produce a .delta file from 2 different .iso images. Of course they need to be closely related, as in say from a beta1 to a beta2 of the same distro. I produced an iso file and uploaded it of Dpup by grabbing the .delta file.. when gposil was getting low on bandwidth.
Delta can also be used for apps, in fact any single file, but here we will only deal with iso images. For those not too sure, an iso image is the usual form of Puppy when you download it in official form or as a puplet.
________________
What to do... for upgrading an iso image.
- * Download the correct .delta file for the iso image you want to upgrade:eg if you have pup_stardust-005.iso get pup_stardust-005.iso:pup_stardust-006.iso.delta. Of course check the checksum.This will produce a long string of alpha and numeric characters, it must be exactly the same as the one posted by the developer.
Code: Select all
md5sum pup_stardust-005.iso:pup_stardust-006.iso.delta
* Save the original .iso and the new .delta in the same directory, this is not essential but will save some searching time
* Simply click the .delta file and the Xdelta gui will appear
* Click GENERATE
* You should see a green splash screen indicating that the new file is generated and there will be a new .iso file in the same directory as the .delta file. Again, compare the checksum with the one provided by the developer. All should be well.
* You can now proceed to burn your new iso image with your favourite burning software.
For developers...
Providing a .delta file is a user friendly way of spreading your puplet. I know I use them whenever they are available, great for dial-up users too.
- * Open the Xdelta, file difference manager software from Menu >> Utility >> Xdelta
* Drag the old iso image to the first entry field in the Xdelta gui.
* Drag the new iso image to the second entry field.
* Hit GENERATE.
* the new .delta file is created.
* do a checksum, then upload to your online storage location.
Xdelta is available for MS windows, however it is reported on Barry's Blog that the .delta files in puppy are failing on windows, or in a dos environment.. This is due to the "delimiter" being used. In future versions, Barry is changing the delimiter from ":" to "___" (three underscores).
________________________
If you don't have Xdelta in your Puppy the you can grab it from here.
_________________
Important note: If the delta file was created with the new xdelta gui, the file wil have three underscores as the delimiter. Most will only have the old xdelta which will not produce the correct filename of, for example, "pup_stardust-012.iso" but "newfile.iso" . If you have already done this then it should be ok to rename the "newfile.iso" to "pup_stardust-012.iso".
eg: To get around this remame pup_stardust-011.iso___pup_stardust-012.iso.delta to pup_stardust-011.iso:pup_stardust-012.iso.delta replacing "___" with " : ".
___________________
Attached is the latest xdelta_gui written by BarryK, dated 20100131. Just gunzip it in /usr/sbin and make sure it is executable
Code: Select all
mv /root/my-documents/xdelta_gui.gz /usr/sbin/xdelta_gui.gz
gunzip /usr/sbin/xdelta_gui.gz
chmod 755 /usr/sbin/xdelta_gui
NOTE: This depends on "xdelta3", type "which xdelta3" in a terminal. If you have it then there will be output of something like "/sbin/xdelta3". It is in all woof built pups and quirkies.
______________________
Cheers and enjoy,
01micko