PeasyScale has disappeared from the right-click menu in Rox file manager

[MochiMoppel]

So you keep asking for a total impossibility. I could be wrong, and if I am, I'm sure someone will point it out, and I will stand corrected.

I think it is possible and it should be an option. I also could be wrong but it seems that you are confusing the bootloader menu, which gives you a choice of different operating systems, with a possible boot option menu of the chosen OS. Such menu already exists. You see it when you have more than 1 save files. The boot process stops and asks you, which save file to load. A similar menu would be possible to give you a choice, which Puppy files to load. I miss this very much. I miss an option to chose, which of the additional files apart from the main sfs to load, e.g. a choice to load the adrv or not. Such menu would have to be defined in the init file ... maybe one day I will do it

I recommend to read the excellent explanation in the /initrd/README.txt file. Gives also some clues what might have happened to @Governor:

* A typical frugal install of Puppy is a directory containing the above files.
* So init begins by establishing the location of this directory,
by looking for the puppy...sfs file.
* In the absence of any indication as to it's location, init searches throughout
the partitions of the system until it finds it.

[williwaw]

The way to do what you want is to edit the bootloader config in a text editor to suit your special setup, not rely on a tool to find and write boot stanzas for all kinds of drives and locations that it may or may not be able to see.

I have found relying on OS installers to partition, format and install bootloaders works OK for the target OS, but if you want to dual boot OSs, your mileage will vary when getting the additional OS to operate properly. Running multiple installers without reformatting can sometimes make a mess of your disk and bootloader and you may end up with multiple bootloaders installed. The basic computer skill of partitioning, formatting and operating and maintaning your bootloader of choice has not been obsoleted.

The CD boot is an ancient piece of boot technology anyway, mostly designed to get started with a clean boot and install the OS properly where you could make a save file on writeable media in an easily/dependably accessible location.

CD booting of linux "live" was once a nifty way to have to have an immutable OS in a world where the alternative was windows XP with viruses. The Puppy savefile was concieved as a way to save to a writable disk (the windows install), at the expense of trading security for convienence with a security model that depended on the obscurity of linux viruses.

The CD did prove useful as an install medium, but to utilize a bootable CD as an alternative to a frugal install (for someone who does not demand the immutability of a CD) makes no sense at all.
There is no easy way to edit the bootloader on a CD install if having choices at boot time is desired.

[geo_c]

So you keep asking for a total impossibility. I could be wrong, and if I am, I'm sure someone will point it out, and I will stand corrected.

I think it is possible and it should be an option. I also could be wrong but it seems that you are confusing the bootloader menu, which gives you a choice of different operating systems, with a possible boot option menu of the chosen OS. Such menu already exists. You see it when you have more than 1 save files. The boot process stops and asks you, which save file to load. A similar menu would be possible to give you a choice, which Puppy files to load. I miss this very much. I miss an option to chose, which of the additional files apart from the main sfs to load, e.g. a choice to load the adrv or not. Such menu would have to be defined in the init file ... maybe one day I will do it

I recommend to read the excellent explanation in the /initrd/README.txt file. Gives also some clues what might have happened to @Governor:

* A typical frugal install of Puppy is a directory containing the above files.
* So init begins by establishing the location of this directory,
by looking for the puppy...sfs file.
* In the absence of any indication as to it's location, init searches throughout
the partitions of the system until it finds it.

Yes, the two menus are different. I do understand that. Perhaps I didn't make a clear distinction between when I was talking about OS boot and save load, but I have never seen a puppy menu that gives a choice of system files, only of saves or no save, which I believe is what your saying it only does now, but seem to be saying that pups in the past asked which drv.sfs's to load also. I don't think that would necessarily be a good thing to make available in situations such as this, however.

So as you say, it would be possible to for the OS to search various locations for the system files and present an option to choose. But essentially you're saying that the "OS" would be acting as a kind of second stage bootloader, for example loading the kernel from a CD, then searching for puppy root file systems in other places. Or are you only saying a choice of which system sfs files to load from the boot stanza's specified boot location, which in the latter case that init doesn't seem as if it would be so difficult to write.

Basically what @Governor is asking for is an init that searches every drive on his machine and gives a menu with the complete path of each file it finds. Save file I think is what he means, and since I haven't booted from a CD since the very early days of puppy, I don't think any of my installs go looking for save files on attached drives. I've often boot a thumb drive with pups installed on the internal drive and have never gotten a choice for loading save files one level deep on my internal drive. With the CD boot this seems to be what is happening to @Governor

I would say @Governor is in bad need of an upgraded menu so he would be your first tester when you write it.

I still think he needs to learn how to boot one OS from one place and manage the save files and system directories first, before attempting a mix and match boot structure.

[Governor]

Bring the equation down to the most simple form: remove all and every device capable of holding a save file or folder including any installed hard drive. THEN and ONLY THEN boot from the CD. What happens now?

Yes, I discovered that the CD actually boots from the ĆD only when I delete ALL PUPPY FILES, on ALL my internal drive, AND disconnect ALL external drives.

So all your problems are fixed now?

Good one!

[Governor]

but I have not completely confirmed this yet

If it's running it's saving unless you have added a parameter in the kernel command line not too.

There are 3 modes of operation...
1. unless specified KLV saves all persistence automatically in /upper_changes
2. RAM2 which allows the user to save on demand or choose to save at system reboot or shutdown also written to /upper_changes
3. RAM0 which loads no persistence and does not save. So fresh system after each boot

If you installed it and the boot stanza that starts it doesn't have a w_changes=RAM0 or the parameter w_changes=RAM2 on the kernel command line it should be saving everything as you go.

It is possible to use normal mode (#1) some of the time and then use RAM2 mode (#2) after that to select when to save a session again.

I do not see any of those settings in either in grub.cfg or menu.1st

I do see this one in menu.1st:
set savepart=Persistence

When I boot Airedale from the thumb drive, which of these 2 files are used?

[williwaw]

Yes, I discovered that the CD actually boots from the ĆD only when I delete ALL PUPPY FILES, on ALL my internal drive, AND disconnect ALL external drives.

So all your problems are fixed now?

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Good one! :thumbup2:

when you are actually booting Fossapup from the cd your problems will dissapear

[mikewalsh]

I still think he needs to learn how to boot one OS from one place and manage the save files and system directories first, before attempting a mix and match boot structure.

@geo_c :-

Of course, along these lines, IF multiple OSes are wanted, Governor could always do what I did in my early Linux days when experimenting with the various 'buntu 'flavours' (Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.)

Since I was still rather new to it all in those days - especially when it came to multi-booting from an internal drive - I did the one thing which I could understand; installed each OS to a flash drive, left the BIOS permanently in "boot USB first" mode & just swapped flash drives around. If USB 3.0+ flash drives are used, it's even fairly responsive.

(Then I started to get "clever", didn't I? I bought a powered USB hub, kept those OSs on their separate drives all permanently plugged-in to that hub and learnt how to "chainload" boot menu entries (after all, computing IS all about automation, yes?).......and since we're talking mainstream distros and GRUB2, it's a bit different to how I would do it with Grub4DOS. But that's heading off down an entirely different rabbit-hole.......Maybe one day, but not today. Not in this thread. Not ATM.)

Multiple individual flash drives, each with a single Puppy installed, might be one way for @Governor to go. It's only one possible suggestion for easier management. I don't suppose it would suit ME, though. Not these days!

Just an idea.....one that IS manageable. Although having that NVMe drive there, it does seem a waste not to use it, of course.....

(*shrug....*)

Mike.

[Governor]

I still think he needs to learn how to boot one OS from one place and manage the save files and system directories first, before attempting a mix and match boot structure.

Multiple individual flash drives, each with a single Puppy installed, might be one way for @Governor to go. It's only one possible suggestion for easier management. I don't suppose it would suit ME, though. Not these days!

Just an idea.....one that IS manageable. Although having that NVMe drive there, it does seem a waste not to use it, of course.....

(*shrug....*)

Mike.

And some people wonder why Linux has never become user-friendly.

[mikewalsh]

@Governor :-

And some people wonder why Linux has never become user-friendly.

I don't know so much. If you look at the way that many of the popular 'mainstream' distros present themselves today, it's clear - to anyone that remembers Linux from, say, 20 yrs ago - that one hell of a lot of work HAS been expended, behind the scenes, to precisely that end.......making the distro as user-friendly and easy-to-use as possible.

Yet this also highlights one of the major differences between Puppy and 'mainstream'. Mainstream distros nearly always have development 'teams'; groups of individuals that spend a good part of their time doing nothing BUT work on OS problems & issues, and try to respond to reports/complaints/issues ASAP. The Puppy community doesn't function like that.

It largely operates on the famed 'do-ocracy' principle. In other words, if somebody feels strongly enough that something wants 'doing', then that individual will often take on the responsibility of personally 'doing' whatever it is that they feel needs to be 'done'.

Oh, that's not a very good summary. The following probably describes it rather better:-

https://medlabboulder.gitlab.io/democra ... do-ocracy/

And if the community WERE to become structured in exactly that way, I feel it would lose a lot of the sheer 'spontaneity' that makes it such a fun place to be. Because certain individuals would then feel obligated to HAVE to fix problems/issues FOR everybody else....and getting constantly nagged by others to 'get on' and 'fix' issue X,Y or Z is never conducive to producing your best efforts (especially when it's all unpaid work, and particularly if you, personally, don't see the need for it).

Of course - being very much a "hobbyist" distro/group of distros - we often spend what to many may seem like disproportionately large amounts of time & effort on investigating 'solutions' to 'problems' which for the vast majority of 'John Does' out there simply don't exist. But to my way of thinking, that's one of those incredible things that makes this such a marvelous community.......the sheer enthusiasm alone often outweighs the 'importance' of fixing what some may perhaps perceive to be critically important 'basic'' issues.

Perhaps I just have a somewhat 'skewed' viewpoint, but I can state, here & now, that I have never previously had anything like as much sheer FUN in my computing 'career' as I have at present.

(*shrug...*)

Mike.

[geo_c]

And some people wonder why Linux has never become user-friendly.

I don't know many people that have 30 different Mac & Windows OS's installed and booting from the same partition, or multiple partions.

When you have this much capability as you do with Linux, and in particular pups, then utilizing that capability can only be so user friendly. Used the conventional way, for instance booting Ubuntu as the only OS installed on an internal drive is not that huge of hurdle. Booting a single portable OS from a removable drive isn't out of reach for many typical computer users either. It's when multiple OSs from multiple locations come into play that the install tools can only be so 'user friendly.'

This is one reason why Windows and Mac do everything they can to basically "own" the machine on which the OS resides. Besides being monopolistic, they don't want to support that kind of flexbility.

I used to dual boot puppy with Windows, and it was still a pretty easy thing to do with Win7, but once Win10 came out, it just wasn't worth the hassle anymore.

My wife used fossapup64_9.5 on her old laptop for four years by the way (then I switched her to Airedale), and she never had a single issue running it, browsing and checking her email. She had a choice in the menu.lst boot menu between her main save and a single backup, and she never did anything but choose option 1 and run her main save. The one OS running soundly on one drive was not a problem for her, and she doesn't even comprehend the concept of a FILE or how to manage one.

She's great with managing a garden however.

[Governor]

@Governor :-

And some people wonder why Linux has never become user-friendly.

I don't know so much. If you look at the way that many of the popular 'mainstream' distros present themselves today, it's clear - to anyone that remembers Linux from, say, 15-20 yrs ago - that one hell of a lot of work HAS been expended to precisely that end.......making the distro as user-friendly and easy-to-use as possible.

But this also highlights one of the major differences between Puppy and 'mainstream'. Mainstream distros nearly always have development 'teams'; groups of individuals that spend a good part of their time doing nothing BUT work on OS problems & issues, and try to respond to reports/complaints/issues ASAP. The Puppy community isn't like that.

It largely operates on the famed 'do-ocracy' principle. In other words, if somebody feels strongly enough that something needs to be done, then that individual will often take on the responsibility of personally 'doing' whatever it is that they feel needs to be 'done'.

That's not a very good summary. The following probably describes it rather better:-

https://medlabboulder.gitlab.io/democra ... do-ocracy/

And - being very much a "hobbyist" distro/group of distros - we often spend what to many may seem like disproportionately large amounts of time & effort on investigating 'solutions' to 'problems' which for the vast majority of 'John Does' out there simply don't even exist. But to my way of thinking, that's one of those incredible things that makes this such a marvelous community.......the sheer enthusiasm alone often outweighs the so-called 'importance' of fixing what some may perhaps perceive to be critically important 'basic'' issues.

Perhaps I just have a somewhat 'skewed' viewpoint, but I can state, here & now, that I have never previously had anything like as much sheer FUN in my computing 'career' as I have at present.

(*shrug...*)

Mike.

IMHO (YMMV):
I speak only from what I have seen here, and from my own experience with trying to get Linux to function as a "normal" and stable OS. In all these years Linux has been available, it has never become a mainstream OS, not even when it is free. The Microsoft/Apple duopoly is only part of the reason. Sure, there are helpful and dedicated programmers, but they do not program for Joe User, simply because they cannot stop thinking like experts. An expert cannot think like a non-expert unless he gets amnesia or brain damage. It is just not possible.

I have "discovered" several issues with fossapup, but nobody really seems to care about these issues, and since no one is actually working on the OS itself, issues are largely ignored, except for a few already existing workarounds.

If programmers are uninterested in what Joe User has to say, they will not understand the perspective of Joe User, and will not create user-friendly programs, but they will create expert-friendly programs. It's ok. It is what it is. I will keep trying and do the best I can. I am just glad there are people who want to help me, at all. Just think, if I had no one to help me, I would get nowhere even faster.

[Governor]

The CD did prove useful as an install medium, but to utilize a bootable CD as an alternative to a frugal install (for someone who does not demand the immutability of a CD) makes no sense at all.

I must do what I can, sense or no sense. I like RAM-only mode because it does not lock up any partitions on my internal disk.

There is no easy way to edit the bootloader on a CD install if having choices at boot time is desired.

That is why the multiple choice menu should be built-in to the boot files on the .iso, before burning to CD media.

Give the user a multiple choice of which partitions to look for boot files on. When all instances of compatible boot files are found, offer a multiple choice of which configuration to use, listing the CD first, of course. If it is done like this, anyone can use the process of elimination to find which configuration works, if any. And they will know where they are booting from!!!
And the full path to each file should always be shown, in case they need to write it down and type it at the command line for some reason.

This would be what I call user-friendly.

[Governor]

I recommend to read the excellent explanation in the /initrd/README.txt file. Gives also some clues what might have happened to @Governor:

* A typical frugal install of Puppy is a directory containing the above files.
* So init begins by establishing the location of this directory,
by looking for the puppy...sfs file.
* In the absence of any indication as to it's location, init searches throughout
the partitions of the system until it finds it.

This is what I would do:
First, give the user a multiple choice of which partitions to look for boot files on. When all the instances of compatible boot files are found, offer a multiple choice of which configuration to use, listing the CD first, of course. If it is done like this, anyone can use the process of elimination to find which configuration works, if any. And they will know where they are booting from!!!
And the full path to each file should always be shown, in case they need to write it down and type it at the command line for some reason.

[Governor]

I recommend to read the excellent explanation in the /initrd/README.txt file. Gives also some clues what might have happened to @Governor:

* A typical frugal install of Puppy is a directory containing the above files.
* So init begins by establishing the location of this directory,
by looking for the puppy...sfs file.
* In the absence of any indication as to it's location, init searches throughout
the partitions of the system until it finds it.

This is what I would do, booting from a closed CD (which contains the appropriate code which was contained in the .iso file) an example:
First, give the user a multiple choice of which partitions to look for boot files on. When all the instances of compatible boot files are found, offer a multiple choice of which configuration to use, listing the CD first, of course. If it is done like this, anyone can use the process of elimination to find which configuration works, if any. And they will know where they are booting from!!!
And the full path to each file should always be shown, in case they need to write it down and type it at the command line for some reason.

[mikewalsh]

@Governor :-

If programmers are uninterested in what Joe User has to say, they will not understand the perspective of Joe User, and will not create user-friendly programs, but they will create expert-friendly programs. It's ok. It is what it is. I will keep trying and do the best I can. I am just glad there are people who want to help me, at all. Just think, if I had no one to help me, I would get nowhere even faster.

That's not an entirely fair observation.

Granted, many applications that are 'native' to Linux DO take some 'figuring-out' in respect of how to use them. Linux 'ports' of programs/apps originally coded for Windows/MacOS do tend to be more 'user-friendly', simply because that's always been the prevailing trend with those two OSes.

However; everything that I myself have created - more so since evolving the 'portable' stuff - has always been put together with an eye to being 'easy-to-use'. You know why? Because despite being a Linux user for the last decade, I've got a lot of years of Windows 'usage' under my belt. I like my GUIs; always have done. There are plenty of Linux geeks/veterans who are scandalized that folks should want to use anything other than the terminal in Linux.......but recent Windoze tactics over the past few years have been sending a steady stream of users in our direction. And these people are used to their GUIs. I like them, too.

They might take more work to put together, but to my way of thinking, a GUI-based app just comes across as more 'professional' than a purely command-line one. That's my opinion, and I'll stand by it. So please; do NOT apply a blanket condemnation across the whole community just because things aren't to YOUR personal liking. That's unfair to the developers/coders.....and it's definitely unfair to the distros themselves.

A lot of work goes into things 'behind the scenes' that the average user is unaware of. Yes, constructive criticism is welcomed, I'll agree 100% with that.......but negativity, purely for its own sake, is beneficial to no-one. It often helps to try and put yourself in the other person's shoes, and attempt to see things from the other side of the equation; much stuff put together for Linux is often created out of the goodness of people's hearts, because they simply enjoy doing so. Nobody's getting paid here, so you have no right to expect or demand anything from them.

They don't 'owe' you ANYTHING. So, please - for your own sake - "Engage brain before putting mouth into gear!" It's the surest route I know to alienating yourself from ANY community.....

Mike.

[rockedge]

I'm trying has hard as I can to make the programs as hard to use as possible. Hidden features, arcane workflow, mystifying controls and first most importantly make the application extremely challenging to get running in the first place......that's what I spend my valuable time doing...with purpose...to get under the skin of all the rat bastards even of thinking of using what I created for people to use....for free.

[one]

peace

PS: the thread - as far as its title is concerned - should be marked as solved, shouldn't it?

[Governor]

@Governor :-

If programmers are uninterested in what Joe User has to say, they will not understand the perspective of Joe User, and will not create user-friendly programs, but they will create expert-friendly programs. It's ok. It is what it is. I will keep trying and do the best I can. I am just glad there are people who want to help me, at all. Just think, if I had no one to help me, I would get nowhere even faster.

That's not an entirely fair observation.

Granted, many applications that are 'native' to Linux DO take some 'figuring-out' in respect of how to use them. Linux 'ports' of programs/apps originally coded for Windows/MacOS do tend to be more 'user-friendly', simply because that's always been the prevailing trend with those two OSes.

However; everything that I myself have created - more so since evolving the 'portable' stuff - has always been put together with an eye to being 'easy-to-use'. You know why? Because despite being a Linux user for the last decade, I've got a lot of years of Windows 'usage' under my belt. I like my GUIs; always have done. There are plenty of Linux geeks/veterans who are scandalized that folks should want to use anything other than the terminal in Linux.......but recent Windoze tactics over the past few years have been sending a steady stream of users in our direction. And these people are used to their GUIs. I like them, too.

They might take more work to put together, but to my way of thinking, a GUI-based app just comes across as more 'professional' than a purely command-line one. That's my opinion, and I'll stand by it. So please; do NOT apply a blanket condemnation across the whole community just because things aren't to YOUR personal liking. That's unfair to the developers/coders.....and it's definitely unfair to the distros themselves.

A lot of work goes into things 'behind the scenes' that the average user is unaware of. Yes, constructive criticism is welcomed, I'll agree 100% with that.......but negativity, purely for its own sake, is beneficial to no-one. It often helps to try and put yourself in the other person's shoes, and attempt to see things from the other side of the equation; much stuff put together for Linux is often created out of the goodness of people's hearts, because they simply enjoy doing so. Nobody's getting paid here, so you have no right to expect or demand anything from them.

They don't 'owe' you ANYTHING. So, please - for your own sake - "Engage brain before putting mouth into gear!" It's the surest route I know to alienating yourself from ANY community.....

Mike.

I appreciate your perspective. I will take this under my hat.

[Governor]

I'm trying has hard as I can to make the programs as hard to use as possible. Hidden features, arcane workflow, mystifying controls and first most importantly make the application extremely challenging to get running in the first place......that's what I spend my valuable time doing...with purpose...to get under the skin of all the rat bastards even of thinking of using what I created for people to use....for free.

Maybe you should be working for MS? No, I am sure you don't think anything like that.
Sorry, I am just very frustrated and pissed off, after finding out that for an entire year that the CD I was booting from was actually booting from an internal partition instead. Beyond words. No wonder I had so many problems. That was more than I can take, and all because someone somewhere thought that was a good idea. Maybe I will take a break for a couple of days.
Cheers!

[rockedge]

@Governor

Way back when making the very first save when you booted the CD for the very first time.....there is a query during the save process that asks if you want to COPY some components from the CD to the partition to increase boot speed for the next system startups. This is how they got there. The save folder / file is there because CD-ROM's are exactly that...read only memory.

So in summary, you yourself chose to place those files on the HDD. Easy to miss the meaning of the question I guess.

Check it out....try a fresh CD with nothing on the machine...then reboot and when it asks about making the save folder / save file follow along carefully and you will encounter the question whether or not to copy additional components to the partition chosen to increase the speed for the following system starts.

You are still missing the point of why Puppy Linux is designed to work the way it does. 20 years it's been okay though.

[mikewalsh]

I'm trying has hard as I can to make the programs as hard to use as possible. Hidden features, arcane workflow, mystifying controls and first most importantly make the application extremely challenging to get running in the first place......that's what I spend my valuable time doing...with purpose...to get under the skin of all the rat bastards even of thinking of using what I created for people to use....for free.

^^^ LOLOLOL!!!!!

Mike.

[williwaw]

Check it out....try a fresh CD with nothing on the machine.......

download iso and the md5 checksum http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-fossa/
verify the download md5checksum
burn with pburn, verify, (it may fail to verify on the first try) reload the disk and re-verify
you should have correct checksum after the second verification

[Governor]

@Governor

Way back when making the very first save when you booted the CD for the very first time.....there is a query during the save process that asks if you want to COPY some components from the CD to the partition to increase boot speed for the next system startups. This is how they got there. The save folder / file is there because CD-ROM's are exactly that...read only memory.

So in summary, you yourself chose to place those files on the HDD. Easy to miss the meaning of the question I guess.

Check it out....try a fresh CD with nothing on the machine...then reboot and when it asks about making the save folder / save file follow along carefully and you will encounter the question whether or not to copy additional components to the partition chosen to increase the speed for the following system starts.

You are still missing the point of why Puppy Linux is designed to work the way it does. 20 years it's been okay though.

Ok, so in polite way, you are basically saying it is my own fault. Thanks for being polite! I am not buying it, though.
Just because it has been done that way for 20 years does not mean it is a good thing. IMO it is a poor idea and should never have been promulgated.

If your bootloader configuration says to "search for files and use the first one you can find", well, then exactly which files will be used would be ... rather random

If the OS is going to arbitrarily load save file or folders, Joe User should be given a choice of which 'save' to use (or use none) on the current boot. That's it. Why has no one done this? Hmm... why not user-friendly.

Kudos to the one person has shown interest in this, so far:

I think it is possible and it should be an option. I also could be wrong but it seems that you are confusing the bootloader menu, which gives you a choice of different operating systems, with a possible boot option menu of the chosen OS. Such menu already exists. You see it when you have more than 1 save files. The boot process stops and asks you, which save file to load. A similar menu would be possible to give you a choice, which Puppy files to load. I miss this very much. I miss an option to chose, which of the additional files apart from the main sfs to load, e.g. a choice to load the adrv or not. Such menu would have to be defined in the init file ... maybe one day I will do it

The thing is, I never got a choice of which Puppy files to load, even though I had several saves scattered on 3 different partitions. It is crazy that the CD would boot and not load Puppy files from the CD, but automatically load files from an undisclosed location. And it is crazy that I couldn't boot from my CD and actually load the Puppy files on the CD, until I deleted all Puppy files on all partitions! Tradition is not always a good thing.

[geo_c]

The thing is, I never got a choice of which Puppy files to load, even though I had several saves scattered on 3 different partitions. It is crazy that the CD would boot and not load Puppy files from the CD, but automatically load files from an undisclosed location. And it is crazy that I couldn't boot from my CD and actually load the Puppy files on the CD, until I deleted all Puppy files on all partitions! Tradition is not always a good thing.

I don't think you read @rockedge 's post very closely.

The only reason it loaded those files is because you told it to.

[geo_c]

@Governor

Kudos to the one person has shown interest in this, so far:

I think it is possible and it should be an option. I also could be wrong but it seems that you are confusing the bootloader menu, which gives you a choice of different operating systems, with a possible boot option menu of the chosen OS. Such menu already exists. You see it when you have more than 1 save files. The boot process stops and asks you, which save file to load. A similar menu would be possible to give you a choice, which Puppy files to load. I miss this very much. I miss an option to chose, which of the additional files apart from the main sfs to load, e.g. a choice to load the adrv or not. Such menu would have to be defined in the init file ... maybe one day I will do it

If you also read @MochiMoppel's closely, you'll see that what he is talking about is getting a choice of which components from the OS to layer into the file system, things like the adrv and ydrv.

You would have to know what those are, what they do, and how a layered file system works to make use of that. All of that information is available right here on the forum in the Getting Started subsection. But you have to learn things outside of the "user friendly" realm to make use of any ot that.

I believe if you had this system component choice, you would have a system more broke than your current one.

[rockedge]

Ok, so in polite way, you are basically saying it is my own fault. Thanks for being polite! I am not buying it, though.

That's correct. How it works for real is FACT. But I'll take your money anyway. Have you done what I asked and tried out to see what I am telling you?

No you did not. I know exactly how it happened and I shared that with you, but go on and complain and with nothing to back up your argument I am out.
No more help from me.

Just because it has been done that way for 20 years does not mean it is a good thing. IMO it is a poor idea and should never have been promulgated.

It does exactly what it is designed to do. And that system has for 20 years provided a pretty good system you pay $0 to have and you can MODIFY it anyway you want too. How much you spend all these years on Microsoft or Apple? Just go use that stuff...it's made to be user friendly. They have thousands of people working on the stuff ( and getting paid $$$) to make it easy for you not to think too much about how it works or what it does. Puppy has a handful that do it for free.

Try modifying Microsoft Windows code and share it...see how fast you land in court.

[jamesbond]

If your bootloader configuration says to "search for files and use the first one you can find", well, then exactly which files will be used would be ... rather random

If the OS is going to arbitrarily load save file or folders, Joe User should be given a choice of which 'save' to use (or use none) on the current boot.

We got it. You have repeated this a couple of times by now.
But that "should" is only your opinion, which is not shared by everyone.

Just because it has been done that way for 20 years does not mean it is a good thing. IMO it is a poor idea and should never have been promulgated.

You were not there when Puppy was designed, and you refuse to understand why certain things were done in a certain way, and lasty you refuse to accept that people can have different opinions than you on what they think as the "good thing".

Continuously harping and complaining about Puppy features which have existed pretty much for the lifetime of Puppy (and isn't troubling anyone except yourself), and questioning why Puppy doesn't work or isn't designed according to your specification, or to your grand idea of "user-friendliness", isn't going to change much, other than irritating yourself (and others).

Puppy is what Puppy is, whether you agree with its design choices or not. If you want to use it, then learn about it, adapt to it, so you can use it properly. If you're not happy about it and refuse to adapt to Puppy's quirks, then yeah it's not like Puppy's the only distro in the world.

Once you know how to handle Puppy properly, you're in much better position to suggest and recommend change. Rather than complaining, you can explain why the feature you suggest is useful not only for yourself but also for others. You can have proper arguments with the Puppy developers other than "should" and "Joe User" or "user-friendly".

Even better if you approach the specific developer of the Puppy you use directly. Perhaps, if the stars are aligned, the developers will hear you, they will have the time to do it, they will have the motivation to do it, and things will magically happen.

If it doesn't, or if you can't wait for it to happen, well, you always have the option of doing it yourself. Be the change you want to see

---

@rockedge, your post came as I was writing mine. Since I've already put the time to write it, I might as well post it, even if it actually says the same thing.

[MochiMoppel]

@jamesbond @rockedge @geo_c
It appears that everybody thinks that @Governor did some stupid things and just needs to learn how Puppy works.
But what if he is right?

I tried to reproduce his problems and now I'm as puzzled as he is.
I burned the ISO and closed the CD as he did.
He reported that he had related files scattered on his internal and external drives and that these files prevented the proper booting of the CD, so I placed a copy of the main sfs and a zdrv on my harddisk:
/mnt/sda5/puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
/mnt/sda5/zdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
No other files, no external devices connected

The CD booted as expected and showed its boot menu. The default seems to be "copy to RAM" and this is what it did, but the boot messages showed that only the main sfs and the zdrv was copied ... suspiciously fast. No adrv and fdrv. As it turns out the CD booted but ignored the sfs files on the CD but loaded the 2 files from the HD instead. That's not what I expect from a CD boot. There is no reason for the CD to poke around in my HD. When I booted with "Do not copy to RAM" the SDA5 partition is mounted and - because it's in use - can't be unmounted. Only when I remove the copy of the main sfs from SDA5 the CD boots correctly with all its sfs files.

Sorry, but I agree with Governor that this is a bug.

[mikewalsh]

@MochiMoppel :-

Hm. Curious.... If it IS a "bug", from whence does it come? The initrd? Woof-CE?

I wonder if it affects other Pups as well, or whether it only shows itself under certain, specific circumstances? Is it perhaps due to what @dimkr has called the partially "closed-source" nature of PhilB's build of Fossapup?

Gawd. It might take some real deep digging to figure out, if that's the case.... Could it be due to the fact that anything on an internal drive can simply be accessed more quickly than it can from the CD? Which makes it sound like a timing issue (of sorts)....

Mike.

[geo_c]

@jamesbond @rockedge @geo_c
The CD booted as expected and showed its boot menu. The default seems to be "copy to RAM" and this is what it did, but the boot messages showed that only the main sfs and the zdrv was copied ... suspiciously fast. No adrv and fdrv. As it turns out the CD booted but ignored the sfs files on the CD but loaded the 2 files from the HD instead. That's not what I expect from a CD boot. There is no reason for the CD to poke around in my HD. When I booted with "Do not copy to RAM" the SDA5 partition is mounted and - because it's in use - can't be unmounted. Only when I remove the copy of the main sfs from SDA5 the CD boots correctly with all its sfs files.

Sorry, but I agree with Governor that this is a bug.

That's a good find on @Governor's and your part.

The problem with taking the find from @Governor as being an actual bug is that he ignored all advice on how to format and setup up his internal drive, and also ignored all advice to get one copy of fossapup installed on a thumb drive to eliminate all the variables and cleanly install fossapup on his internal drive.

So no one could tell if it was the CD boot, or where all his boot loaders were located, or which ones were actually in play, etc. He hadn't backed up and slowed down enough to find out, and instead just booted the CD.

So for all the time we've been hearing about this problem, it could have been eliminated in the practical sense for @Governor simply by installing a single fossapup on the USB drive, configuring his internal drive and installing fossapup there properly.

If @Governor is one of those people who actually wants to boot from CD and only CD, then this bug is important, but honestly, I don't think there are that many people who are going to be affected. Not saying it shouldn't be fixed if someone has the time and ability to do it, as someone is bound to boot from CD in the future, but will they have the fossa files already residing on their other drives?