How to view contents of Fatdog's main sfs?

[MochiMoppel]

When I click on the main sfs file of other distros I'm presented with an option to view the contents (see screenshot).
I understand that in Fatdog the sfs is packed into the initrd, but is it possible to peek into the sfs with the same or similar mechanism as for other distros? I sometimes need to have a quick look at the contents and want to do it with as much ease as possible.

[TerryH]

You can do it in a 2 step extract, click the initrd and extract that first, then as normal you can click the fd811.sfs in the extracted directory.

[MochiMoppel]

click the initrd and extract that first

I'm using a mainly pristine Slacko5.6 and clicking on initrd does nothing. Using MMview I can see the contents and I may be able to figure out, how to extract only the fd811.sfs file, but extracting would mean that the file be extracted either to my personal usage space in RAM, space that is scarce on my machine, or onto my USB stick, which is slow. Cleaning up after peeking into the sfs file would also be required.

Is there anything that is as painless as the method seen in the screenshot?

[JakeSFR]

Not sure if it meets you definition of "painless", but there's archivemount (OOTB in Fatdog), so you can simply mount the initrd and then click the fd64.sfs inside.
Accessing it via mounted initrd is, of course, noticeably slower than extracted one.

Greetings!

[Feek]

click the initrd and extract that first

I'm using a mainly pristine Slacko5.6 and clicking on initrd does nothing. Using MMview I can see the contents and I may be able to figure out, how to extract only the fd811.sfs file, but extracting would mean that the file be extracted either to my personal usage space in RAM, space that is scarce on my machine, or onto my USB stick, which is slow. Cleaning up after peeking into the sfs file would also be required.

Is there anything that is as painless as the method seen in the screenshot?

How to get fd811.sfs out of the initrd:
click on the .iso, copy the initrd out of the .iso somewhere else (eg. to root), then left-click to open it and inside is fd811.sfs. This works for me when I do it in Fatdog (I haven't tried it from another Puppy).
Unfortunately, I don't know a painless way to look inside, maybe someone else will know.

[MochiMoppel]

Not sure if it meets you definition of "painless", but there's archivemount (OOTB in Fatdog), so you can simply mount the initrd and then click the fd64.sfs inside.

Haven't compiled from source for years and try to avoid it. Found an archivemount.pet in the Murga forum but it would not run. Installed the required libarchive from my devx.sfs but it's probably the wrong version, so I finally gave up. Sounds like an interesting tool but few information suggests that it is not widely used in the Puppy universe.

click on the .iso, copy the initrd out of the .iso somewhere else (eg. to root), then left-click to open it and inside is fd811.sfs.

That's basically what TerryH proposed. Left-click open doesn't work for me.

Maybe I have to bite the bullet and some day extract this thing, then make a full file listing and use such file list for reference. Not ideal and certainly not as painless as I hoped for but nothing is easy these days.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the suggestions. I really appreciate this fast response of the Fatdog community.

[JakeSFR]

Not sure if it meets you definition of "painless", but there's archivemount (OOTB in Fatdog), so you can simply mount the initrd and then click the fd64.sfs inside.

Haven't compiled from source for years and try to avoid it. Found an archivemount.pet in the Murga forum but it would not run. Installed the required libarchive from my devx.sfs but it's probably the wrong version, so I finally gave up. Sounds like an interesting tool but few information suggests that it is not widely used in the Puppy universe.

Some time ago, I built 32bit, statically linked (against musl) archivemount: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KxDKST ... sp=sharing
Should work in every x86(_64) Linux.

Greetings!

[MochiMoppel]

@JakeSFR Thank you! Works great