Jeezus H. Here we go.....AGAIN!

[step]

Consequently, my remaining issue is that I need fatdog to recognize the macbook keyboard and wifi.

I use Fatdog64-812, and now 813, on a macbook 2012, so I can give you the drivers you need. Please post your request to a new thread in the Fatdog64 forum, possibly with "macbook" or similar in the title. I will follow up but please be patient.

[JakeSFR]

The filesystem is ext4 on ext4 and I also made a backup disk with ext4 on ext2. The encrypted sparse file occupies a full 4GB. Aren't sparse files supposed to be small and then grow up to the designated size?

Kinda, they're just created quickly, because all the repeating bytes are not really being "imprinted" on the disk, but instead the filesystem is informed that they are supposed to be there.
But it can differ from fs to fs. IIRC when I used to have a sparse savefile on NTFS, the space that was supposed to be used by the savefile was not visible as free, but actually still available. So I was able to create another file, bigger than available space. Don't quote me on that, though, it was long ago.
Now I just created a sparse file on EXT4, nearly as big as the free space, but I couldn't create another file, bigger than the remaining space.
Anyway, I generally tend to avoid sparse files, because although they're quick to create, when you add actual data to them, it's slower than with non-sparse files and also leads to more fragmentation.

I understand why that may not be logical with encryption. I even wondered if encrypting a lot of zero data would weaken the encryption by creating a lot of repeating patterns. Since it is big anyway, I will encrypt a normal (nonsparse) savefile when I install the new version.

If the encryption is good, it doesn't matter what you encrypt, no obvious patterns should be visible.
See the ECB encryption mode and how it leaks patterns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cip ... book_(ECB)
The default cipher/mode for LUKS is aes-xts-plain64 and we use it for savefile encryption.

I tried putting ext4 on exfat, but fatfog complained that it didn't have write access to exfat. Maybe I should try again with the new version.

Hmm, hard to tell. I just made (in VBox, FD-813) an encrypted savefile on an EXFAT partition, which I created with GParted, and FD can load it just fine.
Maybe it's different, if it was created by another OS, like Windows?
Or maybe the filesystem on your device is corrupted and you need to fsck.exfat it (making a backup first, of course)...
___________

Don't I remember user 1111 (you-know-who-I-mean) developing a way of doing multi-session on FatDog from a USB stick.....before he went nutso and started attacking the Forum over its Ukraine stance?

I could be wrong, but I guess you'll find some reference to it within your own pages here. Sounded quite a useful method, from what I recall.

Yeah, I think it was him. And also @Clarity, if I'm not mistaken, but maybe not on USB..?

Greetings!

[je55eah]

Thanks for the details.

I just repeated everything with the new version. Unfortunately nothing changed. The keyboard is still not working when a password is required. The wifi is not present. Exfat partitions are readable, and they do work as reported by JakeSFR, but I was scared off because gparted flags them as unreadable. Which is better on the memory card, ext2 or exfat? I am still using ext4 in the save file.

I will try to install drivers manually presently.

[JakeSFR]

Which is better on the memory card, ext2 or exfat?

Depends what you mean by "better".
If it comes for increasing efficiency and extending the life span of flash memory devices, filesystems specifically designed/optimized for it, like EXFAT and F2FS, will be better.

For me "better" means interchangeability of data between operating systems, that's why I tend to stick to FAT32.

Greetings!

[je55eah]

I have posted an update about my progress in another thread and I will continue the discussion about the MacBook there.

http://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.p ... 792#p68945

@JakeSFR
You made a great point about fat32. I saw that macos and windows have good exfat support so I was thinking about using it for the same reason.

I probably will, but I need to revaluate how I will use Fatdog. Since I cannot decrypt the savefile with the builtin keyboard I will start over with an unencrypted savefile. The question is, how will I use an unencrypted OS. Perhaps I will install virtualbox and encrypt the hosted systems instead. I was going to do that with KVM on MX, because I had KVM working on Antix already but there may be a case for using KVM for servers and virtualbox for desktops.

How are you guys using fatdog? My plan was to use it as a pocket office, which is why I wanted encryption.

[je55eah]

Update:

Multisession on USB does work. The issues I was having with the keyboard were solved with the coldplug option. Exfat works fine, but that partition must be created from the terminal, or from another operating system. Saves can be moved to a subfolder. There are multiple ways to do it, but these are the menu entries in my grub.conf that I have tested. The UUID, is specific to my partition.

Code: Select all

menuentry "Start encrypted Fatdog64 office" {
	echo Loading ...
	linux /vmlinuz rootfstype=ramfs waitdev=10 coldplug ntfsnoperm savefile=ram:uuid:55D8-6BC3:/saves/000office.fd64save_dmcrypt_.ext4
	initrd /initrd
	echo Booting ...
}
menuentry "Start unencrypted Fatdog64 hypervisor" {
	echo Loading ...
	linux /vmlinuz rootfstype=ramfs waitdev=10 coldplug ntfsnoperm savefile=ram:uuid:55D8-6BC3:/saves/000virtualbox.fd64save.ext4
	initrd /initrd
	echo Booting ...
}
menuentry "Fatdog64 with default savefile at USB device root" {
	echo Loading ...
	linux /vmlinuz rootfstype=ramfs waitdev=10 coldplug ntfsnoperm
	initrd /initrd
	echo Booting ...
}
menuentry "Fatdog64 with savefile in USB device & MacBookPro9,2 tweaks" {
	echo Loading ...
	linux /vmlinuz rootfstype=ramfs waitdev=10 coldplug ntfsnoperm extrasfs=ram:usb:extrasfs_macbook_813-2022.10.06-x86_64-2.sfs
	initrd /initrd
	echo Booting ...
}
menuentry "Fatdog64 with unencrypted USB multisession support" {
	echo Loading ...
	linux /vmlinuz rootfstype=ramfs waitdev=10 coldplug ntfsnoperm savefile=ram:multi:uuid:55D8-6BC3:/saves/fatdog813save.ext4
	initrd /initrd
	echo Booting ...
}