A question about BWP64's SFS files...

[mikewalsh]

Morning, gang.

I'm curious. I've never yet come across a Puppy where I cannot "view" the contents of a frugal Puppy's SFS files (in its own sub-directory) from within another Puppy. I can't mount them - I get "Mounting/unmounting failed; insufficient permissions" - and if try to extract any of the SFSs (via uExtract, my go-to extracter), it tells me that extraction failed because the filesystem was unrecognized..!

Question:- Am I right in thinking that these are some of the newer 'security' measures introduced into the Woof-CE build process by @dimkr before he stepped down to concentrate on his own Vanilla DPup? I've also noticed this with Vanilla DPup itself; there is NO way to view anything "externally", because it simply won't let you. The only thing you CAN view is the contents of your save-folder...

(I was attempting to look inside BWP64's fdrv, to ascertain if a particular piece of firmware existed so as to assist one of our noobs......but it's a no-go. As most of you are aware, unlike a lot of you I very rarely jump on the newest Puppy as soon as it comes out; it's usually installed, being "tested", but it'll often be 2-3 years before it will become my "daily driver").

Like I said; just curious.

Mike.

[peebee]

You're probably in an "old" Pup without zstd support:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8690

• Zstd rather than xz compression of SFS files (faster decompression and lower CPU consumption, but 8-15% increase in SFS size)

[dimkr]

Question:- Am I right in thinking that these are some of the newer 'security' measures introduced into the Woof-CE build process by @dimkr before he stepped down to concentrate on his own Vanilla DPup? I've also noticed this with Vanilla DPup itself; there is NO way to view anything "externally", because it simply won't let you. The only thing you CAN view is the contents of your save-folder...

There is no such thing; spot cannot access some directories but that's about it.

Maybe you were looking in the wrong place? e.g. lib/firmware instead of usr/lib/firmware

[mikewalsh]

@peebee :-

Ah. Yeah, that probably explains it. For most of the last week I've been in Tahrpup64.....where the available "compressors" (according to UExtract) are

• gzip

• lzma

• lzo &

• xz

No idea if zstd even existed back then.

@dimkr :-

Nah, it's not that, Dima. I'm fully aware of the 'usrmerge' stuff with recent builds. My problem is that in Tahr64, at least, there IS no zstd; I couldn't even mount the SFS, never mind look inside it. And my attempt to extract the SFS with UExtract failed for the reason just given.....though I'm still unsure why the bit about "insufficient permissions" comes up. And that's why I wondered if you'd introduced any additional security measures into Woof-CE....

Mike.

[dimkr]

And my attempt to extract the SFS with UExtract failed for the reason just given.....though I'm still unsure why the bit about "insufficient permissions" comes up. And that's why I wondered if you'd introduced any additional security measures into Woof-CE....

If you're using such an old Puppy you're clearly not getting any recent changes in woof-CE. (Especially not changes in my fork of woof-CE)

Maybe it's just a bug in UExtract and the error message it shows is wrong. Do you have a screenshot of this error?

[mikewalsh]

Just an 'update'. I'm now in Xenial64, where I shall probably remain for the next week or so. I've added zstd via the PPM, and here I can now access BWP64's SFS files as normal. Initially I was getting the same as in Tahr64, but the addition of zstd support has fixed that.

I can't do this for Tahr64. Zstd didn't exist when it came out, and it's not in the repos. I'm investigating a 'static' build of this using musl over at Github, but haven't yet cloned the build-script'n' stuff.....

https://github.com/VHSgunzo/zstd-static

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

@dimkr :-

I don't currently have a screenshot of UExtract's output, Dima, but I can take one and post it if you want. It won't be till this evening; I'm finally turning in after a very sleepless night.

The reference to new stuff in Woof-CE was in respect of the way BWP64 has been built. I'm fully aware that Tahrpup is ancient, and long unsupported.

I don't use Tahr64 for anything especially important or critical, and use a 'disposable' Pale Moon-portable for internet access (which has been scripted to 'nuke' its 'hardened' profile at shutdown, and re-build that hardening again at the next launch. It's a 3rd-party SSE2 build of PM by a guy name of Nuck-TH, since they've now moved to requiring the AVX instruction set for the mainstream build.....which has been around for several years, yet Intel deliberately disabled it in this 9th-gen Pentium 'Gold' to 'aim' it at its intended market segment). It also has no internal update mechanism, since this has been disabled in Nuck-TH's build config.

I'm just rather attached to it, given that Tahrpup was the first Puppy which worked OOTB on ALL my hardware when I first tried it a decade ago (and 'converted' me to the Puppy 'way'). Plus the current install - now a couple of years old - is the first time I've actually got everything running just the way I want it (at about the 5th attempt!).

It's something of a Frankenpup, with a newer kernel (a 4-series or later is needed for audio on this HP desktop; the original 3-series won't recognise it) and hugely upgraded glibc & dbus, etc. I even managed to compile the Nvidia driver with it like this. Which left me speechless, 'cos I fully expected it to fail....

Well, it works for me, despite being something of a mish-mash. I'll try and remember to get you that screenie later tonight.

Mike.

[dimkr]

Installing a static zstd tool won't help, you'll need to either
1. Install a recent version of squashfs-tools, with zstd support (so you can unpack the SFS with unsquashfs), or
2. Update the kernel to a recent kernel built with zstd support in squashfs (so you can mount the SFS)

[mikewalsh]

@dimkr :-

Sounds like squashfs-tools would be the best approach. If I update the kernel further, I've then got to re-compile & re-install the Nvidia driver again.....and I rather doubt it would work this time!

Where would I obtain a newer version of squashfs-tools with the required zstd support?

Mike.

[dimkr]

Your best option is probably to build squashfs-tools from source. The distro you use is so old you're unlikely to find prebuilt binaries that work on it.

[JakeSFR]

@mikewalsh: here you can download a statically linked, 32bit unsqashfs 4.4 that supports all compression methods:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 01#p116301

Just unpack and put it in /usr/local/apps/UExtract/resources dir and you should be good to go.
You may also need to read this post: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 58#p117058.

Greetings!

[mikewalsh]

@JakeSFR :-

Cheers for that, Jake. Works a treat.

Okay, it's perhaps NOT the 'technically'-nicest way to do it......but it's an easy, functional method for achieving what I was after; to be able to "look" inside any SFS from a recent Puppy IF I happen to be using an older Pup at the time.....

It "does exactly what it says on the tin". Thank you!

Mike.