Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Reducing ram used by Puppy

Computers using Grub4Dos as the boot loader.
Use Geany editor.
-open the file: menu.lst
-find: pfix=fsck
-replace with: pfix=nocopy,fsck
Note: nocopy and fsck are separated by a comma and no spaces
-save

Computers using Grub2 as the boot loader.
Use Geany editor.
-open the file: grub.cfg
-find: pfix=fsck
-replace with: pfix=nocopy,fsck
Note: nocopy and fsck are separated by a comma and no spaces
-save

In addition to reducing ram use, you will also see a slightly faster boot speed.

wizard

@JusGellin

Don't know for KL, hopefully one of the expert users will reply.

wizard

Only an option in the mainline Puppy distros.

Here is a list of the options and parameters for using Kennel Linux's kernel command line.

• distro : distro vmlinuz and modules/firmware that will be used

• w_bootfrom : vmlinuz/initrd.gz location, which might be a dir or a mounted iso (/mnt/iso)

• bootfromdir : like w_bootfrom but always the directory (e.g. even if iso loop being used; then its dir where iso is; whole path I think?)

• bootmnt : e.g. /mnt/sda2 or whatever partition was mounted (I think...); I believe bootpartition code could be derived from this as simplification

• mountfrom : where layers are mounted from. e.g. w_bootfrom dir or from layers_base/RAM

• w_changes : =""|media or RAM0|RAM1|RAM2 or no_uc0 or no_uc1, path2dir (for detailed comments refer lines 109 on)

• w_changes1 : =""|media or RAM0|RAM1|RAM2 or no_uc0 or no_uc1 (only for use when w_changes=path2dir

• w_altNN : alternative/additional location for NNfiles for mounting to the NN overlay layers

• w_rmmodule : Name of module from main list you don't want loaded

• w_addmodule : Name of extra module to load (modprobe)

• w_usbwait : wait seconds for slow devices

• w_copy2ram : is boolean 0(true) or 1(false) to copy all NNsfs, NNdirs, w_rdshN.plug to RAM

• w_debug : Debugging off (boolean 1 means false)

• layers_base : default is /mnt/layers/RAM for (upper_)w_changes=RAM and w_copy2ram storage in tmpfs

• uc_rw : usually for mounting savefile rw

• uc_ro : usually for mounting savefile ro or mount bind savefolder rw

• w_00modules : special option only - specifies 00modules arrangement as either lib or usrlib

We probably should make more detailed documentation for using these options....but as usual the development far outpaces the instructions on how to actually use all of the possibilities.

@rockedge
I'll keep this for future reference for when I can try understanding it better.
It's good to see and know the differences between puppy and KL, since I would like to use both and know more about them.

Thanks

Re-compress your Puppy Files in the gzip format. Gzip is much lighter on resources (and faster) than especially xz compression. You will already see the difference in RAM usage at startup.

On older puppies remove the unused video drivers... they take up quite a bit of space, a good example is slacko-5.7
This will reduce ram size and iso size.
Clean out other unused drivers and remaster is your friend.