USB flash-drive frugal 'mods'.....can it be done?

[mikewalsh]

Morning, guys'n'gals.

This isn't a 'life-or-death' enquiry, nor something I absolutely have to get done; more a case of Uncle Mike attempting to increase his understanding of how Puppy 'stuff' works, prompted by a couple of recent threads.

It's fairly normal (so I believe), when doing a 'frugal' install to a USB flash-drive, to use a save-file, and to set the save interval to 0 ('Never'), thereby prompting a shutdown query as to whether you wish to save.....yes? This is not something I tend to do, hence the question:-

Can the above be performed, except with a save-folder instead? In other words, can manual saves be initiated to a save-folder.......or is this process peculiar to the save-file? AFAICT, Puppy doesn't care two hoots what you save, as long as it knows two things:-

• How often ('when') you wish to save, and

• Where you wish to save to

Is that a fair summary, people?

TIA.

Mike.

[dancytron]

Yes, that's how I set up my usb backup drives. It works pretty much like normal if you format the usb drive to an ext* type of format. IIRC the consensus is ext3 to avoid some sort of bug.

What I do is :

--manually put a puppy distro on the ext3 formatted usb drive and run grub4dos from another puppy to set the boot stuff up (or do the same with Debian Dog and its install program).

-edit the menu.1st file as needed

-Boot to puppy and reboot to set up the save folder.

-set up event manager to only save on exit.

I assume you could do more or less the same thing for UEFI installs.

[Jafadmin]

An additional trick is to boot with 'pmedia=ataflash' which will put the 'Save' icon on your desktop so you can do manual saves whenever you wish. That way you can commit a disk write while in session, as well.

[mikewalsh]

Okey-doke, guys; all useful info.

I've only ever run my kennels in one of two ways. On the odd occasions I've put a Puppy on a flash drive, it's always been 'pmedia=usbflash', which gives me a save icon, and using a save-file, set to the usual 30 mins. Or, as now, on the new hardware (and the old Compaq tower), running frugals from a hard-drive, 'pmedia=atahd', with either save-files (on the Compaq), or save-folders nowadays on the new HP. Currently, I'm in Quirky64 April 7.0.1, and the save-interval is set to 30 (but 'greyed-out').

A lot of folks have been asking about this stuff this last couple of months. I'm as willing as the next guy to help out with queries on anything, y'all know that, but if I don't fully understand this stuff, and all the various permutations, it's a bit pointless me doing so! So:-

I take it each different PUPMODE has a different set of parameters. Where do the 'definitions' for these live? Is it all tucked away inside the initrd? Is it anywhere you can actually access & "read", as such?

Mike.

[TerryH]

The pmedia= is the key. It's presence in the boot stanza tells the system how to treat the Save file/folder. Using pmedia=atahd flags it as a traditional HD. It is writing directly to the save not stored in memory, so no need for a save to occur. Using pmedia=ataflash | usbflash tells the system that it is a solid state drive, regardless of what the actual drive is. This sets it as PUPMODE=13 allowing manipulation of save interval and also placing a Save desktop launcher on the desktop. No difference in treatment of save file or folder in regards to saving.

[bigpup]

How Puppy works:
http://bkhome.org/archive/puppylinux/de ... works.html

[mikewalsh]

@TerryH :-

Thanks for the clarification, Terry. That's much appreciated.

@bigpup :-

Heh. Yah... Y'know, I've scanned that document a few times over the years. I know it gives a lot of detail about this stuff, but I always give up on it after a few pages, 'cos it is SO "dry" & complicated..!!

Perhaps I just don't have the right kinda "mindset" to take it all in.....

Mike.

[Geek3579]

Just an additional comment for Mike's query. I tend to agree with comments above.

I have always used a savefolder for frugal installs - usually in a ext2 or ext4 partition. But I think FAT32 can work as well, but the savefile is limited to 4GB in size...not that one needs that much.

As long as I use pmedia=usbflash or similar the saves always work. Thats one more reason why I love Puppy Linux.