Minimum information we need:
What specific Puppy version?
Bionicpup32 8.0+28
Computer specs or make and model?
MacBookPro 8.1
8GB memory
I plan to attach a summary pup-sysinfo.
How is Puppy installed?
I think that the right answer is live, but see below to confirm this.
Hard drive, USB flash, emmc, SD Card, CD/DVD, etc.....?
Booting off dvd-r, with a remaster of the standard ISO image, with the pupSaves in an SD Card attached as a USB flash drive.
--- Context ----
On about the 4th of August, I booted Bionic Puppy, and followed the advice at line 490 in /usr/sbin/shutdownconfig, that "You are only allowed to save one-deep ...", so the savefile was /mnt/sdb1/puppyLinux/upupbbsave-v_pre_0.4fs
When I booted, it was not found, and it was unclear what my next steps should be.
Because I am unreasonable, I decided to start understanding and fixing things, rather than buy a new flash drive and store everything in the root.
At some stage, I hacked around pmedia= and became able to restore pupSaves (in PUPMODE=13), and discovered that my machine will not sleep without unmounting writeable drives, so I am partway through adding a PUPMODE.
--------- What I have -------
Attached /initrd/init and diff, which add three developability features, enable wildcards in psave=, and begin adding a PUPMODE where the pupSave lives in /initrd/mnt/tmpfs/ with the system .sfs, and the beginnings of a future /usr/sbin/save2removable to save content from it back onto the external media.
I also have projects to:
- extend the syntax of psave=, to enable the claim in shutdownconfig to be true
- ask whether ext4 is the optimal in-memory pupSave format on machines without swap, and possibly implement another one
- make something happen during a second boot where no save file is found, to help people toward usability
Of these, only the developability features are settled enough to submit.
The developability changes are:
pfix=trace
turn on set -x in the shell, without remastering a dvd
pfix=rdsh0
get into a ramdisk shell very early; in fact, early enough to load and run a different /initrd/init from removeable media
forked /initrd/init (always on)
most of the work done by init is ordinary execution that does not have to be in process 1. If it is, and fails badly, the only feedback is a kernel panic. If init is forked, the feedback is an error message, a shell and an intact initrd mounted on /
---------- What I am asking for --------
Please may I have advice, including links to the standard advice if there is one, about how to start contributing code to Puppy Linux?
If it is consistent with the usual process, then I am pre-emptively offering to make clean separations of the three features.
Regards,
James.