Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I booted from a Puppy CD and did not choose the RAM only option, but chose to copy the OS files to RAM.
I wonder why the OS appears to have "hijacked" partition 3 on my internal disk drive. It pmount, there is a little puppy symbol beside that drive, and I am unable to access the drive normally. However, the files seem to be accessible at "/mnt/home", although in the path field, it says /mnt/home +T.
What is the significance of this?
And why does my keyboard setting not stick?

Thanks!

Governor wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 6:37 pm

I booted from a Puppy CD and did not choose the RAM only option, but chose to copy the OS file to RAM.
I wonder why the OS appears to have "hijacked" partition 3 on my internal disk drive. It pmount, there is a little puppy symbol beside that drive, and I am unable to access the drive normally. However, the files seem to be accessible at "/mnt/home", although in the path field, it says /mnt/home +T.
What is the significance of this?
And why does my keyboard setting not stick?

Thanks!

Apparently it's booted with a loaded savefile/folder on partion 3 of your internal disk drive. Puppy mounts the save location as /mnt/home, unlike standard linuxes that mount it as sda1,sdb,etc...

/mnt/home is a significatly useful modification in that you can move savefiles to drives that have different disk id's, and any symlinks and references inside the save will still work because they point to /mnt/home, no matter what the physical drive is named.

In fact I manually create the symlink /mnt/home in distros that don't create it automatically, because I have a large amount of external applications and data symlinked to my persistent save. However, in those distros I will have /mnt/home in addition to /mnt/sda1, and I can access the drive from either. Puppies will not show you the drive letter, probably to avoid confusion if not for other reasons.

geo_c wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 11:53 pm

Governor wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 6:37 pm

I booted from a Puppy CD and did not choose the RAM only option, but chose to copy the OS file to RAM.
I wonder why the OS appears to have "hijacked" partition 3 on my internal disk drive. It pmount, there is a little puppy symbol beside that drive, and I am unable to access the drive normally. However, the files seem to be accessible at "/mnt/home", although in the path field, it says /mnt/home +T.
What is the significance of this?
And why does my keyboard setting not stick?

Thanks!

Apparently it's booted with a loaded savefile/folder on partion 3 of your internal disk drive. Puppy mounts the save location as /mnt/home, unlike standard linuxes that mount it as sda1,sdb,etc...

/mnt/home is a significatly useful modification in that you can move savefiles to drives that have different disk id's, and any symlinks and references inside the save will still work because they point to /mnt/home, no matter what the physical drive is named.

In fact I manually create the symlink /mnt/home in distros that don't create it automatically, because I have a large amount of external applications and data symlinked to my persistent save. However, in those distros I will have /mnt/home in addition to /mnt/sda1, and I can access the drive from either. Puppy's will not show you the drive letter, probably to avoid confusion if not for other reasons.

Does this mean that if I edit files in /mnt/home and re-boot with the RAM only option, or from the internal disk (if I ever get that to boot), the edited files will be on partition 3, with the new edits, as expected?

I find this odd, because no configuration settings were restored. Could there be a savefile/folder with no configuration changes at all that was automatically and mysteriously used on boot?

Thanks!

Governor wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 9:29 am

Does this mean that if I edit files in /mnt/home and re-boot with the RAM only option, or from the internal disk (if I ever get that to boot), the edited files will be on partition 3, with the new edits, as expected?

Could there be a savefile/folder with no configuration changes at all that was automatically and mysteriously used on boot?

I wish I could answer your question, but this aspect of your hardware/install setup has been a mystery since the first time you posted on the forum.

If I were to try and troubleshoot your situation, I would personally find a way to disable the internal drive completely, (perhaps backup all it's data to a third drive, then erase the internal drive's file allocation table using gparted and NOT reformat it.)

Then with no other drives whatsoever attached to the machine:
1) Boot puppy from the CD, don't bother making any personal changes
2) attach a pristine USB thumb drive
3) format a single ext4 partition to the USB thumb drive using gparted.
edit: give it a boot flag to make it bootable
4) install one instance of puppy on it using puppy installer
edit: make sure to run the bootloader installer so that grub is loaded on the USB
5) Shutdown, remove the CD drive completely, in other words unplug it if it's external.
6) Boot into the bios, make sure "legacy boot" and boot from USB is enabled, save the bios changes, continue boot
7) It should boot the USB puppy.
8) make one discernable change (not keyboard, maybe just change the desktop background)
9) Shutdown and make a save folder at shutdown when prompted. Name it fossapup64save-TEST
10) reboot.

There should be a choice at reboot:

0 (which is booting in RAM with NO SAVE)
1 fossapup64save-TEST

Choose "1 fossapup64save-TEST" and see if the desktop background change was saved.

If successful, don't make any other saves, run from the USB for awhile always using "1 fossapup64save-TEST"

Changes should be saved there.

Short of that, I don't think I can offer any meaningful advice.

geo_c wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:36 pm

Governor wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 9:29 am

Does this mean that if I edit files in /mnt/home and re-boot with the RAM only option, or from the internal disk (if I ever get that to boot), the edited files will be on partition 3, with the new edits, as expected?

Could there be a savefile/folder with no configuration changes at all that was automatically and mysteriously used on boot?

I wish I could answer your question, but this aspect of your hardware/install setup has been a mystery since the first time you posted on the forum.

If I were to try and troubleshoot your situation, I would personally find a way to disable the internal drive completely, (perhaps backup all it's data to a third drive, then erase the internal drive's file allocation table using gparted and NOT reformat it.)
8<-----snipped

I will make a not of your suggestion to use gparted and not reformat, and try that when I get the time.

I discovered that there is a save file in use. I went into the Utility menu and chose "Resize personal storage file".
I can see there is a 64Mb personal file in use with 0 bytes free.
It says I can increase the file size, but a reboot is required. I will try this, but I don't have the time now.
Could this account for not being able to save settings?

Thanks!

Governor wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2023 7:06 am

I can see there is a 64Mb personal file in use with 0 bytes free.
It says I can increase the file size, but a reboot is required.
Could this account for not being able to save settings?

Yes. It is not a good situation to run the savefile to 0 bytes, it might result in system files that need to be written at shutdown not being written and could result in bugginess or out right system crashes.

64MB gets eaten up very quickly.

The resize-file routine should work, and if you do that, I would resize it to the maximum. I don't remember what the maximum size is anymore.

This is the reason I suggest using an ext4 partition to save your settings and on shutdown of firstboot CREATE a save FOLDER, and NOT a save FILE when prompted. Save files are containerized filesystems and are fixed in size which require resizing when stored data fills up the file. They were originally useful for installing on Windows partitions. Some people still prefer them, but with storage space being so plentiful these days, I see no advantages whatsoever.

Save folders on the other hand have no size limit, they can grow as big as your partition if you want. Save folders are simply folders like any other, You can copy and write to them from other OS's.

These topics are addressed here:
viewtopic.php?t=6526
viewtopic.php?t=5412
viewtopic.php?p=52190#p52190

No one has ever fixed the save file feature to warn you it is trying to write to the save and there is no free space to write to.

It just does not complete the writing and you loose whatever it was trying to go into the save.

So, with save files, you need to make sure it always has some free space in it, and enough for what you are trying to write to it.

The personal storage display icon, in the right side of the desktop tray, is there to give you a quick indication of how much free space is in the save.
Mouse cursor over the icon and info pops up about the save file/folder.