How to install devx_214.sfs; is swap necessary?

[nickdobrinich]

Dear Forum members,
I am a newbie convert to the wonderful simplicity and speed of Puppy Linux, having struggled with and cursed at various boxed versions for years.
Some new guy notes that might be helpful.

(1) The directions for getting devx_214.sfs installed on a hard disk install are correct but unclear.
(a) you have to get Puppy installed to the hard disk and GParted and the Puppy Universal Installer work perfectly for that. I created a 10 GB Linux ext3 partition and it's a good idea to allocate a 500 MB Linux swap partition while you're at it. Partitioning always has and should scare anyone who has wiped out more than 1 primary partition. Puppy didn't even hiccup.
(b) reboot the hard disk Puppy.
(c) download the developer devx_???.sfs file for the version of Puppy you're using.
(d) to install this .sfs you will have to boot from the live CD again.
While rebooting, give Puppy this boot command:
puppy pfix=ram
Otherwise Puppy will not be able to mount the hard disk as /mnt/hda2 (or something like that) after rebooting from the CD since it will already be mounted and using the pup_save.?fs file.
(e) mount /mnt/hda2 (or some name like that)
(f) then it will be possible to follow the console commands for c/c++ compiling given at:
http://www.puppyos.com/hard-puppy.htm
(g) gcc 3.4.4 works and all will be right with the world.

(2) I was having trouble loading large CAD files into QCad. When I repartitioned and allocated a 500 MB swap partition, the files loaded correctly. I could not find any reference to swap space in Puppy info. Is it necessary or recommended? Curiously in MUT 0.1.1, if I turn swap ON, I cannot load large CAD drawings; with it OFF, I can. Is the displayed sense of this reversed in MUT?

(3) Firefox 2.0.0.3 seems to have problems with Gmail AJAX. Cannot exit without abending Firefox. I'm not sure who's at fault here.

Many thanks. Now I only go to Windows occasionally to visit.
Nick

[GuestToo]

Curiously in MUT 0.1.1, if I turn swap ON, I cannot load large CAD drawings; with it OFF, I can. Is the displayed sense of this reversed in MUT?

yes ...

Swap ON means "Click Me to Turn the Swap ON"
Swap OFF means "Click Me to Turn the Swap OFF"

Swap ON does not mean "The Swap is currently ON"

you can see how much swap space you have available by typing free in a terminal console

swap space ... Is it necessary or recommended?

if you have enough ram, it is not necessary to have swap space ... but it is good to have no matter how much ram you have

the kernel expects to have some swap space that it can use as secondary storage ... for example, if an application does not behave properly, and leaves behind some "dirty ram", the kernel can put it in the swap space to get rid of it ... if there is no swap space, it can't, and is stuck with keeping it in ram ... the kernel can do a little better job of memory management if there is at least the small amount of swap space that it expects to be there

so no matter how much ram you have, it's good to setup a small amount of swap space ... 500 megs would probably work reasonably well no matter how much ram you have ... 500 megs should be enough if you do not have much ram, and if you do have a lot of ram, you don't need much swap space anyway ... if you want to make the swap space larger, it should not cause any problems

Firefox 2.0.0.3 seems to have problems with Gmail AJAX

i've never had any problems with Gmail and Firefox ... i click Sign Out and it does, displaying the sign in page

[nickdobrinich]

also see:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16780

the instructions from gary101 work perfectly for a 2.15CE hard disk installation.