Puppy boots faster from CD than hard drive, is this normal?

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jimj · #1 Post by **jimj** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 05:44

Below are Puppy Linux 1.0.6 startup times on my IBM A20m laptop. All times are in seconds from when I hit enter on the CD boot menu, or hit enter from hard drive grub menu, to when the Puppy desktop appears.

[From CD with usr_cram.fs on CD]
57

[From CD with usr_cram.fs on /mnt/home]
31

[From option 2 hard drive install]
36

You can see from my times that booting from CD with usr_cram.fs on /mnt/home is actually 5 seconds faster than booting from an option two hard drive install. I thought option two hard drive install would be the fastest since it doesn't have to spend time copying everything into RAM. Is this normal?

Mr Doolie · #2 Post by **Mr Doolie** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 06:46

Mine does that too. My guess is that the user.cram/RAM option loads one easy to find file into RAM and then runs from there ZOOM! The full install has Puppy searching the (possibly fragmanted) drive for all those files.
Just a guess.

Knoppix is like that too. A full (regular) install boots slower than the CD way.

GuestToo · #3 Post by **GuestToo** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 08:20

I thought option two hard drive install would be the fastest

i don't know why anyone thinks an option 2 install is a good thing ... you lose most of the advantages of running Puppy, and gain little, if anything

i mostly run Puppy from an option 1 install ... actually, i just copy the 3 files from the iso to my hard drive ... that's it, Puppy is installed

some of the advantages of an option 1 install:

it's easier to install ... just copy 3 files

it's easier to upgrade to the latest version of Puppy ... just copy the 3 files

if any of the files in /usr are corrupted or deleted, you can get them back again by deleting the appropriate file(s) in /root/.usr and rebooting

files in /bin, /lib, /sbin don't get corrupted, they are restored everytime Puppy boots

if you have enough ram, Puppy is running completely in ram ... which is much faster than the hard drive

if you don't want to bother with installing to the hard drive, option 1, Puppy runs exactly the same booted from a cd ... it may take a little longer to boot, maybe 5 or 10 seconds

if you copy usr_cram.fs to the same place as the pup001 file, Puppy is 80% "installed" on the hard drive anyway ... couldn't be much easier or faster to "install" ... WinXP takes me about an hour to install, then needs a lot more time to setup a firewall, configure the internet connection, install updates, etc etc etc

Trobin · #4 Post by **Trobin** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 08:27

I use a hard disk install for convenience, it may not be as fast, and if something screws up it on;y takes a few minutes to re-install.

Sage · #5 Post by **Sage** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 12:05

There are several advantages of type 2 HD installations, apart from convenience. The detection is good enough to boot up bog-standard older kit with considerably less available resources, once a system has been installed to an (older) HD on a modern system and transferred across. The trick is to incorporate a swap partition - there's been a lot of discussion about this in other threads. Planet-saving is the name of the game!

Guest · #6 Post by **Guest** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 19:05

GuestToo wrote: some of the advantages of an option 1 install:

it's easier to install ... just copy 3 files

All very true but how do you customize a type 1 or uninstall stuff? The files are all packed away and can't be modified.

#7 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 22:29

Some can, some can't. Most of /etc, /usr, and /root actually can be modified/removed. In the case of /usr they aren't really deleted, but neither you nor Puppy can see them. Some files in /etc are replaced with every bootup, though, like /etc/fstab and some of the init files. I've never used an option 2, but I've pimped my pup as much as the next guy. The only place I run into problems is the init files, but I haven't needed to change them yet anyway.

raffy · #8 Post by **raffy** » Sun 18 Dec 2005, 23:35

An issue about option 1 install (where only 3 files are used/replaced) is the updating of pup001 (or pup100 in USB) when upgrading. I remember doing this on a USB from 1.05 to 1.06, and many icons at the desktop lost their links to programs. Not really a problem, as the user can find the right links, but still an issue.

jimj · #9 Post by **jimj** » Mon 19 Dec 2005, 02:59

GuestToo wrote: i don't know why anyone thinks an option 2 install is a good thing ... you lose most of the advantages of running Puppy, and gain little, if anything

i mostly run Puppy from an option 1 install ... actually, i just copy the 3 files from the iso to my hard drive ... that's it, Puppy is installed
.
.
.
if you don't want to bother with installing to the hard drive, option 1, Puppy runs exactly the same booted from a cd ... it may take a little longer to boot, maybe 5 or 10 seconds

My goal is to get the fastest boot I can out of Puppy. Option 2 hard drive install is now out, so I'm trying to decide between just using the live CD (with usr_cram.fs copied to /mnt/home) or using an option 1 hard drive install.

You say that an option 1 install should be faster than a CD boot, but have you actually tested that? I would think that the speed hit you take by booting off a floppy (which is required for option 1?) would more than offset any speed increase you gain from loading from the hard drive. Therefore I'd guess that a CD boot would the fastest. I would test this myself, but when I created and formatted a fat partition from within Puppy the option 1 install didn't like it.

Ted Dog · #10 Post by **Ted Dog** » Mon 19 Dec 2005, 03:08

Someone posted a hdparm setting that tests the speed of verious ide devices
searcgh for hdparm on the forumn. I retired a dulling edge 1.6G HD. when it tested slower than the DVD, it also slowed down the use of the other drive sharing the ide cable.

Guest · #11 Post by **Guest** » Mon 19 Dec 2005, 07:23

jimj wrote:
GuestToo wrote: I would think that the speed hit you take by booting off a floppy

Floppy? Phooey! Check out "WinGrub, my friend. I have an NTFS system with Wingrub, the three puppy files and my pup001. Wingrub runs from the hard drive rather than the MBR but works just like grub. When my boot.ini comes up it says

Windows 2000
Puppy Linux And Other Stuff

I'll email you the setup minus the puppy files if you want.
Lemme know. mrdoolie12345@yahoo.com

Sage · #12 Post by **Sage** » Mon 19 Dec 2005, 12:14

Anyone ever try using an LS120 with Puppy? Still a few drives around (Compaq fitted a lot) and it can boot from most, recent BIOS. Slow, clunky and over-priced discs. Just for interest.

kethd · #13 Post by **kethd** » Tue 20 Dec 2005, 00:32

An IDE or LS-120 bootable DOS partition can be made into a bootable Puppy by just putting the four essential Puppy files there and tiny.exe (Gujin). Then just invoke Gujin from a batch line and pass the parameters... I'm not saying this is better than GRUB or whatever, but it is very easy to understand, and very easy to totally control. You can just boot into DOS, and then type Puppy -- or do whatever else you want first (like copy PUPXXX for backup).

My main boot delay is caused by Gujin taking 21 secs on a P233-MMX just to load image.gz. I'd be very interested in timings from other people, telling the cpu speed and media holding the image.gz.

GuestToo · #14 Post by **GuestToo** » Tue 20 Dec 2005, 02:25

this quote by Guest did not post properly:

GuestToo wrote:
I would think that the speed hit you take by booting off a floppy

it makes it look like i wrote that, when it was actually written by jimj

My goal is to get the fastest boot I can out of Puppy

i think an option 1 install is easier than an option 2, and retains the advantages that Puppy has when booted from a cd, so it is often a good way for a Puppy newbie to install Puppy ... or anyone who wants to install and upgrade and run Puppy with a minimum of effort

some Puppy users are forced to do an option 2 install because it is the only way Puppy will run on their particular machines

an "advanced" user might have specific reasons to have an option 2 install ... an advanced user should have no trouble with partitioning and installing and configuring boot loaders

Guest · #15 Post by **Guest** » Tue 20 Dec 2005, 03:03

Pizzasgood wrote:Some can, some can't. Most of /etc, /usr, and /root actually can be modified/removed.

Are you sure?

What's the trick? I deleted everything with "Mozilla" and "moz" in the name from my Puppy system (I like Firefox). Next time I booted up 95% of it was back. The desktop icon was gone but all the folders had been put back. Having a gig of RAM it's really no biggy but I'm trying to strip The Pupster down to just what I want.

Guest · #16 Post by **Guest** » Tue 20 Dec 2005, 03:13

[quote="GuestToo"to install Puppy ... or anyone who wants to install and upgrade and run Puppy with a minimum of effort[/quote]

and remove it later or back it up if you wish.

I put the 4 pup files (and the wingrub stuff) in my automatic backup that I run at LEAST once a night. Even though my pup001 is a gig in size it compresses down to almost nothing.
-----------------------------------------------------

Subject change. What's this "gujin" thing? I'm going to try it. If puppy can be reduced to the 4 files and this gujin that's even better than the Wingrub way.
Guessing-----maybe the 5 files could be put on a USB key and we have another way to make a portable puppy and ANOTHER entry in the 1,001 ways to install and run Puppy.
.
Barry, you have created a monster!

GuestToo · #17 Post by **GuestToo** » Tue 20 Dec 2005, 10:36

http://gujin.sourceforge.net/

kethd · #18 Post by **kethd** » Wed 21 Dec 2005, 02:22

Gujin is the tiny.exe loader used on the boot floppy that a Puppy HDoption-1 install creates -- it seems to just load/setup the vmlinuz kernel and image.gz filestructure, and then start up the kernel and pass over control.

puppian · #19 Post by **puppian** » Wed 21 Dec 2005, 13:34

Anonymous wrote:
Pizzasgood wrote:Some can, some can't. Most of /etc, /usr, and /root actually can be modified/removed.
Are you sure?

What's the trick? I deleted everything with "Mozilla" and "moz" in the name from my Puppy system (I like Firefox). Next time I booted up 95% of it was back.

I think what Pizzasgood meant is that /etc and /usr can be modified by modifying /root/.etc and /root/.usr
http://puppylinux.org/docs/?Getting_Sta ... t_of_Puppy

Anonymous wrote:I'm trying to strip The Pupster down to just what I want.

You may want to try this

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=3982

More:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/remaster

Guest · #20 Post by **Guest** » Thu 22 Dec 2005, 06:24

puppian wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Pizzasgood wrote: You may want to try this

YES! That did it. Thanks. The situation is taken care of. I hope PupBeGone becomes a part of 1.07. Barry did a great job on Puppy but does the average person NEED 18 text editors and 47 graphic packages?

[Moving over to "Suggestions" for the rest of this message].

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Puppy boots faster from CD than hard drive, is this normal?

Puppy boots faster from CD than hard drive, is this normal?

Issue in type 1 install

old HD slower than new DVD-RW drive