Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

cichlasoma · Joined: 12 Sep 2009 Posts: 69

Hi.
From what I've found about changes made in Puppy 4 (and Puppy 3), it seems to me, Barry's text How puppy works (http://www.puppylinux.com/development/howpuppyworks.html) written on Puppy 2 together with his release notes to Puppy 3.0 mentioning "minor" improvements to the system should give a correct overall picture of how frugal install of Puppy 4.2 and 4.3 still works with RAM, drives and savefiles.
Am I not mistaken that no substantial changes took place on this field? What interests me especially - is it still true that Puppy cannot clear RAM by flushing into a savefile when it's getting full without reboot?
c.

8-bit · Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 3033 Location: Oregon

Since Puppy was originally made to run from ram, all files installed and in the pupsave file are loaded into ram as far as possible.
Flushing changes to the Pupsave file as you put it, will not remove them from ram.
When I download a pet, or compressed file or a picture or whatever, I usually save it to /mnt/home.
That way, my pupsave file does not increase in size as fast.
Also, you can increase the size of your pupsave file so that more space is available in it after a reboot.
That option is in the menu.

disciple · Posted: Sat 26 Sep 2009, 22:09 Post subject:

Pizzasgood · Posted: Sun 27 Sep 2009, 02:16 Post subject:

@cichlasoma: I don't know. Sorry.

@8-bit: No official Puppy ever copies things that are already in the pup_save.2fs file into ram. The closest thing to an exception is when the pup_save.2fs file is on a Flash-based drive. In that case, the things that are initially in the pup_save.2fs file are left there. The new things added/changed during that session are held in RAM. But during the next session, those things will be read off the drive (unless they get modified).

The only things that Puppy copies into ram are the kernel, the initrd.gz file, and the pup_xxx.sfs file. And the latter is optional. No other .sfs files are ever copied into ram. Only pup_xxx.sfs.

I applied the "official" qualifier above because I know there were at least a couple experimental Puppies that did load the pup_save.2fs file (or at least the data within) into ram. I wrote one of them, and I think Hairy Will wrote the other. And there may be more floating around out there.

But no official Puppy or even CE did that. But it remains a common misconception.

cichlasoma · Joined: 12 Sep 2009 Posts: 69

Pizzasgood & others: Thanks! (I realize, my question about flushing RAM into savefile in "frugally installed" Puppies makes sense only in case of frugal installs on flash disks as in case of a HD frugal installation, changes to the savefile are written directly into the savefile...)

Pizzasgood · Posted: Sun 27 Sep 2009, 16:23 Post subject:

It depends on the version of Puppy and how much ram you have. In the old days, if Puppy decided you had enough ram it would automatically be loaded. If you didn't, it wouldn't. (The specific amount changed over time as Puppy got larger.)

Then around 4.x, Barry changed things several times. He added a pfix=noram option to disable copying the pup_xxx.sfs file to ram. Then he removed that option and added some code that would consider the speed of the drive and only load to ram if Puppy believed the drive was speedy enough to not make a big impact on the boot time (speediness was determined by drive type, e.g. a usb drive is considered slow while an internal harddrive is considered fast). Somewhere along the way he added a pfix=copy option to instruct Puppy to load the pup_xxx.sfs file even if it's on a slow drive (unless there isn't enough ram). Then he was persuaded to reimplement the pfix=noram option, but he didn't put it all the way back so Puppy still overrides it in certain circumstances (I forget what types of circumstances).

It's been a while since I've really poked around in the init scripts so I'm hazy on the details of all that. Somebody else just asked for help forcing the noram option, so I'll probably dig the scripts out later and figure out what's going on again. Right now it looks like if Puppy decides your drive is fast and you have enough ram, it will ignore your choices and load the file anyway.

cichlasoma · Joined: 12 Sep 2009 Posts: 69

Pizzasgood: Thank you!
Btw, I've come across a quite recent important Barry's statement related to my initial question about flushing memory into savefiles - http://puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00594 . Yet, it's still not clear to me what's the state of affairs for recent Puppies (4.21, 4.3).

Bruce B · Posted: Sun 27 Sep 2009, 20:56 Post subject:

8-bit · Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 3033 Location: Oregon

Bruce B · Posted: Sun 27 Sep 2009, 23:28 Post subject:

Pizzasgood · Posted: Mon 28 Sep 2009, 23:01 Post subject: