Adding and removing programs from your SFS

[8-bit]

I have seen Pet be Gone suggested for removing programs from Puppy.
But let us just assume you want to add or remove programs from a stock Puppy SFS file before making an iso from the directory.
You will need two programs an lots of space in an ext2/ext3/ext4 partition.
Also you will need two files to do this.
They are unpackager-dragNdrop-1-i486-slxr.pet and edit_sfs-2.1.pet
You can get edit_sfs-2.1.pet here.

Once you get the files, first back up your SFS file.
Then install both PET packages.
Make a directory to hold your SFS file for modification.
Run edit_sfs and choose the SFS file to modify as well as the directory you created.
You should now have an editable file system in that directory.
Now for the add/remove part.
Take a PET or tar.gz file that has the program you want to add.
drag it to unzipper_dragNdrop.
It will offer to create a directory with the same name as your PET and extract the contents there.
Open that created directory and drag and drop the needed files from it to the directories in the opened editable SFS file.
When done, save the new sfs file and use it.
All directions for edit_sfs are with it.

If this was clear as mud, maybe someone can do better at a how-to
But this was exciting for me anyway.
I am including the Pet for the unpackager-dragNdrop-1-i486-slxr.pet.

Thanks to Pizzasgood and BigBass for these utilities.

[don922]

I have seen Pet be Gone suggested for removing programs from Puppy.
But let us just assume you want to add or remove programs from a stock Puppy SFS file before making an iso from the directory.

You tell how to add programs to the SFS, but how do you remove them?

Can programs be removed from a "stock Puppy SFS" then can the modified SFS file be used without "making an iso from the directory"?

Can I remove all of Sea Monkey from Puppy 4.12 and replace it with Opera; then use the new modified SFS file in my existing frugal installation of Puppy 4.12 without "making an iso from the directory"?

[8-bit]

To answer some of your questions.
If you are running a frugal install of Puppy, you can modify the xxx.SFS file and remove programs as well as add programs.
To remove a program, It could be as simple as finding the program using the file-search in puppy and deleting said program from the editable temporary directory structure.
The unzipper dragNdrop is helpful in that it creates a folder with the package name and the directory structure with files used by said program.

As to just removing Seamonkey, there are a lot of other programs that will not run if you remove it.
And what you need to keep is beyond my knowledge.
But for removing a calculator, or another program that does not break other programs, you would find the desktop file in /usr/share/applications.
You then check the name of the executable it runs and search and delete that as well a the desktop file.
The large the program, the more support / lib files it uses.
Sometimes you can get away with removing them.

This is not for the feint of heart. A good understanding of Puppy and it's directory structure as well as interaction of installed programs is needed.

And as I said before, clear as mud.

[nooby]

I can confirm this text.

A good understanding of Puppy and it's directory structure as well as interaction of installed programs is needed.

I don't have that so I often do fatal changes.

I try to help test all the changes that Quirky did go through. From 003? to Q1.00 and also Lupu from 006 to 115 or so.

An d it was annoying that every time I had to update Firefox with all the addons and bookmarks and passwords I got used to to just be there.

So I tried to find an easy way to make Firefox to be independent on which version of Q or L I was using.

But I lack the "good understanding of Puppy and it's directory structure as well as interaction of installed programs" so it only partly works for me.

I made a kind of safe haven for FF and mozilla and .mozilla on the HDD and when testing a new puppie Q or L then I install FF using the built in browser installer in lupu but take Chromium and opera first and FF last.

Then I replace it with the version in safe haven and rename .mozilla as .mozillaold just in case I want to restore it.

Everything works except the passwords stored so obviously they are saved somewhere else.

[buckaroo50]

There are a couple ways to get builtin programs uninstalled.

Here is how I do it.
I have "full" install on a partition.
I put the CD in the CD and mount it this lets me copy the lupu_520.sfs file to the hard drive. I use a separate usb hd for this.

If you downloaded Puppy you also have the ISO image someplace that you can also modify.

Now for removing files that you want to take out....

Here is one method - simply install the file - this now will show up as a user installed file then you can un-install it. Such as dillo or sylpheed - just install them and they will show up as a user installed program then uninstall them.

Here is another method.
In your root/.packages/builtin_files is a list of the built-in files - each has a tree structure of each file that was installed for each package.
Use Pfind to search for the program and then manually delete each file... if you have questions about any lib files leave them because you could disable another program that may use the same file.

Assuming you have the program uninstalled - you could remaster but this is what I do.

I use edit-sfs and open the origional sfs file then delete each folder one at a time and replace with my working copy (bin,etc, lib, opt, root, sbin, usr, var)
once those have been replaced then go into the root folder and delete your personal stuff from thunderbird etc so your password and stuff doesn't get included.

Once done with that then just instruct edit-sfs to build.
Once it has finished building then copy the new lulu_520.sfs to a new location on your external hd. You now have the origonal and a modified one.

Now you can use ISOmaster and delete the lupu_520.sfs and replace it with the new lupu_520.sfs and then save-as and give it a different name because it will not overwrite the origional (you can rename it later)

Now you can use the CD with a new burn to install or you can copy the new lupu_520.sfs any place you want, like on a usb-thumb drive etc.

You could do this from a frugal install but you probably would need to copy your working sfs to another drive and open it with edit-sfs and do the manual removal of programs using the list from builtin_files and manually find each file and delete them then issue the build and then copy that back to your working drive overwriting your working copy and then reboot.

It all works better with a full install and if you want a frugal then just delete everything in the full install and do a clean frugal install after you have made the changes and are satisfied with what you have.

I have done this and if you want to download my iso with some things taken out then here is where you get it.

home.myfairpoint.net/buckaroo39/movie/custom-puppy.iso

Good luck

[zbys]

There seem to be ways to customize the puppy sfs files using unsquashfs and then mksquashfs (there are a lot of sites that explain all about these). but when I use them I always find that its a long process to do the squashing and pruning the unsquashed filesystem aand then squashing it again only to find that something I removed is needed by something I wanted to keep. Is there a way to convert a frugal fs into a full fs, do the customizing and check it and then squash it up to an sfs to get the benefits of compact size and convenience of sfs?