Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

jus407 · Joined: 26 Jun 2006 Posts: 177 Location: Texas

sorry i havent been able to try it yet but i did dl it but i am swampped with work so i will let you know soon, and sound like its pretty much taken care of i will check it out soon thanks for your support on this topic and for everone wiling to test! (even though i didnt make it i still wanna say thanks to those who did test as it shows you care about puppy and its future!)

jam · Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 245

Dougal,

Tried your remaster script. My PUP_SAVE.3FS resides on the HD and was created using Puppy 2.02. I tried the remaster script using Puppy 2.10 Barry just released, and created an ISO which I burned to CD+RW using a Windows machine. When I booted the CD it gave be the following error:

Dougal · Posted: Fri 15 Sep 2006, 06:16 Post subject:

Dougal · Posted: Fri 15 Sep 2006, 06:27 Post subject: Re: Remaster 2

Spindoctor · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 118 Location: Vienna, Austria

Hi!

sorry for not answering sooner, Dougal!

I just tried to make an .iso with the new version.

This worked pretty fine.

Well, I didn't try the .iso yet, but it should be working... Wink

I didn't know exactly what to do at the step where I can edit the tmp/etc.
Also I didn't know what parameters to change in the boot script. Is it just about kernel parameters or is it also about keyboard layout,...?

One last question:
Why does the step, where the script reads the CD take so much longer than in the last version?

jam · Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 245

Dougal,

I'm back now. Sorry for the delay in responding. By the way, I should be available for the next 6-8 hours from the time of this post. Puppy <finally> did boot to the desktop, but none of my saved settings were reflected. Some of the GTK objects appeared, but icons and background did not. I could not get to the JWM/IceWM menus, and although the mouse/keyboard functioned, clicking an object on the desktop produced no action.

For this test run I used Murga's Very Mean Puppy 2.02 SE. My next run will consist of downloading and using the the puppy-2.02-seamonkey.iso from ibiblio.org to see if that makes any difference.

jam · Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 245

Dougal,

Went through the same process with Puppy 2.02 Seamonkey and the result was the same. The ISO created was 300 Mb in size, the bootup process went fine, but the desktop displayed did not resemble anywhere near the settings saved in my PUP_SAVE.3FS file. Just to clarify, my PUP_SAVE.3FS file resides in a directory located on hard drive device /dev/hda2, and the remaster files used for the ISO build were properly placed on that device as well. There were no obvious critical errors that came up during the remaster process, and the output scrolled by so quickly during some phases of rhe remaster process that it would have been almost impossible to detect the errors anyway.

Dougal · Posted: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 06:42 Post subject:

Dougal · Posted: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 06:56 Post subject: Re: Results

Dougal · Posted: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 07:07 Post subject:

Ok folks, I have an idea:

Barry's script (and hence mine) takes some "pristine" directories (/root, /var, /etc...) to use in the new cd and adds to them some config files.

AlienX's script simply took your directories and -- if you chose "no hardware customisations" -- removed a few files.

Should I add an option of copying the full /root (and maybe also /etc) directory instead of the "pristine" one?

It's probably easier to then go to /tmp/root and delete all the emails and whatever that you don't want... then you can be sure all your customisations will remain intact.

BarryK · Posted: Sat 16 Sep 2006, 07:22 Post subject:

Dougal,
be careful though, the stuff in /root can get quite large.
That will also include cache and tmp subdirectories.
There is a way of copying /root while at the same time screening out unwanted
subdirectories ...a different method from 'cp', but I can't think of it right now.
...there is something about this in one of my old notebooks somewhere.

jam · Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 245

Dougal,

While I can't give you an exact breakdown of what settings were copied and which ones were not saved since the machine locked up on me, I can tell you that visually the background and icons were missing. I'm not at my Puppy machine at the moment so I can't itemize what was stored in the /root folder, but I can tell you that I did not manually copy off anything from /root.

Really like your new idea of adding an option to copy off /root and /etc since there are important custom settings that need to be preserved(less the cache and tmp objects Barry mentioned which I can care less about).

Here's another idea to consider - although you are technically more qualified to implement this than I:

1. Check the contents of the original pristine/base Puppy CD and compare
them to the current installation (excluding the contents of tmp and
cache and special device files, etc.). This will give you an inventory
of what was added/change in the custom installation. You can also
take the opposite approach, looking at the custom installation and
comparing them against the base/pristine CD.

2. If the user does not want to preserve their custom settings for
keyboard/mouse/locale/display, then overwrite ONLY those files
with the pristine files from the original CD, otherwise save other
custom settings to the remaster.

In basic terms, the goal is to take a literal snapshot of your current operating environment, regardless of whether you're running a multisession or HD install, and recreate that in the remaster so you can distribute your exact desktop to others without all the normal complexities of remastering. I've been through some painful and time-consuming Knoppix remasters on one end of the spectrum and very simplistic remasters using Slax so I know this can be done with Puppy - and you're getting very close. Believe me, I know it's not easy and takes some work, and I very much appreciate your effort! Very Happy

Dougal · Posted: Sun 17 Sep 2006, 05:36 Post subject:

Dougal · Posted: Sun 17 Sep 2006, 05:51 Post subject: Re: Examples

jam · Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 245

Dougal,

You'll have to decide the best approach to take here. Perhaps in your remaster script you can give the option to use one or the other - Dougal/AlienX schemes. I'm not sure how important the package registration step would be or whether it needs to occur, since at least from my perspective you're creating a base ISO from your current desktop settings. Any new packages can be added to the base.