Problem continuing a multisession CD. (Solved)

Discuss anything specific to using Puppy on a multi-session disk
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WindUpToy
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Problem continuing a multisession CD. (Solved)

#1 Post by WindUpToy »

I have a multisession CD which has filled up.
I have tried to get it to continue on a fresh CD copy of the original Puppy 520 disc, but it won't do it.
I tried with a closed disc, and an unclosed disc. No joy.

Tried copying the disc with Pburn, but it does't pick up the saved folders.
Tried with dd, but the resulting disc won't boot.
Tried manually with IsoMaster, but it won't boot.

The full multi disc still works ok, I am using it to be online now.

Any suggestions?
Last edited by WindUpToy on Fri 13 May 2011, 23:01, edited 1 time in total.
It's not easy being incompetent.

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

Boot the full CD in a burner drive, then use Menu -> Multimedia -> Burniso2cd to burn a new CD with the same iso used to make the CD that is now full. Leave the newly burned CD in the burner. Either click the Save icon on the desktop or Menu -> Shutdown -> Reboot and then Save to CD. Everything you've saved on the full CD will be transferred to the first session of the newly burned CD. This includes all the settings you've made and programs you've installed, plus whatever junk may have accumulated in, for instance, your browser's cache or your email client's various hidden places. So it would be a good idea to do some housekeeping before you save to the newly burned CD. When you boot the newly burned CD, the computer should be in exactly the same state as if you'd booted the old CD, except for whatever changes you might have made just before you saved that first session to the new CD. By the way, you can tell SeaMonkey to put it's cache in /tmp so that the contents of the cache are not saved when you shut down.

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8-bit
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#3 Post by 8-bit »

Flash! You the man!
I may be wrong, but I think your reply has merits of being a sticky on the forum!
I had the same problem at one time, but kept it to myself and booted by other means than a multi-session CD.

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Flash
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#4 Post by Flash »

Thank you. I'm glad it was helpful to someone. :)

I use a DVD instead of a CD, but multisession Puppy treats both exactly the same. DVDs work better for multisession than CDs and, of course, they hold more.

If you run multisession Puppy from a rewritable CD or DVD, you don't even have to put in a new disk; Burniso2cd will burn the iso to the multisession disk you've been running Puppy from, then it is burned you just Save to it. The danger is that if the burning or save process doesn't go right, you no longer have your old multisession disk to fall back on. So it's better to transfer to a different disk. I use DVD+RWs and leapfrog them. Once I'm sure the new disk works, the old one goes into the pile to be reused for the next test.

By the way, you can upgrade to new versions of Puppy the same way. As long as the new version of Puppy is not too different, most all of your settings and programs will transfer. And, once again, if it doesn't work you have the old disk to fall back on. It's a painless way to try out new Puppys.

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WindUpToy
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#5 Post by WindUpToy »

That did it.
I thought I was looking at having to spend hours reconstructing a new disc.

And you are right about DVD+RW. They write faster, and seem to read faster, apart from the other obvious benefits.

Thank you so much for that.
You are not just a pretty face. :)

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Flash
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#6 Post by Flash »

I use the mini-DVD+RWs meant for Sony camcorders. They are scratch-resistant and hold 1.4 GB; perfect for multisession Puppy.

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technosaurus
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#7 Post by technosaurus »

Or add it to /usr/share/doc

Actually that just gave me an idea for improving documentation.
Each pet gets a block of html that starts with a #target so that it could be built into the dynamically built main help page ... and easy to make a table of contents or to link to in scripts.
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#8 Post by Flash »

Technosaurus, I think you may have posted that one in the wrong thread. :) I can't move it to another thread, only start a new thread with it, so you'll have to copy it into a post in the right place and then let me know. I'll delete it.

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#9 Post by technosaurus »

not this time, just should have quoted 8 bit
8-bit wrote:Flash! You the man!
I may be wrong, but I think your reply has merits of being a sticky on the forum!
I had the same problem at one time, but kept it to myself and booted by other means than a multi-session CD.
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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Flash
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#10 Post by Flash »

Ah, I see.

The problem with stickys is there are so many and few people pay any attention to them anyway. Especially beginners.

An index of various subjects and topics, with links to relevant posts and threads, works best I think, but is a real pain to create and maintain with the forum software. I made one such index as an experiment for the Beginners help section, but lost interest when maintaining it proved to be unwieldy. Since then, I've thought of doing the editing outside the forum's compose window and pasting the edited text in the window. Maybe I'll get back to it someday.

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#11 Post by bigpup »

Flash wrote:Boot the full CD in a burner drive, then use Menu -> Multimedia -> Burniso2cd to burn a new CD with the same iso used to make the CD that is now full. Leave the newly burned CD in the burner. Either click the Save icon on the desktop or Menu -> Shutdown -> Reboot and then Save to CD. Everything you've saved on the full CD will be transferred to the first session of the newly burned CD.
Question?
For this to work, do you need enough memory, so that all of what is on the full CD is in memory?

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#12 Post by Flash »

bigpup wrote:... Question?
For this to work, do you need enough memory, so that all of what is on the full CD is in memory?
I'm not too clear on what happens as Puppy loads sessions from a multisession CD or DVD. I suppose that every session is loaded into RAM before the Aufs filesystem combines them, so that if for instance in the most recently saved session you've deleted something that was in an earlier session, the final result is that the RAM does not contain whatever was deleted.

One reason I'm unclear how this works is that multisession Puppy loads the sessions beginning with the newest and proceeding to the oldest session. I recently experimented with reversing that order, so that the oldest session loads first and the newest loads last, and it didn't seem to make any difference. From that I deduce that all the sessions must be loaded into RAM before Aufs combines them.

In short, the general answer to your question has to be that the sessions on the CD or DVD are all loaded into RAM during the boot process even though the final result after everything is combined by Aufs might be much smaller than the total. If you don't have enough RAM to hold everything, a swap partition would provide the temporary storage needed.

There is also a simple way to save stuff to the DVD in sessions that are ignored by Puppy when it boots. These sessions are visible by mounting the DVD after Puppy boots. As an experiment I saved several GB of mp3 books to a multisession Puppy DVD that way, back when I only had 512 MB of RAM.

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Problem continuing a multisession CD. (Solved)

#13 Post by Sky Aisling »

I'm hoping I'm placing this post appropriately.
I've search the forum and this thread seems to be the closest to my question.

I've managed to create a Live CD r/w with multiple sessions (the store that sells DVDs is closed, so, I used CD/r/w that I had on hand.)

There seem to be save folders building up on the CD. Is this right? Won't they get too big for a 700mg CD pretty fast? I've only booted up three times.
I tried deleting the older folders,but, all that happened was they stayed on the CD and a copy went into the trash.
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#14 Post by Flash »

In that ROX window you show, if you ctrl-A (to choose everything), then right-click on what you chose and select Count from the menu, you can see how much of the CD has been filled. Saving sessions does take up more room on a CD than it does on a DVD, but unless you're installing large programs, you can save many sessions on a CD before it's filled up.

You don't have to save every time you shut down. If you haven't done anything that you want to save, just hold the power button in until the computer shuts off. Since multisession Puppy runs entirely in RAM, everything will go poof when the power shuts off. The next time you boot, Puppy will be as it was the last time you booted it. No need to save unless you change something and you want the change to persist. By the way, this makes multisession Puppy excellent for trying out programs. If you find that you don't really want to keep the program, don't save when you shut down.

Does that help? Just use multisession Puppy for a while and everything will become clear. :)

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Problem continuing a multisession CD. (Solved)

#15 Post by Sky Aisling »

Thank you, Flash
Yes, this is most helpful.

One final question:
Is there is way to erase the saved folders and start over?
Or once the directories have been created do they stay forever?



Why I am experimenting with r/w disk media:
I am preparing to show Puppy to a person who educates seniors on the use of a computer system. She is ready to explore something else besides M$. I find so many people are put off by the graphics of the nascent Puppy desktop. So, I wanted to pop in a disk with an attractive background and attractive background choices, plus other goody enhancements.
In my experience, most people who are new to Puppy struggle to understand that they have control of the Puppy system, not just the 'on' and 'off' button. They are afraid to 'touch' anything for fear of never finding it again.

Multisession disk method looks like a handy, simple way of presenting Puppy.
Thank you, again.

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#16 Post by Flash »

What's written on the disk, stays on the disk. :) However, there is a way to get rid of unwanted saved sessions. First, boot the multisession disk with the boot option puppy pfix=N, where N is the number of saved sessions you want Puppy to ignore when it boots (starting with the last saved session and working back.) For instance, if you enter puppy pfix=2 at the boot option prompt, Puppy will ignore the last 2 saved sessions on the multisession disk when it boots. They'll still be on the disk, but all sad and lonely because Puppy ignored them.

So now you have Puppy in RAM, incorporating all the improvements you made, up to the last 2 saved sessions. Here's where multisession Puppy can do a trick that nobody else can do: using Burniso2cd or Pburn, burn a new CD of the same Puppy iso that you used to make the original multisession CD. You can use a blank CD-R or a used CD-RW that you blank with Pburn. You can even use the same CD-RW you booted Puppy from, but I wouldn't do that. Use a different CD-RW if you have one, and blank it. Save the CD you booted from. If anything goes wrong, you can always start over by booting from it.

You should now have a freshly-burned Puppy CD. With it still in the burner, click the Save icon on Puppy's desktop. This will create the first saved session on what is now your new, improved multisession CD, and it will incorporate all the improvements you made to your original multisession CD, except whatever was in the last 2 saved sessions on that old CD. They are isolated to that CD.

You now have a new multisession CD that is exactly like the old one except that all those saved sessions (less the 2 you told Puppy to ignore when it booted) have been consolidated into the first session on the new disk. I think of it as defragmenting a multisession disk. It is also a handy way to make copies of your multisession Puppy. I think it's better than remastering, though I may be partial because I've never remastered. :)

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#17 Post by tallboy »

Flash wrote:I think it's better than remastering, though I may be partial because I've never remastered.
Yes, but no. If you remove a program from your live CD, and save your work to the CD afterwards, I think the program still remain in the .iso, it is just not loaded. Unless the CD-RW overwrite function let you burn an entirely new .iso when you remove stuff.

When removing a program during remastering, it is not included in the new .iso you create.

I'll get back to this issue later, I have to do some testing, but the burn function in my DVD player has stopped working, and I have to get some sleep.

tallboy
True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

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#18 Post by Flash »

The reason I think multisession may be better than remastering is that it always works, or at least it always has for me. If I try something in Puppy that pleases me, then save it to my multisession disk, It's there when I reboot. I must admit that I've never tried anything as ambitious as, say, removing SeaMonkey and replacing it with Firefox. Still, if I did do that (in RAM), and found by testing that everything worked as desired, I'm pretty sure that if I saved that session, SeaMonkey would be gone and Firefox would be working fine in its place when I rebooted.
You are right that the original iso is unchanged on a multisession disk, but all the improvements I make and save to the multisession disk are overlaid onto the original iso when the disk boots. So, once the multisession disk boots into RAM it's the same as if I booted a remastered iso. I think. :)

Jasper

#19 Post by Jasper »

Hi Flash,

Two points.

:(1) Re right click on a/any directory:
The functions "Properties" and "Count" frequently yield very different answers. In my experience "Properties" is usually by far the larger.

(2) I use multi-session and remaster - and whereas my boot time was about 120" with 30 pets installed as "date" folders totalling some 45 MB before remastering - my current remaster boots in about 85", my sole "date" folder is less than 0.1 MB and my Precise 5.6 iso is a little smaller than the original which Ted Dog attributes to greater compression.

I suspect that with your "bluray", remastering may be of no benefit to you.

My regards

I have made a small adaptation to Ted Dog's brilliant contribution.
However. if any of you follow Ted Dog's method to the letter - after booting your current Multi-session-Live-CD/DVD, eject it and insert a fresh CD or fresh/used DVD to avoid any overwrite after the "remastered-sfs" stage.
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Disco Makberto
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#20 Post by Disco Makberto »

Flash wrote:If you run multisession Puppy from a rewritable CD or DVD, you don't even have to put in a new disk; Burniso2cd will burn the iso to the multisession disk you've been running Puppy from, then it is burned you just Save to it. The danger is that if the burning or save process doesn't go right, you no longer have your old multisession disk to fall back on. So it's better to transfer to a different disk. I use DVD+RWs and leapfrog them. Once I'm sure the new disk works, the old one goes into the pile to be reused for the next test.
Please excuse me, Flash, but I don't clearly understand the difference between "defragmenting a live disc" via a multisession CDR or multisession DVDR versus "defragmenting a live disc" via a multisession CDRW or multisession DVDRW. Why can we use the same multisession CDRW or mulitsession DVDRW when we "defragment"? Does that means that we cannot do the same when using a multisession CDR or multisession DVDR?

Carlos Albert
D-Mak

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