How to manually specify a larger save-file increase

[Mike Walsh]

Afternoon, all.

I came across this almost by accident. I know many of you prefer to keep your save-files as small as possible. For those of you who want to increase the size of your save-file substantially, and your Pup's resize script only goes to a maximum of 512 MB, here's a simple 'workaround'.

1. Run the Resize application from Menu->Utility. Specify the maximum of 512 MB. OK the increase.

2. Go to /mnt/home, and you will find a text-file, called 'pupsaveresize.txt'. This needs to be done before you re-boot, which is when the resize will occur.

3. Open this with Geany. All the file specifies is the amount (in Kb) by which Pup will increase the size of the save-file at the next boot.

4. If you wish to increase the size of the save-file by more than the maximum of 512MB, and don't want to keep re-booting to achieve this, then do this:-

a) Work out the number of MB you want to increase the save-file by, then, using Galculator (or your calculator of choice), multiply this by 1024. This will give the desired size increase in Kilobytes.

b) Edit the contents of the 'pupsaveresize.txt' file to show this figure.

5. At the next boot, Puppy will increase your save-file by this amount.

PLEASE NOTE:- For those of you running Puppy from a FAT32-formatted USB drive, the maximum save-file will be limited to 4 GB.....this being due to constraints imposed by the way the FAT32 file-system works.

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To many of you, this will seem totally pointless, and appear to contradict the whole point of Puppy's small size. I only offer this as a single-step operation for those of you who require a larger save-file (for whatever reason), and don't wish to have to run the Resize script multiple times to achieve it.

Hope some of you may find this useful. This is, of course, the complete opposite of Shinobar's 'sticky' above about keeping your save-file as small as possible.

The Puppy way is to offer maximum choice.


Mike.

[musher0]

Hi Mike.

Thanks for starting this thread.

You are right, the pupsaveresize.txt can be edited before reboot.

I would even suggest to users that they make a back-up of that file in a
safe place as a template for future use.

However file pupsaveresize.txt is created only on older Pups. Newer Pups
create a file called pupsaveresizenew.txt. Its structure and syntax are as
follows:

KILOBIG=262144
PUPSAVEFILEX=/DpupStretch-7.0b/stretchsave-yaya.2fs

(Talk of a silly example!)

In the newer file structure, the name of the save-file is mentioned, so only
that save-file will be increased by the "KILOBIG" number of bytes.

But defining the increase is done exactly as you mention, and the
principle is the same.

You can indeed use this technique to specify a larger save-file.

As for me, I frequently use it to specify increases in multiples of 96Mb's
rather than the defaults, suggested in multiples of 64 Mb's.

Just a fancy, I suppose. Or sometimes it's more convenient.

BFN.

[bigpup]

One issue.
Fat 32 formats are limited to max file size of 4GB.
The save file cannot be bigger than this.
Not sure what would happen to process, if you tried making it bigger.
Hopefully, something in the resize program code, would stop process and give warning.

I would add that warning to the first post.

A lot of people put Puppy on USB flash drives that come fat 32 formatted by manufacture.
As long as they keep this fat 32 format, they can only use save files.

[Mike Walsh]

@bigpup:-

Thanks for raising this issue; it hadn't occurred to me, since I always use ext3. I've amended the first post to relect that advice.

@musher0:-

Thank you for pointing out the differences between the older Pups, and the newer ones. I 'discovered' this in Precise 5.7.1 this morning, it being one of the last of the 5-series (with the exception of some of the later Slackos) to use the save-file as default.

In all of my 6-series, the save-folder is the default configuration....so, of course, with them it's a moot point, as increases occur automatically (up to the size of your partition, obviously).

I just thought it would be useful for some of our newer members to know. I myself, when requiring a larger save-file, have been frustrated by the constraints of the resize script, and have had to run it multiple times to achieve what I wanted. I was reading a post about something totally unrelated this morning, and the 'pupsaveresize.txt' file was mentioned.....I tried out something just for the hell of it; it worked, so I thought a quick 'How-to' might come in handy for some..!


Mike.

[Sailor Enceladus]

I used the method by Mike Walsh once too, because I wanted to increase by 16MB instead of 32MB (I think).

[musher0]

A few years ago, as a challenge, ttuuxxx conducted an experiment to build a
30 Gb pupsave on a 32 Gb ext partition. It took awhile to get created, but
It worked! (His report is somewhere in this bazaar of a forum!)

You wouldn't normally want or need a 30 Gb pupsave, I suppose, but hey!,
the capacity is there!

BFN.

[mikeslr]

One issue.
Fat 32 formats are limited to max file size of 4GB.
The save file cannot be bigger than this.
Not sure what would happen to process, if you tried making it bigger.

Nice catch bigpup.

Most likely the process will hang, if not the entire computer and perhaps corrupt the SaveFile. Coincidentally, I decided today to use an SFS of Unetbootin I cobbled together in Tahrpup64 to see what LinuxMint 18.2 was about. Unetbootin requires a Fat32 partition, and during the installation of "Ubuntus" asks how large you want the Persistent file to be. As the USB-Key had plenty of space, without thinking, I choose 5000 Mbs. The result was a frozen computer requiring resort to the Power Button.

Having to resort to a hard-shutdown while changes to a SaveFile are taking place is one of the known causes of SaveFile corruption.


mikesLr