Is there a .pet to make any Puppy into a multisession Puppy?

Discuss anything specific to using Puppy on a multi-session disk
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Flash
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Is there a .pet to make any Puppy into a multisession Puppy?

#1 Post by Flash »

I seem to remember a recent thread or post that contained a .pet to make any Puppy into a multisession Puppy. Am I misremembering? I have no idea who made the post or the pet.

Quirky Werewolf64-7.4 can only Save to DVD by remastering and burning a new DVD. I'd rather save sessions on the original DVD.

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Ted Dog
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#2 Post by Ted Dog »

Big dumb approach. Would be set to archive the entire filesystem and save as same name using graft point and -M this would replace file as seen new one but not sure isolinux sees beyond first session.
A UNDOCUMENTED bug allows an iso to be added with -M which replaces former with growisofs.

ASD

#3 Post by ASD »

Flash,

Re your
I'd rather save sessions on the original DVD.
I didn't understand Ted Dog's reply, so I'm wondering if your wish came true.

PS I see it's some four months since Ted Dog last posted, so I hope he's OK.

EDIT: Flash, thank you for your response in the next post below.
Last edited by ASD on Thu 04 Aug 2016, 13:10, edited 1 time in total.

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Flash
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#4 Post by Flash »

I think Ted was suggesting an approach that might work, but it would be clumsy, inefficient and slow to boot. Not elegant at all. If I understand him right, the entire Puppy filesystem could be saved on the DVD as a session, not just the parts that have been changed as multisession does it. When the DVD next booted, isolinux would overwrite the original files with the ones from the saved session. I guess it amounted to remastering on the same DVD. Ted wasn't sure that isolinux could see more than the one saved session.

I didn't try his idea or anything else, just went with remastering.

I never understood how multisession works. How does it decide what to put in the saved sessions? Then when it boots, the saved sessions are loaded into RAM starting from the newest to the oldest. That seemed backward to me, so I once modified a Puppy to load the saved sessions from oldest to newest, as an experiment. It made little or no difference in boot time.

I think Ted was the guy who originally came up with the way to make multisession work, way back when. He's mentioned experiments with multisession on USB flash memory instead of DVD. I don't know how they worked out.

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tallboy
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#5 Post by tallboy »

Flash wrote:When the DVD next booted, isolinux would overwrite the original files with the ones from the saved session.
In that case it will only happen if you use DVD-RW, I only use CD-R or DVD-R, which cannot be overwritten.
Flash wrote:How does it decide what to put in the saved sessions? Then when it boots, the saved sessions are loaded into RAM starting from the newest to the oldest. That seemed backward to me,...
My understanding of the reason:
Everything saved to files during a work session, are saved to a session directory, which is named with the current date when burnt to disc. (I believe there exists a possibility to prevent a file/directory from being burnt to a session-directory.)

The reason for starting to read the newest session dirctory at bootup, is because puppy will not copy an older version of a file over a later version. If a file is loaded from a session, any previous version of that file, in older sessions, are not copied, thus saving boot time.
If the oldest session - containing a first version of a file - is loaded first, there may be a lot of copying going on before the final version is reached.

An advantage is that you can read several versions of a file, as they can be loaded separately by mounting the disc, and opening the session directory of choise. Unless they are overwritten on a DVD-RW, of course.... :mrgreen:

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

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greengeek
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#6 Post by greengeek »

tallboy wrote:I only use CD-R or DVD-R, which cannot be overwritten
But a CD-R can be written to multiple times. Just not erased and overwritten. Flash - are you talking about the original puppy multissession ability? Is it missing from recent pups?

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Flash
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#7 Post by Flash »

Yes, the original multisession capability of Puppy.

Neither Quirky Werewolf64 nor Quirky Xerus64 do multisession. Instead, they remaster. However, Xerus64 would not remaster for me. Werewolf does, so I'm using Werewolf.

I know, Quirky is not Puppy, but it seems to me that multisession proved so useful that it should be a standard feature of any operating system that can run from a live CD or DVD.

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Burn_IT
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#8 Post by Burn_IT »

A CDR can be added to as long as it is not finalised or closed.
That is the key point and a setting that is often not easy to find in CD writing software.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

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8Geee
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#9 Post by 8Geee »

In Slacko 5.7 there is no pet to make a multi-session puppy.

But there is included BurnISO2CD a utility that can make a CD-R or DVD-R (DVD+R) into a multi-session CD providing that more than one ISO can fit on the media. A personal example... should I choose to do so, the 3 new spins of slacko 5.7-2017 can all fit on one CD-R if I use BurnISO2CD as a multi-session (multi-track) CD. Each spin has its own volume-lable (track-lable) and can be called by menu. Therefore one can run any one of the 3 spins as a live-CD.

Of course we do things with the sfs files these days, and such a setup for sfs files is redundant if using 3fs or 4fs filing systems... these update every save... when ever Puppy Event Manager says to do so. So getting into Puppy Event manager and zeroing the updates, along with a timeout length of say 30 minutes will have a save ..

A.) when one shutsdown the computer, OR
B.) after 30 minutes of mouse inactivity, followed by an automatic shutdown.

IMHO/ I'm not against ext2, but the ext3 & 4 filesystems allow a large flexability, by having the save-files also formatted in this way. Journalling risks are for the cheap and unreliable stixks of yesterday. Today the reliability is improved, and journalling is not nearly as risky. In addition, the ext2 file-system, though secure, is very bulky... filling the drive without an over-write. It has become a bloat-tool, considering the other ext3&4 systems and the better USB sticks available. /mho

If one wonders why my discussion points migrated to save-files, its because the potential of having new sessions exists already, and the USB stick is more reliable.

regards
8Geee
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Flash
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#10 Post by Flash »

Just to clarify for those who are not familiar with multisession Puppy:

Multisession Puppy is not just a Puppy that can write session after session on a CD or DVD. Any competent burning program can do that, these days. CDs are limited in their specification to a maximum of 99 tracks, but It's not clear to me if a session is a track, or can a track contain more than one session?

Multisession Puppy saves to the CD or DVD when you click the "Save" icon on the desktop, or, if you tell it to, when it shuts down. Unlike saving to a flash drive or hard disk, both of which overwrite or replace existing files with newer ones, each saved session on a CD or DVD contains only the changes that have been made to Puppy. Previous sessions and the original Puppy files are not overwritten or replaced on the CD or DVD. Thus, multisession Puppy has the unique capability of inherently backing itself up. Also, any given session or sessions that have been saved on the disk can be skipped when Puppy boots, then after Puppy has booted up, the disk can be mounted and the skipped session can be inspected.

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8Geee
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#11 Post by 8Geee »

As Far As I Know, the BurnISO2CD utility treats session = track. So the 99 track limit might be a limiting factor on a CD. Essentially, my own experience with personal files in mnt/home means these sessions are small deltas. In fact over several months of active use perhaps only a few Mb's. But when doing an update to apps/programs, deltas get large. Example is the recent spin updates I did. All three showed about 25Mb deltas each. So there are times when the save-file gets altered significantly.

But I would presume that those significant updates would call for a remaster as opposed to save-file delta. (keeps the default system up to date if stuff happens)

Regards
8Geee
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"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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tallboy
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#12 Post by tallboy »

BGeee wrote:But I would presume that those significant updates would call for a remaster as opposed to save-file delta.
You are absolutely right about that. Especially with an older CPU, when the booting prosess starts to take a veeery long time, it is wise to check the number and sizes of the of session saves, and to perform a remastering. Before that is done, saving the whole CD/DVD to a new disc first, will collect all previous sessions into just one saved session, which makes it easier to sort what you may want to include/remove in a remastered version.
I try to keep the number of saved sessions to a minimum, and I save all files to a HDD or flash memory, or burn them separately to a non-bootable directory made with growisofs.
I have also played with saving large and seldom used .pets (Gimp, Blender, OpenOffice) to a such a separate directory, then I can mount the disc and install the program when needed. The install prosess takes only seconds when the .pets are read from the disc.

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

s243a
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#13 Post by s243a »

As a side note* It would be nice if frugal installs had a snapshot button which created an sfs of the changes, which would be an idea simmilar to a milti-session mode.

For this to work the save interval wouldneed to be set to"infinity".

For this to work we need:
pmedia=usbflash

In grub. However perhapa a new boot paramater should be created for this option

TeX Dog
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#14 Post by TeX Dog »

ASD wrote:Flash,

Re your
I'd rather save sessions on the original DVD.
I didn't understand Ted Dog's reply, so I'm wondering if your wish came true.

PS I see it's some four months since Ted Dog last posted, so I hope he's OK.

EDIT: Flash, thank you for your response in the next post below.
He is OK :wink:

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