Which is the latest 32-bit Puppy that can save to a live CD?

[tallboy]

Hi nosystemdthanks, I have to admit that I have not been precise in my definition of the problems. I usually run from 2 different locations, both P4 machines, one more than 10 years old with 1Gb RAM, and one closer to 15 years old with 512Mb, and generous swap partitions on their HDDs.
Some late puppies, like indicated in the text from the Xenialpup above, rely on frugal or full installation, and there seem to be a lack of support for saving to a multisession disc. And one additional problem is their sheer size!
But, I am actually writing this from musher0's Xenial-7.0.6-k41, which at least says it has the possibility to save to a multisession disc at shutdown - I have not tried yet.
A nice surprise is the number of my old favorite applications which are available from the Xenial's PPM repo, like Xpdf, pdftk, lynx, pinfo, xpad. A small disappointment is the lack of decent backgrounds, themes and fonts, but I have some of my own, ready to be installed.
The Xenial is too big, so I have to remaster it. I am not sure if it will run on the 512Mb RAM machine at all, without some serious slimming.
So far it seems like a good substitute, if I retire my Lucid 5.2.8.7.

[proebler]

I too have the aim to keep a 32-bit P4 machine running with a new Puppy, currently running Slacko-5.3.1.

I can confirm that booting from live CD works with the Ubuntu LTS based UPup Bionic Beaver (upupbb) 18.05 on :

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
Max Speed: 3200 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:3200 MHz

PC Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: HP d530 CMT(PA650PA)

Motherboard Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: 085Ch

BIOS Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Version: 786B2 v1.11
Release Date: 07/10/2003

Linux Kernel: 4.9.96-lxpup-32-pae (i686)
Kernel Version: #1 SMP Thu Apr 26 11:45:00 +08 2018
PAE Enabled: Yes

Memory Allocation:
(one window each of Abiword, Rox Filer and PupSysInfo open)
Total RAM: 2013 MB
Used RAM: 619 MB
Free RAM: 1394 MB
Buffers: 80 MB
Cached: 434 MB
Total Swap: 956 MB
Free Swap: 956 MB

Actual Used RAM: 105 MB Used - (buffers + cached)
Actual Free RAM: 1908 MB Free + (buffers + cached)

To achieve it,
I have used ISOMaster to modify the upupbb-18.05.iso
- removed fdrv_upupbb_18.05.sfs (finding it not necessary)
- replaced ydrv_upupbb_18.05.sfs with a modified ydrv_LxPupSc_18.03.sfs, renamed to ydrv_upupbb_18.05.sfs.

The ydrv_LxPupSc_18.03.sfs can be obtained from the ISO (https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxpup/ ... r/LxPupSc/)

The ydrv provides switching from Xorg-server 1.19.6 to an alternative Xorg server 1.11.4 [in fact 1.11.3].
With the default Xorg server 1.19.6 of upupbb-18.05 the P4 fails to get xwin going even when the vesa driver is chosen.

The modification was to add (to the original ydrv_LxPupSc_18.03.sfs)
/usr/lib/libXfont.so.1 (symbolic link to libXfont.so.1.4.1)
and
/usr/lib/libXfont.so.1.4.1
(including the respective directories /usr/lib)

I attach the two libraries. (remove the .pup extension)

On 1st boot with the live CD, when prompted, select 5) to 'Use alternative Xorg server 1.11.4'.
Pupmode will be 5.
Initiating a reboot, I created an ext4 savefile on a HDD partition.
The savefile was then detected and used to get into Pupmode 12.
UPup Bionic Beaver (upupbb) 18.05 runs well on this P4.
I do not normally run from CD but use frugal install on USB or HDD.
This was an experiment.

regards
proebler

[tallboy]

Thank you very much, proebler. That is exactly the kind of info I am looking for! My 'newest' machine will accept 2Gb of memory, but finding old 1Gb memory chips is not easy anymore. The 1GB chips were expensive at the time, but most were just thrown away with the old PCs, as their life ended in the Windoze-world. The Bionic Beaver pup has an .iso wich is 315Mb, and will not run without a remastering, and maybe not at all in my oldest machine.
I have started making an overview of the default programs I can do without in Xenial, and I will remaster it and see if in runs on all PCs. The Xenial is recent enough to be hanging around for some years, and I have always modified my Puppies.
I live in what is supposed to be the richest country in the world, but my personal economy does not exactly reflect that situation!

Edit: Oops! I said my newest PC was 10 years old, it turns out it is from 2003! God knows how old the other old one is...

PC Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name:

Motherboard Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: 0864h

BIOS Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Version: 786B1 v1.14
Release Date: 07/11/2003

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz
Max Speed: 3200 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:2600 MHz

Frequency governor : performance
Freq. scaling driver : p4-clockmod

Sensor status is not available, or required kernel drivers are not loaded.

Personal Storage: RAM Disk
Size Used Free Use%
3.8G 594M 3.2G 16%

Memory Allocation:
Total RAM: 992 MB
Used RAM: 711 MB
Free RAM: 281 MB
Buffers: 48 MB
Cached: 416 MB
Total Swap: 6159 MB
Free Swap: 5700 MB

Actual Used RAM: 247 MB Used - (buffers + cached)
Actual Free RAM: 745 MB Free + (buffers + cached)

[april]

tallboy I have many 512Mb and 256Mb memory boards if that is of any help . You are welcome to them free just say how many and where to go . You would cover any huge postage right?

The 1 Gig I keep for myself

[tallboy]

April, my 'nixbox have two memoryslots, and the hold 512Mb each now. I have several 256MB and 512Mb chips myself. An upgrade would have to be to 1Gb each, but thanks for your kindness anyway.

It turned out that musher0's XenialPup didn't like to save to a multisession CD after all, so I'll stick to my Lucid.

[proebler]

tallboy,
perhaps you need not worry too much about limited RAM.
The SysInfo below is from a Pentium M laptop with 750 MB RAM.
It is almost as old as my P4 and does run UPup Bionic Beaver (upupbb) 18.05 quite satisfactorily from live CD.
The 'Light' browser works ok and and I have run a DVD video with MPlayer successfully (boot CD removed)
I had to forcepae at boot and then load the fdrv_upupbb_18.05.sfs on-the-fly in order to be able to use a wifi dongle (the laptop has no in-built wifi).

It is a Puppy after all , I suggest you give it a try.

PC Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: HP Compaq nc8000 (PQ168PA#ABG)

Motherboard Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: 088C

BIOS Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Version: 68BAR Ver. F.12
Release Date: 08/17/2004

Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
Max Speed: 1600 MHz
Current Speed of Core

Frequency governor : ondemand
Freq. scaling driver : acpi-cpufreq

Sensor status is not available, or local hardware is not supported.

Personal Storage: RAM Disk
Size Used Free Use%
372M 250M 123M 68%

Memory Allocation:
(one window each of Abiword, Rox Filer and PupSysInfo open)
Total RAM: 743 MB
Used RAM: 663 MB
Free RAM: 80 MB
Buffers: 83 MB
Cached: 457 MB
Total Swap: 0 MB
Free Swap: 0 MB

Actual Used RAM: 123 MB Used - (buffers + cached)
Actual Free RAM: 620 MB Free + (buffers + cached)

Linux Kernel: 4.9.96-lxpup-32-pae (i686)
Kernel Version: #1 SMP Thu Apr 26 11:45:00 +08 2018
PAE Enabled: Yes

Kernel Command Line:
initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=cd BOOT_IMAGE=vmlinuz forcepae

Distro: UPupBB 18.05
Window Manager: JWM v2.3.7
Desktop Start: xwin jwm

regards
proebler

[tallboy]

perhaps you need not worry too much about limited RAM.

I actually got a warning in Xenial about lack of space as I tried to save something to /root/ (I can't remember what, and the exact words).

[musher0]

Out of the Blue:

Perhaps try pemasu's Upup-Raring-3.9.9.2?
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... ost#713317

Or its "Vincent-Van-Pup" artsy re-incarnation by former member Starhawk?
https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_vincentvanpup
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=89395

[april]

perhaps you need not worry too much about limited RAM.

I actually got a warning in Xenial about lack of space as I tried to save something to /root/ (I can't remember what, and the exact words).

Thats the usual message about no room left in the savefile isn't it?

[mikeslr]

Hi Tallboy,

As I've never run Puppies as a Multi-session CD/DVDs I don't know if it can. But musher0's post jogged my memory to consider newer Puppies which might. I was very impressed with csipesz's Precise 5.7.1 minimal, available from here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 774#954774. My post about it is on the 3rd page of that thread.

I also don't know how it compares to rerwin's Lupusupers (Lupus with updated kernels).

mikesLr

[tallboy]

Thats the usual message about no room left in the savefile isn't it?

I don't know, I never ever used a savefile!

I really liked musher0's Xenial with a dowgraded kernel, but it would not save the session to the disc.

Thank you for yuor kind suggestions on other distros, but I had hoped I would get some advice that would spare me the download and burning of a lot of distros that don't save to a multisession disc...
It is always fun to play, but I already have a huge stack of CDs and DVDs with different Puppy .isos...

[oui]

sorry tallboy

In my experience whichever you choose to run with when asked to select your save file take the "ext4" file extension.

april and mikeslr: Sorry gentlemen, but you failed to understand my original question.
The point is that I never use a save-file! I run my puppies from RAM, not frugal but loaded from a live CD. And that is difficult with many late puppies.

this is absolutely not true. you generate a wrong opinion on Puppy...

in my eyes, this stay to be the standard way for puppy exactly as money continue to be the real standard way for payment else if someone prefer paypal or bitcoints etc. ...

the real question can possibly be:

which of the new moderns puppy can work friendly on old hardware. this is a different question (the olds one can that! the most of them!). for ex. warns Barry Kauler against the use of his new creations (Quirky's) on hardware having less than concrete power of RAM etc.

but the same question is possible inverted: which new terrible better hardware continue to permit to test old puppies (release 0,26 .. 2,11, only from this point, it was possible to really connect and use USB input hardware!). for those puppy's I continue to have an old museum i486-book PC! It can read, of course, my old CD-RW's from Puppy release probably 1.3 or 1.4 including the on the CD-RW recorded files. My new hardwares can't do it any more!

Kind regards


kind regards

[Flash]

I'm running upup Bionic Beaver from a DVD (same as running from a CD) completely in RAM. It's a 32-bit Ubuntu-based Puppy. I had to enter puppy acpi=off or something like that at the boot screen to get it to work in my computer. I've installed some stuff and then remastered the DVD (Menu -> Setup -> Remaster) but haven't yet rebooted with the remastered DVD.

[tallboy]

this is absolutely not true. you generate a wrong opinion on Puppy...

Really?

the real question can possibly be:
which of the new moderns puppy can work friendly on old hardware. this is a different question

Yes! It is a different question, and it is not what I ask for!

I am looking for the latest Puppy which will run in old PCs from a live, multisession CD.
Why?
My hardware is old, and not all have a DVD-player, just a CD-player/burner.
Most have early USB, not all.
Most have 512Mb or 1Gb RAM.
For some reason, many late Puppies can not save to a multisession disc, which is a vital point if you want to run from a live CD, and save to the same CD. They can burn a multisession CD, but not save to it.

Flash:
How much RAM do you have?
How much RAM and HDD space is required for doing a remaster?
Have you saved your sessions to the disc?

[mikeslr]

Hi Tallboy,

proebler's posts, especially his note about how to switch to the Xorg server 1.11.4, appear to provide a way forward with upupbb (Bionic Beaver) running from a Live CD. Flash noted that it would run from a Live DVD. [In my ignorance, I would assume that the mechanism is the same, only the later providing more storage].

My own experience with upupbb's RAM usage is almost identical to proebler's, albeit I don't run from a Live CD: there's a great amount of data being buffered or cached, but actual RAM in use was 121. None of my swap had been employed as I had sufficient RAM. But I would assume that with 512 RAM and a 'generous' swap upupbb would still have functioned, albeit more slowly.

What I've also experienced with upupbb is that many applications built for older OSes ran OOTB. As your plan is to make use of older-less-ram-demanding applications and remaster, upupbb may well provide the modern Puppy for Older hardware you desire.

If it does, and does so satisfactorily, perhaps you might consider publishing your remastered ISO for those Puppy fans similarly situated.

If it doesn't, then let us know that as well. As you know many of us don't run Puppies from LiveCD/DVDs. Some of us don't even have CD/DVD burners which makes personally testing ideas regarding running from LiveCD/DVDs impossible. But we are really good at coming up with ideas about what someone else might do.

mikesLr

[hamoudoudou]

I still have CD (CD !) with sessions registered on it. i think it's french Toutou 4.3.1 I have DVDs too, with sessions registered on it.. Bad souvenirs.. How many hours spent to find one CD trademark which do it.. I will give info later. Because lot of criteria are needed, not only trademark, but where the CD was built (Made in india, or Mexico or ... Marocco). Viva USBs, never i will burn again CD or DVD, excepted if i want to keep a Puppy which i suppose to disappear (PolarpupQT 005 is one of them, but i failed with multissessions)
Furthermore Some CDs can be played only on cd-burner where they were burn. A Nightmare !
I think Puppy is not the criteria, but CD.. It was dificult to find CD-RW 4 years ago, not available in all shops.
Screenshots and topic CD-RW by Musher
"In short:
for CDRW's, use the command: cd-info
for DVDRW's, use the command: cd-info --dvd"

[Flash]

...Flash:
How much RAM do you have?

I have 2 x 2GB sticks of RAM in this computer, but even 64-bit Puppies say there's only a little over 3GB of memory. Maybe that's because the video card is reserving the difference or maybe I got cheated on the RAM sticks. Still, 3 GB has been plenty for me to do everything I want, including remastering.

How much RAM and HDD space is required for doing a remaster?

I don't use a hard disk drive at all for anything, haven't used one for years. My luck with them has been dismal, so I don't use them. I do have several flash drives plugged into USB ports, but I haven't used them for extra memory while remastering. I don't remember how much memory remastering used but there has always been enough RAM to do the job.

Have you saved your sessions to the disc?

No. Bionic Beaver doesn't do multisession. I wish it did.

Barry's remastering program included the stuff I installed and the settings I made to Puppy but didn't include my browser settings or the puppy acpi=off that has to be entered each time the DVD is booted. I don't know what I have to manually add to the remastered stuff to make those things work.

[James C]

I'm running the latest Bionic Beaver 18.05A as a multi-session DVD.

In my case the size doesn't matter because I've got plenty of ram and some swap.
Other than being unable to load an sfs things are working well.

Code: Select all

# inxi -Fxx
System:    Host: puppypc21002 Kernel: 4.9.96-lxpup-32-pae i686 (32 bit gcc: 7.3.0)
           Desktop: JWM 2.3.7 dm: N/A Distro: UPupBB 18.05
Machine:   Device: desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: M5A97 LE R2.0 v: Rev 1.xx serial: 150545593600028
           BIOS: American Megatrends v: 2601 date: 03/24/2015
CPU:       Hexa core AMD FX-6300 Six-Core (-MCP-) cache: 12288 KB
           flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm) bmips: 42138
           clock speeds: min/max: 1400/3500 MHz 1: 1400 MHz 2: 2000 MHz
           3: 1400 MHz 4: 1400 MHz 5: 2000 MHz 6: 1400 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GT218 [GeForce 210] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:0a65
           Display Server: X.org 1.19.6 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root
Audio:     Card-1 NVIDIA High Definition Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0be3
           Card-2 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2 chip-ID: 1002:4383
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.9.96-lxpup-32-pae
Network:   Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
           driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: d000
           bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168
           IF: enp2s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full
           mac: 1c:87:2c:5a:bb:e2
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1200.3GB (0.7% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: KINGSTON_SV300S3 size: 120.0GB serial: N/A
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD10EZEX size: 1000.2GB serial: N/A
           ID-3: /dev/sdc model: 0JB size: 80.0GB serial: N/A
           ID-1: swap-1 size: 8.60GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb5
RAID:      System: supported: linear raid0 raid1 raid10 raid6 raid5 raid4
           No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
           Unused Devices: none
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 20.9C mobo: N/A gpu: 43.0
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 192 Uptime: 16 min Memory: 270.0/16111.6MB
           Init: SysVinit v: N/A runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: N/A
           Client: Shell (bash 4.4.191 running in lxterminal) inxi: 2.3.8 

Code: Select all

# free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:       16498328      246316    15540324      365412      711688    14759844
Swap:       8396796           0     8396796
# 

[tallboy]

Furthermore Some CDs can be played only on cd-burner where they were burn.

I think that problem usually happens with laptops.

If it does, and does so satisfactorily, perhaps you might consider publishing your remastered ISO for those Puppy fans similarly situated.
If it doesn't, then let us know that as well.

Yes, of course I will do that, Mike

Have you saved your sessions to the disc?
No. Bionic Beaver doesn't do multisession. I wish it did.

Hmmm.

I'm running the latest Bionic Beaver 18.05A as a multi-session DVD.

Hmmmmm.

I wonder, could there be a difference between saving to a CD or DVD? Could there be differences in the 'save session to disc' code? I'll try to dig out some code examples from the .isos.
I have always used CD/DVD -R discs without any problems, never -RW discs.

I'll download and install the BiBe, and see what happens.

[Flash]

I'm running the latest Bionic Beaver 18.05A as a multi-session DVD.

How? I know there must be a script or something that makes it work, but I never bothered to find out if it could be ported to versions of Puppy that didn't come with it. Is there a .pet that adds it?

Hmmmmm.

I wonder, could there be a difference between saving to a CD or DVD? Could there be differences in the 'save session to disc' code? I'll try to dig out some code examples from the .isos.
I have always used CD/DVD -R discs without any problems, never -RW discs.

Multisession was not in the original CD specifications. It just sort of grew out of necessity and opportunity. Each manufacturer implemented it their own way. Later versions of the CD specification did include multisession, but by then everyone was already doing it wrong. Multisession was included in the DVD specification, so it works much better from a DVD than from a CD.
That said, rewritable DVDs are handy for trying out lots of new Puppies but my experience is that if they're more than five years old they should be thrown away. Stick with DVD-R or DVD+R for the Puppies you want to keep.