(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

a system without hard disk but with DVD-RW is quite nice because all spinning media go haywire before long when run on a boat due to mechanical stress.

a DVD is off most of the time but gives you 4 GIG download space.

in this scenario it makes sense to create a pup002 or a filesystem mounted R/W on DVD because RAM aint big enough. is that possible already

Hey, Frank.

There's been some discussion of this topic in the original forum here.

Basically, packet writing doesn't look like it would work as well as multisession for this purpose. I could be wrong.

It is quite clear that solid state systems are the ideal (keydrive) and Puppy will do this very well when we move to Puppy on phone (one Lobsterian fantasy)

I have found the "Best Puppy" the one I find most useful and satisfying is the Puppy Live CD

The writable multisession pup was an experiment and very interesting. The HD is faster at load but then once you are in, everything is in ram.

The first puppy was designed for flash memory card - the thing is the readers and storage material vary widely. So the most fun Puppy would be on a business card RW/CD?

All Puppy is fun

The hard drives used in iPods seem to be pretty rugged.
Would that work better for you than a DVD, Frank?

I think a live-dvd strategy will be a winning combination !

I also think that we must invest in some neutral tool to make it possible for many distros to master multisession live cds and dvds. Tools such as mklivecd.

mklivecd project:
http://livecd.berlios.de/

-Fenix*NBK*

to start new DVD
from a multi-booted version of 1.04:

growisofs -Z /dev/scd0 -J -R -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table /livecd/

extract above file to /root/my-applications and /tmp
next to make the new rc.reboot file return after reboot
add two lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

cp /root/my-applications/rc.reboot /tmp
chmod 777 /tmp/rc.reboot

type in terminal
chmod 777 /tmp/rc.reboot

The multi-session DVD > 2GiB seems to be unmountable in the rc.init on the command mount for /mnt/home. The limit does not seem to affect puppy-1.02 (K2.6) using the above scripts with one change I had to hard code /dev/hdb in place of $DEV. I discovered this limit after a few 1.04 puppies DVD where over half full would not mount early but could be mounted in a fully booted puppy of vers 1.02 and 1.04. this may shed some light about the unable to boot Xwindows error.
TedDog

Using puppy version 1.02 the new limit was reached. The DVD very near 4GiB boundry gave a new limit
~
Now saving session to burner drive...
next session would cross 4GB boundary, aborting...
...done

Odd note the laptop DVD reader could continue to boot fully but would not see the additional sessions. On any other multi-session CD or DVD it would give the Xwindow usr not mounted error. So some progress there.

TedDog

Puppy 1.0.5 has a new create ISO and multisession wizard script - News 11 Sep 05 http://www.goosee.com/puppy/news.htm

Assuming this is in the beta please remember to report back if / how this is to be used with DVD

After reading that same note (not using SCSI is a good thing with DVD burning) in version I downloaded v1.05 beta 2 and came back to get the growiso settings I left earlier to burn a DVD version. My test loading DVD are at the ready. Will report back soon, Ted Dog

pupy v1.05 beta2 required alot of twists and turns to get DVD multi-sessions working to the same level as v1.04. It still has the problems as the rest of the kernel 2.4 series. I clear think all the issues that keep this DVD and mount problems are related to SCSI and I suspect it will corrupt a good iso using growiso at 2G boundry. If v1.05 SCSI-IDE drivers are removed and only IDE drivers remain I think it will work as good as v1.02 w/ kernel 2.6
Ted Dog

Ted, thanks for the work you've done to get multisession Puppy to work on DVD.

Have you actually been using it for anything, other than to play with and try to get it to work?

I have some larger than 1G mpeg video files and added them to archives so they never see memory. I've stored every version of puppy in iso and many dotpups. It works just like regular CD multi-sessions but up to 2G on v2.4 and 4G on kernel version 2.6. I just finished getting multi-session DVD v1.02beta2 to only use DVD for the new devf.sfs by adding this to rc.local and copying usr_devx.sfs to /livecd prior to burning to DVD.
----------------------------------------
#this file called from rc.local0
#you can edit this file
#When firewall is installed, will append lines to this file...
#v1.0.5...
ONECD="/dev/scd0"
mount -t iso9660 $ONECD /mnt/home > /dev/null 2>&1
cp /mnt/home/*.sfs /livecd/
sync
USRDEVX=""
if [ ! "`ls /livecd/usr_devx.sfs 2> /dev/null`" = "" ];then
mkdir /.usr_devx
echo "Mounting /livecd/usr_devx.sfs file on /.usr_devx..."
losetup-FULL /dev/loop3 /livecd/usr_devx.sfs
mount -r -t squashfs -o noatime /dev/loop3 /.usr_devx
if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
USRDEVX=':/.usr_devx=ro'
fi
fi
USRMORE=""
if [ ! "`ls /livecd/usr_more.sfs 2> /dev/null`" = "" ];then
mkdir /.usr_more
echo "Mounting /livecd/usr_more.sfs file on /.usr_more..."
losetup-FULL /dev/loop4 /livecd/usr_more.sfs
mount -r -t squashfs -o noatime /dev/loop4 /.usr_more
if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
USRMORE=':/.usr_more=ro'
fi
fi
umount $ONECD
fuser -k -m /usr
sync
umount -r /usr
sync
mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/root/.usr=rw${USRDEVX}${USRMORE}:/usr=ro none /usr
--------------------------------------
having fun next I am going to try to compile from DVD saved source.
Ted Dog

I tested the DVD stuff on the mini-DVDs and it works well and has double the storage of a normal CD. Nice to carry a pocket puppy!

Ted Dog,
What you are doing is extremely interesting.
1.0.5beta will be released soon, and you might like to look at the new remaster-cd script and the iso2cd burner script, see if they can be improved for dvd.
I only have a cd burner, so that's what I write for and test on.
The scripts are only using cdrecord, so that is probably an immediate area for improvement if user wants to burn to dvd.

I didn't even know there are mini-dvds!

BarryK wrote:...I didn't even know there are mini-dvds!

They are the same size as mini-CDs (8 cm) and hold 1.4 GB. Memorex have an 8cm mini DVD-RW with "DuraLayer" scratch-resistant coating. I bought a 3-pack for $15 to try out. They boot fine in my computer.

DVDs are better than CDs in another way: the data layer is sandwiched in the center of the thickness of the disk, not on the back side close to the surface where a scratch can easily obliterate it.

The improvements with xgine and the playback of larger video files quickly in 1.05Beta looking good. I am looking to work on the new alpha when it is released.. - Ted Dog

Ted,
Note, although 1.0.5rc does not require scsi-emulation, BUT I haven't looked at the multi-session code, which as I recall still uses scsi-emul.
So, will take a look at that now.

If you look at /usr/sbin/createpuppyonline in 1.0.5rc, you will see how burn to cd with cdrecord:
where CDR="/dev/hdc" or whatever.
BURNMULTI="" or "-multi"

What about growisofs? can it accept something like dev=ATAPI:/dev/hdc?
...what would the format be?

growisofs is multi-session by default. the tricky stuff is there must not be any spaces around the equal sign. to burn an iso. cdrecord is not piped, not needed.
It behaves better if growisofs burns files straight to disk, note lack of equal sign.
the -pad should be avoided in constructing iso.

this is the code to append from rc.reboot-cd [/code]

with SCSI on limit 2g without SCSI limit 4g for last new directory. Data can go to 4.7G physical limit (or over with -overburn ) my DVD burner is slave on first ide '/dev/hdb'