Why are those extra directories in Rox?

[SkyPilot]

I'm putting this here, because I'm pretty sure it's just my newbie problem rather than a problem with Puppy.

I have a Dell Inspiron 2650, use a 64KM Lexar jump drive to take files back and forth between work and home -- and by the way, thanks Barry, with Puppy 106, I've gone to using Puppy exclusively, except for a few times when I have to use a color printer that I can acess only thru XP.

My question is about ROX (the standard version in 106), when I open up to /mnt - to get to my sda1 - I see the following "directories" apparently mounted there -
cdrive
cdrom
cdrom2
data
flash
floppy
home
linux2
linux3
linux4
linux5
msdos1
msdos2
pupxxx
ram1
sda1
swap
windows2
windows3
zip

This is rather confusing to me since I don't have any msdos on this machine, I don't have any windows, I only have one cdrom drive, and only one other linux (Ubuntu which I really haven't used since 106 came out).

I'd really like to know how to get rid of the "extra" directories, and I wouldn't mind knowing the "why" behind all this.

Thanks!!

[rarsa]

In Linux you don't access 'drives' as in other Operating sytems so, there is no drive C: or D:, etc.

Here is some linux theory:

In Linux you mount filesystems into existing directories. This is, you access filesystems seamlessly as if they were part of the directory structure.

The directory where you 'mount' a file system must exist. It does not have to be in any particular location but it is standard that you mount filesystems in a subdirectory under /mnt

The directories that you see there are just placeholders for when you want to mount something. Just helpers so you don't have to create the folders. Another advantage is that when giving instructions to new users we can refer to those folders knowing that they always exist.

So, to round up:
- Those folders are not required, just convenient.
- You don't need to mount your filesystems under /mnt although that's the common location. For example, I have a /root/data folder where I mount an additional pupdata file at boot time.
- The directory where you mount a filesystem is called a mount point.
- If you are running from the liveCD, The folders under /mnt exist on ramdisk so even if you delete them they will be created the next time you boot. The only way to permanently get rid of them is to remaster the CD. (Not worth your time)

I hope I did not confuse you more.

[Pizzasgood]

A quick addition:
Rox adds a little green circle/arrow thing to the folder icon if it is mounted. A white arrow in a circle is if it's not mounted, but defined as a mountpoint. Things can be mounted anywhere, but you can set it to mount to a certain place in /etc/fstab, which is how it knows to stick the white arrow there.

This is not to be confused with the white and black arrow in a box, which is a symlink (think beefed-up shortcuts).



Those directories can't be deleted permanantly because of how Puppy works. You can try, but they will just come back. If you really[i/] want them gone, you could add this to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Code: Select all

rm -r /mnt/msdos1

which would get rid of /mnt/msdos1. You can just add a line like that for every directory you want removed. Then, every time Puppy boots, it will delete those directories again.

[SkyPilot]

Thanks for all your information - I'll just put up with the extra mount points. I'd rather not screw around with Puppy and mess up the fine beast that Barry has "created."