Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

dogle · Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Posts: 302

For me, living out in the bundu, momentary power interruptions causing loss of RAM contents are a great vexation (BTW my UPS cuts in too slowly to overcome this).

I've taken to running in multisession (i.e. no pupsave), and also keeping a manual backup on HD of selected important files, like bookmarks. Trouble is, one does not wish to shutdown multisession too often and fill up the disk ..... and Sod's Law generally ensures that the next power blip happens just before I was about to do one or the other saving process.

Although this thread started specifically about frugals=pupsaves, I can't help thinking that a means of keeping a backup (other than pupsave?) on HD would be very useful, and would not need to be 'hot=continuous' if the user could, say, hit a button now and then or request periodic automatic backups. I can't however see how this could be made to play nicely in PUPMODE=77, multisession, which has that great advantage of insurance value against the HD self-destruct event ... but it sure would be nice if it could.

Sylvander · Posted: Mon 14 Nov 2011, 06:32 Post subject:

Something STRANGE! Confused

1. I just now restored a hot backup of Lupu-528.002 that was an update of Lupu-526.

2. When I then booted using the Lupu-528 live CD...
It reported that the lupusave file had previously been a 526 lupusave, and did I want to update it.
I hit enter, it updated, and all is as I'd expect after this update.

3. So how come?
I definitely made of hot backup of a lupusave that had already been updated from version 526 to 528.

Jasper · Joined: 25 Apr 2010 Posts: 869 Location: England

Hi Sylvander,

(a) I have not tried this "hot" backup program, but I have the impression, perhaps wrongly, that a backup would need to be renamed (and possibly moved) before use.

(b) It seems that you frequently choose not to save; so is your "strange" event possibly a combination of not saving since 10th November and (a) above?

Your use of "nosave" options is probably somewhat unusual - so that may make it harder for others to comment.

My regards

Sylvander · Posted: Mon 14 Nov 2011, 09:57 Post subject:

1. "a backup would need to be renamed (and possibly moved) before use"
Agreed.
(a) I save the backup on a USB2 connected external HDD.
(b) The pupsave+SFS filepair are held on my 2nd internal HDD.
(c) To restore, I boot to a 2nd Puppy that doesn't use the pupsave to be replaced by the backup.
(d) Then I use Xfe to display [side-by-side in its twin file panes]...
The pupsave to be deleted [and I delete that]...
And...
The pupsave which is to replace it...
(I copy that into place, and rename it by removing the date & time extension, so as to leave the name as lupusave.3fs)

2. "is your "strange" event possibly a combination of not saving since 10th November"
(a) Not possible; having updated the lupu-526 version of the pupsave to make it a 528 version..
I MUST have saved as soon as I got to the desktop...
So that the changes to the pupsave would be saved back to the pupsave.
Not just completed in RAM, and then discarded.
Only then would the pupsave be a 528 version.
Don't know for sure if I'm right in thinking that, but I would act upon that belief.
(b) And anyway, there would almost certainly have been good reasons to save the session since then.

3. "Your use of "nosave" options is probably somewhat unusual - so that may make it harder for others to comment"
I think in practice, the difference is that there would be no instant auto-saves every time the smallest change is made...
But there would indeed be saves...
Done manually now and then during the session.
I normally fetch my emails using smm...
View each notification in turn, of posts at the Puppy-forums...
Copy the numbers into the address, and view each post.
Then I would probably save that latest arrangement of Firefox windows....
With that sequence of viewed posts following one-after-the-other in a single window, that could be viewed by using the back/forward arrows.
Hence, I probably save at least once in a session.
Depends whether they're important or interesting posts.
I'll save this. Wink

Jasper · Joined: 25 Apr 2010 Posts: 869 Location: England

Hi Sylvander,

Doubtless you are sure that your restore was not of a pre-528-update backup - so I have no other thoughts about your interesting puzzle, but at least all appears to be normal again.

My regards

Sylvander · Posted: Mon 14 Nov 2011, 12:24 Post subject:

Yet another twist! Confused

The speaker icon disappeared yet again... Sad

So I restored the backup pupsave yet again...

And all appears well yet again... Smile

I'll keep a close watch on the speaker icon to see if I can notice what it is that makes it disappear.

2byte · Joined: 09 Oct 2006 Posts: 356

Sylvander et al,

PHB is a simple utility. It does not do anything tricky when performing a backup. It is just a straight copy (cp) of the save file, followed by a sync and e2fsck. That’s all. If the data exists on disk in the active save file then it exists in the backup.

Sylvander · Posted: Mon 14 Nov 2011, 15:37 Post subject:

Any idea why the Lupu-528.002 disk would see the [backup and restored copy of the] lupusave as a 526 version, and update it...
When the original from which the backup copy was made was not treated so?

Puzzles me. Confused

2byte · Joined: 09 Oct 2006 Posts: 356

Nope, not a clue, unless that info was either stored outside the save file or covered up by a whiteout file ( I think that's what they're called ). Did your restored backup have a different name? Just curious.

Sylvander · Posted: Mon 14 Nov 2011, 19:01 Post subject:

No, the name of the restored lupusave was identical to the original.
Both lupusave.3fs...
Both 1GB in size.
As you'd expect.

Sylvander · Posted: Tue 15 Nov 2011, 05:00 Post subject:

See this post by rerwin offering a patch PET file that applies some fixes to Lupu-528.002.

And this subsequent post by me reporting HOW I got it to work by restoring a Pupsave Hot Backup, then applying his PET. Very Happy