So ... This is it? Puppy is dead?

[sunburnt]

I looked at Slitaz years ago, I can`t remember what it`s like.
Most all newer small Linux distros. use a union. It`s the current design method.
But Mr. Knopper used a union for the purpose of running Linux from a CD.

[MinHundHettePerro]

@sunburnt

Somehow I feel that I'm still missing your point ...

The SFS file is a compressed file that can be made only with the command: mksquashfs
So it`s almost impossible for it to get a virus, but not the Save file with app. packages installed...
The kernel is a compressed file too and so is the initrd.gz file, they`re all fairly reliable.
Save file corruption is the major source of Puppy " going south ". For many reasons.

If I may, what would be the most common cause of a save-file corruption, according to your experience?

I don't have that many of these pup_save*.(2/3/r)fs-files corruptions, and when I do have one, it's mostly my fault anyway .
And yes for a kind of personal, standard, instant customisation add-on type of thingy, I admit to having combined a few applications, utilities of my own, extra fonts (with "pre-run" fontsdir and fontscale), and some customisations into a squashfs-file, for ease of use (for my frugal/live installations/runs, that is) (for the more conventional (OS-wide) full installs of puppy, I normally use the .pet format).

And... Now you don`t even need the Save file for installing apps. into. Simple!

But, it would still be needed for to save settings (puppy's own, as well as, those of any installed application), wouldn't it?
I fail to see how any implementation of this new type of save-file would be less prone to corruption than the present type of pup-mode 12/13 save-file. (Supposing that something should still be saved in mode 12/13 (mode 6/7 never, really, worked that well for me), or in mode 2/3 (and, how to go about that?).)

MinHundHettePerro; I`m guessing that you`re fairly new to Linux?
Over 10 years ago Linux was only what Puppy calls a "full install" ( all lose files like WinBlows ).
Then Klaus Knopper got the idea for Knoppix and made a hack that was the first crude union FS.
The union FS didn`t work very well until recently, but now it works pretty damn good!

How could you guess? Yes, I only have a few years worth of Linux mileage down the road. Some VMS/OpenVMS before that (IIRC *nix descendant, but my memory could play tricks on me here ).

Actually, some 15-20 years ago I used to carry around a single floppy, containing an extremely cut-down MS-Win3.1 (with an admixture of some heavier footprint MS-Win3.11 features), all zipped and (customised and) ready to run from floppy boot. Not entirely my own idea, don't remember now who shared the initial cuttin'-down script (which I highly optimised for my needs), though. There was the possibility to just run from the floppy, unzip its contents to a harddrive subdirectory (which, of course could be booted into directly), or to boot from my floppy and use a harddrive (sort-of) save-file. I could choose to run this with a temporary save-file, or to re-zip the changes into the original zip-file.

Of course, it was never a matter of any union of different layers at that time, only the occasional overlaying of certain saved features (saved in a separate zip-file) onto the un-zipped, or installed, cut-down OS.

Excuse me but, would the concepts described in the paragraph above even seem remotely familiar .... ?

jemimah obviously doesn`t understand how it works. But lots of folks don`t like change...
You should have been here 10 years ago when folks told Klaus Knopper it would never work!
" What would never work " became the foundation Barry used to build Puppy...
Who`s laughing now? HA HA!!!

And, yes, I am familiar with the work of Klaus K., and the influence it had on the Live-Distro niche of *nix.


Cheers /
MHHP

[sunburnt]

Yes... Klaus, Barry, and all of us who use and enjoy it are laughing at the nay sayers!

The Save file isn`t the problem as such, it`s the types of files put in it.
If a Save file has only settings type files in it, then not too much damage can be done.
Settings files are not executed, but they do effect the operation of the system.
But when you install executable programs, ( again... loose files ) then they can get viruses.
If all the executable files are in Squash files, then it`s very hard for them to get viruses.

If the Save Area`s used ( be it a file, dir., or partition ) for read-write files only,
then you have secured the rest of the read-only files in very secure Squash files.
Most of the files in a any OS don`t need to be written to ever!
I counted over 3,200 files of the read-only type, and about 800 read-write types.
And the read-write types may never be written to! Only statistics would show this.

The dirs. I`ve identified as having read-write files are:
/etc, /root, /mnt, /proc, /sys, /tmp, /var, /usr/etc, /usr/local, /usr/share. All are small except
/root is about 96 MB and /usr/share is about 53 MB. Most of the files are never written to...

[MinHundHettePerro]

Good Luck, then ..., and all the best ...

/
MHHP

[nooby]

Just my wild guess but if one can trust wikipedia then both Knopper and Kauler learned about unionFS from older experiments like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_mount

A union mount is a mount that allows several filesystems to be mounted at one time, appearing to be one filesystem.

Rather than mounting each filesystem at a different place in the directory hierarchy, a union mount overlays the filesystems, creating a unified hierarchy. Thus, any given directory (or "folder") in the resulting filesystem may contain files and subdirectories from any or all of the underlying filesystems.
...
Union mounts are implemented by a union filesystem such as UnionFS and AUFS. They originated with Plan 9 and its concept of union directories.

Bibliography

* Pendry, Jan-Simon; Marshall Kirk McKusick (December 1995). "Union Mounts in 4.4BSD-Lite". Proceedings of the USENIX Technical Conference on UNIX and Advanced Computing Systems: 25–33. http://www.usenix.org/publications/libr ... mckusick.a. Retrieved 2007-11-25.

But as far as I know Barry Kauler is unique in that he made use of the writeable prtions of a DVD so one could save the changes back to the same DVD that one booted from while Knoppix forced one to save on a USB and Puppy could be run from memory so you could take the DVD out and play music from the CD or DVD while knoppix could not do such trix.

Puppy is truly different and it would be very sad if it died out. There is nothing like it AFAIK.

[nitehawk]

OK....
the original title of this thread is:
So ... This is it? Puppy is dead?

..right now I don't think it's entirely dead. That's a pretty strong statement (the "dead" word, I mean). There are changes in the wind, for sure.

[Pizzasgood]

How would you install something from source? Configure, make, make install will no longer work, so you'll have to learn whatever convoluted thing you need to do to make it stand alone, find its libraries on any one of a hundred different mount points, and who knows what else.

For many packages, you could use DESTDIR:
./configure && make && make DESTDIR=/home/me/package-1.2.3 install

That would install it into /home/me/package-1.2.3, while leaving all the files thinking they were installed into /, so that you could do whatever you need. It doesn't work on all packages though - depends on the Makefile.

Also, you could use src2pkg, which uses some other techniques to let you accomplish similar goals without touching the RO parts of the system. (It also has techniques that do require it to be RW.)

In a conventional distro, the user account wouldn't have write access to /usr and /etc anyway, and in server-world those are often mounted as read-only in the first place.

As for modifying .sfs files, I wrote a pretty simple utility a while back (Edit-SFS) that helps simplify the process of expanding, editing, and recompressing them.


That said, I like unions. I like being able to seemingly modify everything and having those edits all held in a separate area, with the originals kept pristine.


Which one is better depends on circumstance and implementation.

[sunburnt]

Most interesting Pizzasgood... Building Squash file packages can be done a number of ways.
A while back I tried to make a GUI SFS file maker that would build directly from .tar.gz.
No need to extract the .tar.gz file. But I couldn`t get mksquashfs and tar to work together.

Jrb`s ChoicePup uses his Linker for mounting SFS files but not unioning them.
This is key to getting rid of the union and securing most of the loose files in the Save file.

Rebuilding the core boot Squash file wouldn`t be all that hard either.
Copy the contense of the current core Squash file to a dir., modify it, and then mksquashfs.
The point here is that the core Squash file almost never needs to be rebuilt. Apps. are needed.

We need a GUI for building no-union Squash files that connects to the Debian repository.
Pick the package you want and the GUI would statically build it on your PC from Debian.
Being statically built the Squash files would be very sure to work as there`s no dependencies.
NOTE: No-union Squash files can be used in a union, but they will also work without it.

A thought on Pizzasgood`s liking unions... The setup I propose can still use a union.
It would have all the appearance of Puppy just as it is now with a few minor differences.
Having apps. built as static no-union Squash files gives the option of having a union or not.
The choice of using a union would be a CheckBox option on one of Puppy`s settings GUIs!

Now that`s something great to think about..! ( It sure beats thinking that Puppy`s dead...)

[Aitch]

Agree with that Sunburnt
Perhaps the next release should be called Puppy's Ghost.....just for the heck of it!

Aitch

[Enrique Corbellini]

Is Puppy some forgeted by Barry? Such a loose if Kauler isn't with us any longer. But know I see his blog is readable, and he says an interesting thing about politicians.
I always considered why Puppy Linux wasn't more than a community to make computers work.
You know, if the thing was to make computers work, then, why is it we care for having a free system, without paying a coin for it? Didn't that have a philosophy in itself? I mean, that computers were important for their hardware, but not for their software?
Isn't it obvious that, expecting to receive money only from donations, causes Puppy Linux to be economically unsoported?
But I don't know why Kauler could stop doing the job. What I know, is that, none of us was born to be robots to meet dozens of people as in this community, just to create happiness for the computers. It was us, the community, who should find more happiness, not the machines.
I mean, I never see a Puppy meeting, a place were at least drink a glass of beer with you, my Puppy community partners. Perhaps some of you do that anyway, but I don't see the presence of this good humor in our community.
Guys, why don't we try to do something like a meeting? I know some of us won't cross oceans to do a meeting like this, but, does that matter?
Isn't it true we can meet using a net-room with microphones and webcams? Couldn't we say cheers just putting our glasses next to the monitor's screens?
And I think we SHOULD speak about money, more frecuently. We absolutely speak too little about money. We can understand it is a need, I know very few people who lives without money, and no one who lives without it pretending to use computers at the same time.
We can bring Puppy to people in a more organized way, earning an income for Puppy BECAUSE that will make that people understand Puppy is something real, something that COASTED EFFORT to be made.
Otherwise, they'll still think Puppy could be a virus or other stupidness we can see people believes.
So I propose that, dear partners. Let's organize an anual meeting and an Economic Department for Puppy. That will make everyone of us happier, including Barry.
What do you think?

-----------------------from Barry's Blog:
Why do politicians think they can decide on what should be done on technical issues. In discussing technical issues with my local state and federal representatives, it amazes on the lack of understanding they have on technical issues. They seem to go what is recommended by their biggest contributor or the bureaucracy. They do not want to take the time to understand what they are doing by passing a law. Too often, they do not read completely the entire law or regulation they are about to pass.

[sunburnt]

To re-echo Enrique Corbellini`s excerpt from Barry's Blog:
The special interests ( industry ) have the politician`s ears and attention, the voters are nobody.
I read today someone saying:

Imagine Bill Gates putting together all those chips needed to make Windows.

This level of ignorance is frightening when it`s displayed by the people making the decisions.

[looseSCREWorTWO]

A case in point is Health Care. A big issue right now in the U.S. and in Australia. Of the Billions to be spent on Health Care, how much of it will disappear into the coffers of Microsoft? Now, if the doctors have a multi-million dollar machine, they probably will need the proprietary software designed to control it. But what about the mundane things like records systems, medical databases and admin software? How much money will the Hospital Networks waste on things like that, when they could do the same job with Linux at a fraction of the cost?

[Aitch]

To me the issue is FREEDOM


see my post, here

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 583#418583

Beers all round to the first implementer of Puppy Personal Freedom Server OS

Aitch

[ken geometrics]

But I also want to be able to use the latest cheap small netbooks or mid something or tablets that are coming sooner or later.

Yes this is the end goal of the Puppeee project. I need more developer firepower if this is going to happen any time soon though. Keeping up with the bleeding edge is harder, because it's a moving target.

I have 4.31 with basically nothing special added loaded onto the plug in flash of a first year eeepc. It works for what I need it to do. 4.21 had problems. This means to me that the Puppy is improving with time as living things tend to.

Someone where I work has Windows-7 for over a week now. He still can't get his programs to run and things to print right etc. This means to me that Windows is getting worse with time as dieing things tend to.

[obxjerry]

looseSCREWorTWO, regarding healthcare and computers, would you rather go to a human doctor or a computer for medical care? For me and mine, we get much better service from the internet than from doctors. The tough part is finding a doctor that will put their ego aside and treat you for what you have instead of fighting a turf war.

[tubeguy]

Agree with that Sunburnt
Perhaps the next release should be called Puppy's Ghost.....just for the heck of it!

Aitch

Turns out it's called Puppy 5.0 (Lucid Puppy).

[pa_mcclamrock]

Agree with that Sunburnt
Perhaps the next release should be called Puppy's Ghost.....just for the heck of it!

Aitch

Turns out it's called Puppy 5.0 (Lucid Puppy).

I'm running it right now. The reports of Puppy's death have been greatly exaggerated--to say the least!