Viewing / mounting the boot partition with ROX

[8-bit]

Let us say I have a number of Puppy distros installed frugally to a partition.
For simplicity let us say it is sda1.
I boot using grub and select a Puppy version from the menu.
Setting at the desktop, I open ROX and navigate to /mnt/sda1.
It appears to be empty.
To me, that does not seem right.
If I instead navigate to /mnt/home the contents of sda1 are visible.

Now the fun starts. Can I copy a file to /mnt/sda1?
Will it be there when I reboot?
Will it appear in /mnt/home or when I click on the sda1 icon at the bottom of the screen?

That is confusing. That partition is mounted in which case, the contents should appear in /mnt/sda1.
Instead, the contents of /initrd/mnt/dev_save are shown which is the full directory tree of a mounted sda1.

Can someone explain this to me?
And why is /mnt/sda1 empty even though it is mounted?
Is that Home directory a special case?

[disciple]

Let us say I have a number of Puppy distros installed frugally to a partition.
For simplicity let us say it is sda1.
I boot using grub and select a Puppy version from the menu.
Setting at the desktop, I open ROX and navigate to /mnt/sda1.
It appears to be empty.
To me, that does not seem right.

That is not right. Puppy does not normally do that.

If I instead navigate to /mnt/home the contents of sda1 are visible.

Now the fun starts. Can I copy a file to /mnt/sda1?
Will it be there when I reboot?
Will it appear in /mnt/home or when I click on the sda1 icon at the bottom of the screen?

That is confusing. That partition is mounted in which case, the contents should appear in /mnt/sda1.
Instead, the contents of /initrd/mnt/dev_save are shown which is the full directory tree of a mounted sda1.

Can someone explain this to me?
And why is /mnt/sda1 empty even though it is mounted?

Are you sure /mnt/home isn't actually /mnt/sdb1 or something?

Which Puppies does this occur with?

[8-bit]

I am running Puppy Lupu/Lucid 520.
As I said, I was using sda1 as an example.

My setup is booting to a grub menu on sdb3 using a windows bootloader on sda1 courtesy of EasyBCD.
From that grub menu, I then select a frugal install of Puppy from sdb3 or sdb4.
I am on sdb4 partition now and running Puppy Lucid 520.
If I open ROX, the file manager, and click the up arrow to get to / and then click on the mnt folder and then sdb4, that directory is empty.
If I click on the desktop icon for sdb4, the contents of that partition show in a ROX window but /mnt/sdb4 folder still shows as empty.

Also, Pmount works correctly in mounting that partition, but the /mnt/sdb4 folder is still empty.

Also, if you mouse over /mnt/home, which is shown as a link, the link shown is "/initrd/mnt/dev_save".

I know all of this does not sound right.
But when you are booted in Puppy from a certain partition, first lets make sure it is mounted by clicking on the desktop icon for it.
Then click on the House icon and navigate to /mnt/[partition you are running from].
Also, when I run Pmount and click on the partition I am running Puppy from, say sdb4, the ROX window that comes up shows it as mnt/home in the window header.

Try it. You will find that in /mnt that the partition you are running from is shown with no files.

Also, it does not make any difference what version of Puppy I am running. This is duplicatable in my other running Puppy versions.

I still do not understand why that folder is not showing the contents of the partition.

[8-bit]

I did re-size my sdb2 NTFS partition and then make a ext2 partition in the unallocated space.
It shows as sdb4.
Since there were defined partitions both before and after sdb2 before this action, the actual partitions were not in disk order.

So my PCs partitions are shown as:

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 37458 300881353+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 37459 38913 11687287+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 638 5116928 b W95 FAT32
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 * 667 13320 101636640 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb3 19695 24793 40952520 83 Linux
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb4 13320 19695 51203880 83 Linux
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order
#

The physical disk order of /dev/sdb is sdb1, sdb2, sdb4, sdb3.
Also, I have never known how to get a partition to end on a disk boundry.
Does that relate to the size one picks when creating the partition?

[tasmod]

Hmmm, I was intrigued, so I did the same but the results were different.

I have currently 12 frugal install folders on partition sda1. I also use grub and select one, boot (529 just now) and use ROX to look at mnt.

The difference is that sda1 is not shown in mnt as it is system mounted because of the working savefile. I've always seen this as correct, it should be down to where the save file is as to whether it shows.
Once the system is booted the initrd and puppy sfs are no longer in use they are in ram. However if the savefile is in same folder it will be mounted.

Sometimes I wonder about this with a newby, as it is perfectly possible to delete the Puppy sfs and lose the install.

[puppyluvr]

Hello,
Is your savefile on a different partition than the .sfs it is booting with??

[8-bit]

I don't know how it happened that I got a /mnt/sdb4 directory appear in my /mnt directory on Lucid 520. But it was there in the lupusave file irregardless.
My boot sequence is a windows boot menu on sda1 that has two selections. Windows on sda1 or linux on sdb3.
I select linux and that starts grub and the menu for selection frugal installs of Puppy on sdb3 and sdb4.
I then select Lucid 520 from the grub menu and continue the boot to Lucid 520 on sdb4.

Just now, I booted to Puppy 431 SCSI on sdb3.
I then mounted sdb4 and then /lucid520/lupusave.2fs.
I navigated there to /mnt and deleted /mnt/sdb4.
I unmounted all and rebooted.
Now I have that /mnt directory appear as it should other than any device I have accessed/mounted has a directory there in the /mnt directory.
It seems like it would be a good thing if Puppy cleaned out those /mnt directories on a reboot.
Why are they being saved to the pupsave file to begin with since they get unmounted on rebooting or shutting down?

The big problem with experimenting with not writing that /mnt directory to the pupsave file is that if it is done wrong, one can easily wipe out the entire contents of their drives and partitions.

[disciple]

Oh, thanks for the extra information. I'd forgotten that on my machines /mnt/home and /mnt/sdb5 are both links to /initrd/mnt/dev_save
I think the /mnt/home link is standard but I made the other one myself, because it was convenient.

It seems like it would be a good thing if Puppy cleaned out those /mnt directories on a reboot.
Why are they being saved to the pupsave file to begin with since they get unmounted on rebooting or shutting down?

I've thought the same myself. The only downside I can see to cleaning them up is that it would be inconvenient for anybody who mounts things manually instead of using pmount or whatever.