(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I'm sorry to ask this, I know its been asked many times, but the 5 series Puppy may be different (?)

I am running a 511 frugal install on a a USB memory stick and want to upgrade it to 515. I have downloaded the 515 ISO and previously I've burned a CD, booted it and then installed to flash from this, but this is slow, wastes CDs and leaves me back with a fresh install without any of my personalisations.

Please advise the simplest way to uprade, thanks.

Nobody ? That's unusual for this forum, it must be harder than I thought.

Perhaps everyone is too busy with Christmas.

abedarts wrote:Nobody ? That's unusual for this forum, it must be harder than I thought.

Perhaps everyone is too busy with Christmas.

Definitely Christmas.

Firstly, make sure you realize that 515 is a beta release for 520, which should be out fairly soon.

To update/upgrade, mount the newer CD *.iso (click on it) and from there copy the main Puppy *.sfs file (lupu_515.sfs in this case, I think) and copy it onto your flash drive. Once you're done copying it, click on the *.iso image again to unmount it, and you can delete the older Puppy *.sfs (lupu-511.sfs) off of your flash drive.

When you boot, a prompt will ask you to confirm that you wish to upgrade, and if you let it it will do just that. Your savefile should be usable in the newer version after this, but since 515 is a beta release and since I've not tried transferring a savefile to 515 myself, you should probably make a backup copy just in case before you boot it up. (I've only tested upgrading from 511 to 516, but it went smoothly enough.)

Many thanks TheAsterisk! - I do realise that 515 is interim on the way to 520, which is partly why I was looking for a quicker and more economical way to upgrade, because I may do it several times.

So just copy the new sfs, not vmlinuz and initrd.gz, (or any others) I noticed that these were different in size too?

I know nothing but I would just for the sake of it delete all three and copy the now three over to the usb and then boot it and accept that it upgrades.

Could you maybe save the three files on some HDD just in case you want to get back to 511?

To back up the pupsave file would be wiseable too?

abedarts wrote:Many thanks TheAsterisk! - I do realise that 515 is interim on the way to 520, which is partly why I was looking for a quicker and more economical way to upgrade, because I may do it several times.

So just copy the new sfs, not vmlinuz and initrd.gz, (or any others) I noticed that these were different in size too?

hmm, are you a bit lazy?
What is easier then copy 3 files (the sfs, the vmlinuz and the initrd.gz) from the new ISO?

Merry Christmas.

Yeah, dead idle.

Béèm wrote:...
What is easier then copy 3 files (the sfs, the vmlinuz and the initrd.gz) from the new ISO?

Merry Christmas.

Copying just 1 file is easier. This is how:

1. Given: I want to install 515 onto a new flash drive that I
just purchased.
2. I run the universal installer, that is on my 511 system.
In the dialog box, that allows me to select a source directory,
I select the 515 directory (it's on the -loop mounted ISO file). Then
I wait for the install to finish.
3. Next, I copy the PupSave file to the new flash drive. (1 file only).
Wasn't that easy?

Merry Xmas, Béèm.

P.S. For the above upgrade scenario to take place, the Universal Installer's
directory filtering mechanism has to allow for the selection of lupu-515.sfs
as a target source directory file. Currently, it only allows for lupu-511.sfs
to be targeted. A simple change from filtering on lupu-511.sfs to filtering
on lupu-*.sfs should do the trick for future upgrade lovers.

abedarts wrote:So just copy the new sfs, not vmlinuz and initrd.gz, (or any others) I noticed that these were different in size too?

Well, you could just copy the sfs- it worked for me going from 511 to 516- but it would be wiser to copy all three files and to backup the old savefile before you upgrade.
There's no need to backup the initrd.gz, vmlinuz or lupu-511.sfs files from Lucid 511, though, assuming you still have the CD *.iso, since they're all still available from that. You can just delete those and keep the ISO.

The instructions of Barry are to copy all three files in an upgrade operation.
Specially the initrd.gz could be adapted to a new version.

Warning about upgrading with a save file.
There are fundamental problems with upgrading a save-file, such as it breaks things.
It is the way that the /etc/rc.d/rc.update script works. If you install an upgrade PET for a Puppy Linux core program, when the save-file is upgraded to a newer version of Puppy Linux, many of the files get reverted to the "official" ones -- result, that program may not work.
Example:
Had previously upgraded to the latest "Adobe Flash Player", upgraded the save file to a newer version of Puppy Linux, and "Adobe Flash Player" also got reverted to the "official" one.
These are not new problems, they have been there since Puppy started.

Warning about upgrading with a save file.
There are fundamental problems with upgrading a save-file, such as it breaks things.
It is the way that the /etc/rc.d/rc.update script works. If you install an upgrade PET for a Puppy Linux core program, when the save-file is upgraded to a newer version of Puppy Linux, many of the files get reverted to the "official" ones -- result, that program may not work.

I wondered why my upgrades never seem to be satisfactory.
Are you suggesting there a better way to do it?

frefel, The better way is to start with a fresh save file.
If you upgrade a save file, which isn't really supported by 100%, you take the risk.

I can confirm that just copying the SFS does not always work - the new version of initrd or vmlinuz, I'm not sure which but I guess the latter, is hard coded to look for a specifically named SFS file, such as lupu_511, lupu_515 etc. So the advice to copy all three files seems to be right.

Then the hope is that if your save file is renamed and copied it will fuction with the new version, however Beem and bigpup both warn against this for reasons of compatibility or finding that programs have been downgraded in the process.

So the reality seems to be that there is no upgrade mechanism - the best thing to do is download the new ISO, make a fresh install from it and then hand customise it back the way you like it?

A side issue -

During my efforts on this issue I often had more than one USB flash drive containing Puppy installs plugged into my laptop. One of these would be the currently running Puppy and others were other Puppy installs that I had made, possibly containing older / different versions. If I attempted to manipulate Puppy files on these latter drives Puppy would not let me and give a warning along the lines of 'you can't play around with this because it is in use', whereas in fact a file with the same name on the running Puppy was in use but this was a different logical drive. So, my guess is that some file name checks are not checking for the full path - drive/filename, just the filename.

(I hope nobody takes any of the above as criticism, I am a Puppy lover too!)

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