Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[simargl]

Main thread http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=84353

1. Installation

A frugal install, as characterized by most Linux distros that use it, is a technique
that copies the CDROM boot files as is directly to a hard drive. The distro can then
boot from these files and operate as if it had booted from the CDROM. This lets the
user bypass the sometimes lengthly and messy full install procedure. Not all
distributions are set up to do such a thing. But for those that are, they need only
a handful of files to be copied to the hard drive, making for a very simple and fast install.

Since the Puppy install is typically just 3 - 5 files in a directory, it can be
installed in conjunction with about any other operating system - without the
need for an additional disc or separate partition. This concept works so well
that it's possible to have several different Puppy installs on a single partition,
each within its own directory. The grub bootloader can be configured to offer
booting into any of them. This lets you install any of the specialized derivatives
of Puppy that are available, and have the choice of booting into any one of them.

A frugal install is similar to running a live cd or live usb, except that
it is running from a hard drive. Advantages of frugal:

- Space is saved (installation to hard drive typically is 4 times the
size of the iso, whereas with frugal it is the size of the iso).

- Frugal from hard drive is faster than live usb and live cd.

- Great for testing (once set up).

How to make a frugal ArchPup installation? For this example I assume, that you want
to install ArchPup on partition sda6:

- First mount that partition and CD, i.e. click on their icons in Thunar file manager.

- In partition sda6 make directory called archpup, and copy 5 files:
archpup.sfs, adrv.sfs, archapps.sfs, initrd.gz and vmlinuz from CD to that folder.

- Start Grub4Dos bootloader config from the menu.

- Select you disk, then in options tick search only in this device and press OK.

Created menu.lst will have these entries:

title ArchPup (sda6/archpup)
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /archpup/initrd.gz
kernel /archpup/vmlinuz psubdir=archpup pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /archpup/initrd.gz

title ArchPup RAM mode (sda6/archpup)
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /archpup/initrd.gz
kernel /archpup/vmlinuz psubdir=archpup pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck,ram
initrd /archpup/initrd.gz

The same method can be applied for installation to a USB flash drive.

[simargl]

2. pacman

Pacman is a utility which manages software packages in Linux.
It uses simple compressed files as a package format, and maintains a text-based
package database (more of a hierarchy), just in case some hand tweaking is necessary.
It will add, remove and upgrade packages in the system, handle dependencies
automatically and can download packages from a remote server.

Invoking pacman involves specifying an operation with any potential options
and targets to operate on. A target is usually a package name, filename,
URL, or a search string. Targets can be provided as command line arguments.

Examples (with simple text editor leafpad):

pacman -Sy
Update package list

pacman -Ss leafpad
Search for package leafpad in the database, searching both in packages' names and descriptions

pacman -Sf leafpad
Download and install leafpad including dependencies.

pacman -Si leafpad
Display extensive information about a given package

pacman -U /path/to/package/package_name-version.pkg.tar.xz
Install a 'local' package that is not from a remote repository (e.g. the package is from the AUR):

pacman -Rs leafpad
Remove leafpad and its dependencies which are not required by any other installed package.

ArchPup also includes packer, a wrapper for pacman and the AUR. It was designed
to be a simple and very fast replacement for the basic functionality of Yaourt.
It has commands to install, update, search, and show information for any package
in the main repositories and in the AUR. Use pacman for other commands, such as
removing a package. Packer is included in archdev sfs module. Supported operations:

packer -Ss
Search for a package.

packer -S
Install a package.

packer -Si
Outputs info for package.

packer -G
Download and extract AUR package tarballs, but don’t install anything.

packer -h
Show packer usage.

More informations:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman
https://github.com/keenerd/packer/wiki

[simargl]

3. Timezone, language, scripts...

- Setup timezone, change keyboard layout and locale settings
In order to keep time properly, you need to select your timezone
so that your system knows where it is located. The timezone under
Linux is set by a symbolic link from /etc/localtime to a file in the
/usr/share/zoneinfo directory that corresponds with what timezone you
are in. Example: ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris /etc/localtime.
Please avoid the /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT* timezones as their names
do not indicate the expected zones. For instance, GMT-8 is in fact GMT+8.

To set and customize all keyboard layout settings in the X you can use the
setxkbmap command in /root/.start. The list of predefined options can be
found right on the system, in: /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

Before a locale can be used on the system, it has to be enabled first.
To enable a locale, uncomment the name of the locale in the file /etc/locale.gen.
This file contains all the available locales that can be used on the system.
Revert the process to disable a locale. After the necessary locales are enabled,
the system needs to be updated with the new locales: locale-gen. Now open
/etc/rc.conf and change to suitable system language (french in this example)
LOCALE="fr_FR.UTF-8"

- pet2sfs and arch2sfs
ArchPup combines strengths of two linux distributions: Arch Linux
(large software repository and pacman, the best package manager)
and Puppy Linux (light-weight, portable, flexible). Almost all of
Puppy Linux specific dialogs and tools including support for installing
pet packages, are removed, to make ArchPup simple, clean and uncluttered.
If you want to install pet packages, it is still possible, but only after
you convert them to sfs module.

pet2sfs script converts all pet packages in current directory
to SFS module. Second argument you pass will be name of created SFS file,
e.g. pet2sfs games, will extract pet packages and create games.sfs.

arch2sfs has the same idea and functionality. Let's assume that you want to
install gnumeric without using space in savefile. First download gnumeric
including its dependencies, with pacman -Sw gnumeric. Downloaded packages
are stored in /var/cache/pacman/pkg, and you can move this cache directory
to some different location outside your savefile, for example to /mnt/home.
Now, change to directory with Arch's packages, and type arch2sfs gnumeric
in terminal. After you load newly created gnumeric.sfs, pacman will recognize
converted packages inside this module as installed.

makesfs is script that will automatically download packages from Arch Linux
repository and create sfs module using arch2sfs script. As argument, this
script accepts one package name. For example, if you want to use opera as
your browser type makesfs opera. SFS module will be crated after following steps:
cleaning packages cache, downloading opera with all dependencies, moving packages
from cache to /mnt/home/opera, running script arch2sfs opera.sfs. Newly
created sfs module will be inside /mnt/home, click to load it.

- Savefile explained
ArchPup supports three pupmodes:
5 - boot from hard disk, cd or usb drive without savefile,
12 - savefile created on hard disk drive,
13 - savefile is on removable disk (usbflash).
When using pupmode 13 your settings and additional programs will be
saved only on reboot or shutdown, unless you manually run usbsave in
terminal. Because of this, my advice is to create savefile on one of
your hard disk's partition if it's possible. ArchPup supports NTFS
partitions, so you can make savefile on a Windows NTFS formatted hard disk.

- User accounts
By default, ArchPup has two user accounts: one is root with password toor,
and other is arch with password arch. Home directory for restricted user
arch is /opt/home/arch. Once the system finishes booting, you will be
logged in as root, and to start some application as unprivileged user,
first open terminal and substitute user root with arch, i.e. type: su arch.

- Xorg autostart
Xorg will start automatically on every boot. If you want to prevent
this and log into a virtual console at the end of the boot process,
open file /etc/rc.conf and change X_AUTOLOGIN="yes" to X_AUTOLOGIN="no".
To start X window system, use archpupx. Environment variable WINDOW_MANAGER
from files in /etc/profile.d is used to start specific window manager.
Also, you can edit file /root/.start to launch any applications you
want to run at startup.

[Flash]

I hope you put a prominent link to this thread wherever the Archpup iso is available or mentioned.

[simargl]

Yes, I have added it under Recommended forum posts in main thread. This way people will know better what to expect, as some system configurations are only possible through editing text files.

[Flash]

How about putting a link to the main thread in this thread?