(OLD) (ARCHIVED) Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Rodney Byne · Joined: 31 Jan 2014 Posts: 247

My screenshot attached.

mikeslr

rufwoof · Joined: 24 Feb 2014 Posts: 3725

Hi Unicorn. I'd suggest waiting for a kernel 3.19. I compiled a LZ4 compression for ThinSlacko however Linux squashfs doesn't support decompression of that until k 3.19.

LZ4 decompresses very quickly so puppy sfs's compressed using LZ4 will benefit from that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ4_%28compression_algorithm%29

Rodney Byne · Joined: 31 Jan 2014 Posts: 247

Hi to all.

A cautionary tale.

It has become evident over time that any Linux distro using
persistence or a save file, is probably prone to flashdrive failure by
frequent writes concentrated to the same segment of drive space.

Serious OS corruptions were first noticed on an "Integral"
8Gb stick having Linux Puppy Slacko 5.9.3 installed.

The stick seemed the most likely culprit over the OS performance,
as random failed opening of any apps was worryingly erratic.

It was suspected that the stick sector blocks suffered from
writes fatigue, when normal frequent saves to RAM occurred.

Fortunately in kernel toolkits, there is a test write & read facility
called badblocks which stress tests all blocks on the stick.

To use this, first format the stick then insert into USB as dev/sdc.
(in my case)
It is important to unmount the stick prior to tests.

Open a Terminal, copy & paste this command line:
sudo badblocks -w -s -o usbstick.log /dev/sdc
and enter.

Automatic tests commence by slowly writing certain hex characters
until 100% stick space is reached.
Then reading and comparing those up to 100% will reveal any errors.

The first sweep revealed 152 errors, aggregating upwards at each following sweep.
So initial suspicions were vindicated and the faulty stick was binned as unusable.

Be alert to all this.

Regards.

unicorn316386 · Joined: 07 Apr 2015 Posts: 208 Location: Canada

mistfire · Joined: 04 Nov 2008 Posts: 1424 Location: PH

01micko I suggest that you should declutter more common unix commands by using symlinks pointed to busybox as many as possible and centralizing all the necessary system files in a path and use symlinks to redirect the needed resource files. This will remove duplicate system files and greatly reduce the filesize of slacko.

miriam · Posted: Mon 15 Aug 2016, 23:13 Post subject: slacko puppy 632 problems

Hi folks, I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this request. If I should post it elsewhere let me know, please.

I had a frugal install of Slacko Puppy 6.3.2 for a while until I was satisfied it did what I wanted. I'm really impressed with it, so did a full install. Unfortunately I then found that poweroff and reboot don't work anymore. X shuts down to the black commandline screen and looks like it tries to reboot or shut down, but the prompt reappears and it sits there blinking at me. I can type in commands fine and they work as they're supposed to, except for "reboot" and "poweroff" which clear the screen again and present the prompt again. Any idea what could be causing this annoying problem?

While I'm here, another small, but niggling problem is that the retrovol icon has disappeared from the swallow section of the tray. The blank spot where the icon should be is still there and I can click the blank area with either mouse button and the volume bar and menu for configuration and other things pop up.

This really is a great Puppy, in spite of these two small annoyances. Great job micko.

01micko · Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 8787 Location: qld

miriam · Posted: Tue 16 Aug 2016, 04:08 Post subject:

Hi micko, thanks for the reply. Sorry for the wrong place. I searched but this was the most appropriate-looking thread that came up. Is there a better one?

mikeslr

Hi Miriam,

There's rarely an advantage to Full Installs. Frugal Installs boot from compressed files. A Frugal Puppy reads those files and decompresses on-the-file the files it needs into RAM. Those operations use RAM and CPU. But only when have a low powered CPU --say, a single-core computer more than 6 years old-- and/or less than 512 Mbs of RAM will you notice any difference in how much quicker a Full install would perform.

I'm not running Slacko-6 at the moment. But as far as I recall, a Frugal Install enables you to create a SaveFolder rather than a SaveFile. With a SaveFolder you can do everything you could do with a SaveFile. But unlike a SaveFile, it is not compressed. As you install applications it grows as needed up to the extent of the available space on the partition/drive on which it is located.

It does require a Linux formatted partition, Ext2, 3 or 4. That, however, shouldn't matter anyway as your Full install similarly required such formatted partition.

If Slacko-6 can't handle a SaveFolder, I suggest you try Slacko-6.3. I know it can and it's highly unlikely that you won't be able to run it since as its requirements are (almost?) identical to Slacko-6.

mikesLr