Why can't we unsquash to FAT?

[Smithy]

Is it not possible to unsquash to Fat and squash back from Fat?

Will it ever be possible?

[Flash]

Have you tried it? What happened when you tried it, if you did? How big was the squash file? Was it FAT32 or FAT16?

[mikeb]

You can if there are NO symlinks....but that's unlikely with anything linux.

As for the future I doubt it...The FAT system is just too basic for such niceties (NTFS can in theory..windows 7 make heavy use of hard links which are similar)...remember it was designed in the seventies by bill gates .

mike

[Smithy]

Flash, no, it is not an option in SFS Edit, ext or ram only. I have no use for ext.
Mikeb, thanks for the info.

I obviously will have to format a flash drive to ext, just to update the bash and a coupla other files.

And then put it back to fat, which is what they come as retro or what, but at least you can see what's on 'em and read/write to them from all OS.

When doing a Barry remaster, the bin is unreachable, just the root and etc.

If it seems a bit *rse over *it, then it probably is, but that's how I do my Linux updates.
Sheesh, anyone think it's going a bit like windows updates, which possibly we were trying to get away from

[jamesbond]

Is it not possible to unsquash to Fat and squash back from Fat?

Not plain ole' FAT, no. You do that and you will lose all the permissions which is enough to screw you, plus symlinks and hardlinks as mikeb said - the re-squashed SFS would be unusable.

Will it ever be possible?

It is *possible*. Bugger your puppy maintainer to produce a working version of posixovl. Mount your FAT partition as usual, then use mount.posixovl to overmount it, and do you work there.

[SFR]

Smithy, simply create an ext2 image on that FAT/NTFS/any partition (bear in mind the limit of 4GiB for FAT) and do the stuff inside of that mounted image.

Greetings!

[mikeb]

Well the idea of a remaster is that /usr changes are done via the save file or whatever mechanism is in use and the updates get incorporated when squashing.

Otherwise if you want to have a file tree to build from and modify like I do with slax then posix is the way really...as mentioned an image file would do the trick also.

You might want to look into the ext2/3 driver for windows...well there are a few of them...I use ext2/3 as shared data and could have ext2/3 usb sticks too....

Mike

[Smithy]

Jesus, I've just deleted the wrong drive by accident with gparted, 74gb of archive.
Hoping I've got some on an old EIDE.
Just a warning to users, Puppy is powerful.

Have to sort that out now. #uc@

[mikeb]

try using testdisc to recover a deleted partition....often works if you do it before trying any further changes with no data loss.

Mike

[Smithy]

Have you got a link to a good version of testdisc Mike, preferably puppy linux (the dog returns to his vomit).
I think gparted has killed the fat!
Thanks in advance. What a dumb move.

[mikeb]

I usually grab it from their website.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Its a standalone binary which you run from the command line... it may need making executable after unpacking.
By the way when its asks everything you will encounter comes under msdos type partitions.

Just ask here if anything is unclear though their site is good for documentation.

mike

[neerajkolte]

Testdisk, Yes nice and powerful little tool. I have used it previously to recover data for my friend.

On other note, I have read that usb sticks come formatted FAT to reduce number of read writes which hamper the life of flash media.(non-journaling fs).

So would ext2 be better for flash media than ext3/4.
Can journaling be turned off.

Thanks

- Neeraj.

[mikeb]

ext4 can be configured without journalling... I believe the save files use this but don't quote me.

As for the working life of flash sticks when it comes to writes perhaps the fear of journalling is no longer necessary...again don't quote me.

mike

[neerajkolte]

Yes I too seem to remember seeing 'ext4 with journaling turned off' in fatdog 630's savefile options. That's why I asked if it's possible with the whole usb drive and how to do it.
I will search on net.

Thanks.

- Neeraj.

[mikeb]

either when formatted or at a guess you could use tune2fs as you can for ext2/3 altering

mike

[bigpup]

Why are USB drives formatted Fat by manufactures.

Because they don't want non-Windows users calling and complaining that the drive is broken.

FAT32 is compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux right out of the box.

[neerajkolte]

Found this old post while searching and many like it.

Code: Select all

mke2fs -t ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sdXN

Format partition with ext4 but without a journal
For slow flash memory (cheap thumb drive), ext4 is the fastest stable file system for all use cases with no relevant exceptionhttp://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/7208/1
Since we can usually dispense with the benefits of a journal for this type of storage, this is a way to achieve the least awful I/O-speed.
Disabling the journal for an existing ext4 partition can be achieved using

Code: Select all

tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdXN

Note that it is often recommended to format removable flash media with ext2, due to the lack of a journal. ext4 has many advantages over ext2 even without the journal, with much better speed as one of the consequences. So the only usecase for ext2 would be compatibility with very old software.

Thanks.

- Neeraj.

[Smithy]

Thanks for the pointer to Test Disc, like Lazarus, my hard drive is back and intact, saved me hours of messing around!

Now, I have made an EXT2 (4gb) on a 16gb maxell usb.

Will see if this works now cheers.

[don570]

Fat formatted drives don't support colon character ( : ),
so certain linux utilities will give strange message error to terminal and stop
working.

For instance I have found that extracting certain pet packages couldn't be
done to fat partitions because Zigbert's apps would have a file with
a colon.

___________________________________________________

[gcmartin]

Hello @Smithy

You may be well beyond this, but, did you know that you can format a USB/SD to NTFS and not have any real issues with its use on almost every system out?

Might be an option if you shuttle information between Apple/Microsoft/Unix/Linux via USB/SD. Thus, it has a universal appeal.

FAT is mainly used on preformatted USB/SD for 2 reasons: Universal appeal and a simple low overhead file-structure architecture.

I am NOT saying either of these are the best, but, they do offer some good advantage. So, if on a Microsoft PC, simply open the disk manager and have it change the filesystem from FAT to NTFS, in-place.

Hope this helps