User Feedback :: Great but could someone help a little bit



Quote (Juanito @ Sep. 16 2007,02:45)
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With the toram option, do I need a swap drive
- no, not if you have enough ram

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I don't understand why the Knoppix folder is 4MB. I thought it should be 50MB?
- the file /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX is +/- 50MB

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The cd-rom folder contains stuff and there is no cd-rom in the drive
- from memory, this is what is in the root directory of your boot partition. The actual cd drive will be somewhere else, depending on its interface (ide, scsi, usb, etc).

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What is the etc folder and so on
- this is where you put configuration files for various applications.

Many thanks for your responses Juanito.

Toram option: I am not sure what enough is - I have 256Mb. Would you suggest more? What would you suggest for a typical  install (if such a thing exists!)?

I am currently writing an explaination of the filesystem for Windows users. See below!

Thanks again!

C.
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Toram option: I am not sure what enough is - I have 256Mb. Would you suggest more?

- I think it depends on what you want to do with your dsl machine. To use it as a web browser and e-mail client, you could probably get away with 256MB or less and no swap. To use it for compiling, etc might be less obvious.

I'm using a 10-year old desktop toram but luckily enough it has 512MB ram - even so, I noticed the swap gets used when compiling large programs.
Juanito - thanks again for the reply. I don't anticipate doing much in the way of compiling just now. I suspect that the rdp uses will be minimal, playing mp3s should be minimal - decompressing xvid or other formats may need some more. I will report back later in the project.

Many thanks.

C.
Understanding the filesystem WORK IN PROGRESS

It took me a while to understand how the files system works with DSL. To get a grip on it you need to understand the boot process too which is not clear to a Windows user. It is much more technical than we are used to. Here's my way of explaining it...

If you go into emel-fm (a file manager that takes a bit of getting used to is you are familiar with Explorer) you will see that in the root directory (/..) there are a bunch of folders. They are NOT a consistent set of files that you might see in Windows explorer. Don't think of them as such. Here are the varieties you get:

1. Some are symlinks (shortcuts) to regularly used folders. (They can be recognised as light blue folders in EmelFM)
2. Some are real folders.
3. Some are mounted drives. Drives don't appear in the same way in DSL - they are mounted as folders.
4. Mounted images - the main Knoppix file is treated in this way.

When booting up, there is a bunch of primordial stuff that happens at low level that is handled by the loader (grub in our case). During that phase, it loads what is known as the kernel. This is the shell or environment that allows everything to start to talk to each other. The programs can interface with the hardware and different bits of hardware can talk to each other and so on. Once the kernel is loaded, the main operating system files (/Knoppix) are hunted down on the system. In our case, these are on hda1.

The basic DSL files stored in this image are then installed into RAM at /KNOPPIX. These files allow the Operating system to run. A bunch of shortcuts to commonly used folders are also set up for ease of use. In addition, the orginal KNOPPIX image is mounted (you could say that a shortcut to the main file is setup) under the /cdrom folder. Hence the Operating system can call on the other stuff it needs whenever and you can access the files you are most likely to need quickly. This is all very sensible when you think about it.

Back to persistence again:
As discussed, some of the files are in RAM. The ones that are in RAM can be changed for the most part - some are actually in use so can't be changed. When you start to change these files - nothing will last until you 1: Click System > Backup/Restore (if it does not default to your 2nd drive then select type the name of the drive e.g. hda2) and 2: Introduce the cheatcode: restore=hda2. More about this later!

The KNOPPIX image loaded at /cdrom is not writable either because it is in constant use by the OS. Hence - at a later stage we will have to remaster this image.

In an effort to explain what all these files are doing, here is a list of the files that you will see and an explaination of each.


Directory; Type; Description
/KNOPPIX ; RAM based folder ; A container for holding a bunch of files that DSL needs to run.
/bin; [Symlink to /KNOPPIX/bin]; OS files
/boot; [Symlink to /KNOPPIX/boot]; OS files - boot related
/cdrom; Mounted image; The main Knoppix file found when booting up
/dev; ## No idea!!; No idea
/etc; Ram based folder; Contains application settings
/home; [Symlink to /KNOPPIX/home]; OS files
/lib; [Symlink to /KNOPPIX/lib]; OS files
/lost & found

etc. etc.
Could someone tell me where I can find a proper description of all these folders? I would like to complete this list with a bit more knowledge. I don't understand for instance why there is a 'lost & found' folder in the cdrom directory as well as the ram root? Is there a reasonable explaination for this somewhere?

Many thanks!
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