ke4nt1
Group: Members
Posts: 2329
Joined: Oct. 2003 |
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Posted: Sep. 20 2004,20:36 |
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What is " c:\ " ??
If you lean your head to the right ,
it looks like a man with a goatee and a beret .. 
Either format for extensions will load fine from the root of the CD ..
The DSL Live CD when first booted has 3 directories that are writable ..
Those are /home /opt and /tmp
The rest are read-only....but can be changed..
This change is what makes the writable filesystem grow, and begin to eat up valuable ramspace ..
The .dsl files actually do require the filespace to grow.
As henk stated, this is the space/place the author designed the program to run...
Many of the support files for some programs HAVE to be found in certain directories...
If a program REQUIRES one of it's executables to be in the /usr/bin directory,
a common directory for storing executables,
then the entire directory will be available as read/WRITE space in the ramspace you have in your box..
Read-only space requires no ramspace, just a scan to read data. ( like the DSL CD )
The "red" .dsl files OVERWRITE already existing DSL files.
The "yellow" .dsl files only ADD to the filesystem, but still make otherwise read-only areas writable.
The "green" .tar.gz files ONLY write to the /tmp /opt and /home dirs.
If you can get a program to be cooperative, either thru a command line prompt, or a wrapper,
to operate only in that space, then the filesystem remains unexpanded, and saves ramspace.
The extension .tar.gz is somewhat confusing to people who download sources, drivers, and other softwares
from other sites, who commonly use the .tar.gz for archiving.
The .tar.gz's at DSL are made for DSL, and other .tar.gz's will not work in the same way.
It is best to keep your extensions separate from your daily downloads..
The "blue" .uci files are a compressed loop format..
They "mount" like a cdrom or partition does ..
The advantages are great and it is very highly suggested you
use the .uci files when available..
There is no " loading " to speak of , like in .tar.gz or .dsl ..
It does not have to be untarred in its entirety, and written to
ramspace BEFORE executing.. For example ...
You download a 5 meg .dsl to your /home/dsl dir 5M
You click myDSL or run mydsl-load to untar it ..
It expands to 10 megs and writes to /usr/local/games
which has 10 megs of files already in it 10M + added ramspace for writable
Now the game , when executed, takes another 4 megs 4M
Total 20+ megs...
If it were a .tar.gz, there would not be any added ramspace
used up by making writable the directory of choice, since they
are already writable.. so it would only be the original 5M + the installed 10M + the executed 4M
Total 19 megs
Now, the .uci file is downloaded - same 5 megs as the .dsl or tar.gz
But it uncompresses on the fly, just like the DSL LiveCD does.. and it mounts like its OWN filesystem.. - so no " installing "
When executed, it uses the same 4 megs to run the app..
Total 9 megs...
This is not factually exact or accurate, but gives you the idea of the savings that can be had with ramspace
IF the program can be run inside only the writable areas of the filesystem..
73
ke4nt
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