scot
Group: Members
Posts: 15
Joined: Dec. 2006 |
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Posted: Dec. 25 2006,00:11 |
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As far as functionality is concerned, UNCs are just like any other extension. They provide an application (or whatever). Use them if they work, use other kinds of extensions if those work. But they do provide some advantages.
UNCs are a way of making extensions to DSL which dont have to be contained entirely underneath a single directory (/opt), like, UCI extensions, but, which also don't take up ramdisk space, and eat up memory all the time. Thus you can have an application which loads bits of itself to various parts of the filesystem, and the individual bits stay nicely on disc (or usb or wherever) until you actually need them. Some of the other ways of creating extensions meant that either you had to put everything under a single directory, or else make the whole application load into ram. This lets package makers include documentation, for example, which is otherwise left out of DSL extensions in the interest of memory savings.
To use UNC's: you must use a recent version of DSL (>3.0 I think, but 3.1 was the first time I had sucess with uncs). Boot from CD or frugal install, so that the DSL loads using the 'unionfs' file system, which it should do by default. Put the unc's you want into a directory where dsl can see them when it boots (depends on your machine, say /hda4/mydsl), and boot with the following added to your boot options: mydsl=/hda4/mydsl. Presto. your extensions are loaded at every boot. (Note that the way to add a boot option depends on your boot loader lilo, grub, or that new one whose name I forget. I boot from grub, so if I want to change a boot option temporarily, I just hit 'e' after selecting DSL at boot time, add/edit boot options, then hit 'b' to boot.)
See the complete wiki versions here:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/MyDSL:_Installing_Extensions
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....at_Boot
These apply to all extension types, not just UNCs.
For me UNCs are no real advantage for things I use often, since I boot with the toram option so that I can turn the harddisc off. I WANT the whole app in memory so that I don't need to access the disc and my laptop stays quiet. For things I use less often, or for bulky apps that I don't need all the pieces of, they're great.
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