Need help saveing / browsing files

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Need help saveing / browsing files
started by: dbough

Posted by dbough on Sep. 02 2006,12:53

First apparently I am an extreme newb!

I'm running DSL live off of a USB thumb drive. During a session I would like to save my settings to the same thumb drive so when I "reboot" the settings can be restored (or already there.)

I've followed the instructions in the FAQ the best I could. I open backup/restore and type "sda1" as the backup location - I believe this is the thumb drive.

When I reboot and try to restore the settings I type "sda1" and nothing happens. When I close down DSL it asks me if I want to save the settings. I chooose yes and it opens emelfn.bin. From here I am confused. I can't seem to navigate to my thumb drive or a folder to save things in. It always says "ramdrive" ad the top file name (which I assume is the program loaded into memory.)

Anyhow - I need help saving my settings and browsing the files / folders.

Thanks in advance!

Dan

Posted by roberts on Sep. 02 2006,17:43

Once you have selected a backup device, the backup and restore become automatic.
If you watch the boot messages you will see the messages relating to this.
The backup/restore is really for the natively writeable areas of the system when run from liveCD or frugal install. This means all of home/dsl and selected parts of /opt
The backup/restore is writing each time you shutdown and reading each time you boot up.
Now, the mydsl extensions, are very large and static, i.e., they do not change, therefore you would not want such large items to have to be written every time you shutdown. Therefore, if you have downloaded some mydsl apps and they are on the /tmp directory, at shutdown, you are prompted to save them that is why the file manager appears.
On a pendrive frugally installed system your choices for saving depend on if it is a USBZIP or USBHDD. If it is a USBHDD then you have a single partition /dev/sda1 and this is already mounted as /cdrom. So choose /cdrom to save the extensions. If it happens to be a USBZIP they choose sda2

Posted by dbough on Sep. 02 2006,22:29

Ahh very good. So I should mount the cdrom in the lower right hand corner of the desktop and assume that is the pen drive (I am using it as a USBHDD in the bios.)

If that is the case what drive is used for the cdrom drive?

I have noticed on shutting down it says "saving to /cdrom" or something similar. I just figured I chose the wrong configuration at some point in the game. It tells me to remove the cdrom and hit enter to complete the shutdown process.

So confused heh :P.

Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 03 2006,00:14

/cdrom is the mountpoint of the partition where DSL is installed.
/mnt/cdrom is a "real" cdrom.

Posted by roberts on Sep. 03 2006,00:19

No. The mountpoint /cdrom is already mounted on the device /dev/sda1. So you do not need to mount it!

This is what is confusing you. Many times the device and the mountpoint are the same. This blurs the line of which is which.

The mount point /cdrom is used with all frugal type installs because it is emulating the image that is normally on the device /dev/cdrom.

If your system has a physical cdrom device, then you can mount it most likely under the mountpoint /mnt/auto/cdrom or any other mount point that may be available.

Posted by dbough on Sep. 03 2006,13:39

Ok so what I am doing is backing up to "/cdrom" which should put any changes I have made (including applications / downloads" onto my pendrive in the file called backup.tar.gz.

I assume this is correct - I"ve been fiddling around - I'm in the process of "backing up" using the above stated method - so far it has been taking a few minutes and the backup/restore window has become unresponsive.

Posted by roberts on Sep. 03 2006,15:37

In the case of liveCD or other frugally installed systems, if you choose to ignore the recommendations of the separation of mydsl apps (write once/read many) and the backup of user data files (write and read upon each boot) and include mydsl applications in your backup.tar.gz then your backup will indeed take a very long time.