Frugal re-install

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Frugal re-install
started by: malanrich

Posted by malanrich on Aug. 23 2008,16:43

Greetings all,

I've been having a great experience learning about DSL by monkeying with a frugal install that, so far, has been working great on an ancient Compaq desktop (only 167Mhz 28 MB RAM!).

But I fouled up the install in some way or other, so I attempted a frugal re-install, thinking I'd be dumping the previous setup. Well, everything works fine again, except that how the new install is using disk space seems different than before. It almost seems that I've simply duplicated the install on another part of the disk (rather than replacing the previous one). Sorry for such a vague and noobish description of my situation!

Anyway, below shows how my disk space is allocated. Is there any way to tell from this whether I've got the system set up properly? (If not, no biggie. It's working fine, and I can always wipe it clean and start again.) Thanks in advance.

dsl@box:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root.old 2.9M 614.0k 2.3M 21% /
/dev/pts 127.2M 22.5M 104.7M 18% /dev/pts
/dev/hda1 68.6M 48.5M 16.5M 75% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 114.6M 114.6M 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/ramdisk 124.3M 21.9M 102.4M 18% /ramdisk
unionfs 238.9M 136.5M 102.4M 57% /KNOPPIX/bin
unionfs 127.2M 22.5M 104.7M 18% /dev
unionfs 127.2M 22.5M 104.7M 18% /etc
unionfs 238.9M 136.5M 102.4M 57% /KNOPPIX/lib
unionfs 238.9M 136.5M 102.4M 57% /KNOPPIX/sbin
unionfs 238.9M 136.5M 102.4M 57% /KNOPPIX/usr
unionfs 124.3M 21.9M 102.4M 18% /ramdisk/var
/dev/hda3 2.8G 31.9M 2.6G 1% /mnt/hda3
dsl@box:~$

Posted by roberts on Aug. 24 2008,03:00

Looks like a typical frugal install to hda1.

I also see hda3 shown, not sure what you have there without more info or even if it is mounted/used by DSL.

Posted by malanrich on Aug. 24 2008,05:54

Thanks for the look-over.

Hda 3 is where all my "mydsl" stuff goes. I got confused because it seemed that when I reinstalled I ended up with a duplication of the file system under KNOPPIX that wasn't there before. But I'm still a real noob when it comes to the frugal system of arranging the file system. I'll get used to it.

Meantime, everything works fine.

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 24 2008,10:27

Good to know you got going again.
One thing to remember for the future is that a frugal installation has a read-only base system, just like a live CD, so it's very unlikely that a reinstall is ever needed to fix a problem. If something goes wrong after the system has be working properly, it's typically the result of something in a backup or persistent home/opt (if it exists), or a corrupted extension. Booting with "norestore" will stop backup from being restored, and "base" will prevent extensions from being automatically loaded.

Posted by malanrich on Aug. 24 2008,18:06

Thanks for the reminder.

Frankly, the problem tends to be that my frugal install just works. So I haven't been pressured into finding out exactly why or how it works. I keep meaning to study into how the read-only install works with persistency and back-ups. It really is a remarkable system!

Maybe if DSL were more like Windows I'd know more about its inner workings--because I'd have to just to keep the bloody thing operating...