DSL file structures

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: DSL file structures
started by: jimihieu

Posted by jimihieu on Mar. 26 2006,15:45

hi
im newbie to DSL and before i go ahead to modify it...
Does anyone know what file structure does DSL is like?
how is it compare to a normal distro?
thank you very much.

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 28 2006,17:38

DSL is based on Debian/KNOPPIX, so the file structure should be similar to a Debian installation.

Posted by jimihieu on Mar. 29 2006,12:02

Quote (cbagger01 @ Mar. 28 2006,12:38)

DSL is based on Debian/KNOPPIX, so the file structure should be similar to a Debian installation.

hmm i tried google but seem i cant search for such debian file structure
is it same as linux structure?
does anyone has a good link?
thanx

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 29 2006,16:38

< Filesystem Hierarchy Standard >
Most Linux distros stick to this pretty tightly. With a few exceptions the only differences will be minor, such as using /etc/rc.d instead of /etc/init.d. DSL isn't much different, apart from its read-only base.

Posted by jimihieu on Mar. 30 2006,02:37

Quote (mikshaw @ Mar. 29 2006,11:38)

yeah i just want to know the different which is important to me...does anyone know?
thank you anyway

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 30 2006,03:05

Can't really say what's different unless we know what to compare it to. Most Linux distros are "normal", including DSL, but every distro has its little differences from every other distro. Your question really can't be answered unless you want to compare DSL to one particular other distro.

What I can say is that the most obvious differences between DSL and most other distros are...
1) Its package installation system is not package management...it will install but any uninstall is the user's problem.
2) If you run anything but a traditional harddrive install, the system is typically run in ram and so it requires files to be reinstalled on every boot. There are some exceptions to this.
3) Most included applications are the tiniest ones that could be found to do each task.

Posted by jimihieu on Mar. 30 2006,03:08

Quote (mikshaw @ Mar. 29 2006,22:05)

hi
thank you for reply
hmm i just want to know the different between DSL and the FHS in the website that is all.
thank you

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 30 2006,03:10

I don't think there is any difference at all. As far as I can tell, DSL adheres to that standard.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 30 2006,04:48

Quote (mikshaw @ Mar. 29 2006,19:05)

Wow. I certainly would not answer like that!

First of all DSL is primarily a liveCD or Frugal type install, ie., a copy of the compressed read-only image.
Traditional hard drive install is not the focus of DSL at all. Over the past three years all of the improvements to DSL have been for the liveCD/Frugal environment.
That is the biggest difference between DSL and most other distros.

Now, a distro running from a compressed read-only image whether it is from a liveCD, sitting in ram, from a pendrive, Compact Flash, or even a hard disk partition runs partially in ram. Package managment is USELESS in this environment. There is no uninstall, just reboot and you always have a pristine known state of the OS. Reinstalling evey app, hardly, many automatic means to load these specially made extensions (packages). These "packages" are slimmed down to reduce their impacts on ram and are made exclusively for user dsl. I have never labelled them as packages, they are extensions.

Because, it is designed for such, the only natively writeable areas of the filesystem, is /opt and /home and a few other areas setup in ramdisk. The rest is mainly read-only. Using the write boot option or loading a .dsl extension automatically creates many symlinks allowing much more of the filesystem to be writeable.

Again, as the filesystem is running from compressed image and mostly read-only, many system files are placed in /opt. This allows for easy backup and restore, without overly burdening the use to constantly add files to the .filetool.lst ( the list-of-files to backup). Also many items that may normally be in rc.d are combined into these two files: /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig and /etc/init.d/dsl-config

Users can however choose to install to the hard drive in a traditional way. And thus can use a package managment system provided by Debian.

To compare the specially made DSL extensions made for the compressed image/ramdisk environment to that of packages ala traditional hard drive installed makes no sense.

There is even a warning on the website that dsl extensions are not made for traditionally hard drive installed systems. Let's keep these definitions clear.

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 30 2006,05:05

ok. i stand corrected.

I'm gonna blame it on getting slightly frustrated with the apparent circular nature of this thread, and wanting to just throw out some differences for him to read.

Posted by jimihieu on Mar. 30 2006,05:47

hi
thanks alot guys
yeah i install DSL on my HDD
im still pretty new to DSL and linux
if i want to use another distro to install binutils or gcc of the version that i want to from tarball source code (*.tar.bz2):

which of the following methods below should i use?

1) configure,make,make install on the HOST system then "cp files" into DSL file stuctures ( according to FHS)
or
2) configure,make,make install on the HOST system but make use of --prefix to install into DSL file structure? (i make use of FHS again this time too)

Hope i can get some hints on this so i can learn more.
Thank you very much since the last post was very useful to me.