Frugal install, settings not saving
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Frugal install, settings not saving
started by: jhsu
Posted by jhsu on April 09 2007,02:45
I have the DSL 3.3 frugal install on my hard drive.NOTHING is saving. Any file or directory I add vanishes when I reboot. I have to keep changing the settings every time I boot in.
How do I save settings, files, etc.? I'm sure there's a simple step that I've overlooked.
Posted by mikshaw on April 09 2007,03:14
Read the dillo page that comes up when you first enter the desktop.Also, consult the DSL wiki
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Persistence >
Posted by jhsu on April 09 2007,04:57
OK, I realize now that my partitions weren't right. I know now to have THREE partitions: hda1 for the bootup (primary, 55 MB, beginning of drive, bootable, type 83), hda2 for the swap drive (primary, 2xRAM, end of drive, type 82), and hda3 for the saved information (primary, rest of drive, type 83).I realize now that saving my settings is very simple: DSL menu -> System -> Backup/Restore, backup to hda1.
No offense, but I find the documentation to be vague and poorly organized. (To be fair, that's the case for most of the other Linux distributions as well.) That's why I'm writing up my own instructions on how to get started in DSL and use them to help my family and friends get started on DSL as well.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on April 09 2007,13:45
Actually, you only need 1 partition at a minimum (as stated, 50mb)I think most of the docs probably aren't updated often...
but most people never read that all-important local startup documentation popup in dillo
Posted by Juanito on April 09 2007,13:59
| Quote |
| OK, I realize now that my partitions weren't right. I know now to have THREE partitions: hda1 for the bootup (primary, 55 MB, beginning of drive, bootable, type 83), hda2 for the swap drive (primary, 2xRAM, end of drive, type 82), and hda3 for the saved information (primary, rest of drive, type 83). I realize now that saving my settings is very simple: DSL menu -> System -> Backup/Restore, backup to hda1. |
If hda1 is 55MB, i.e. just bigger than /knoppix, it might make more sense to backup to hda3 - I once left a large file in /home/dsl, exceeded the partition size and lost everything in the backup...
Posted by jhsu on April 10 2007,02:01
< If hda1 is 55MB, i.e. just bigger than /knoppix, it might make more sense to backup to hda3 - I once left a large file in /home/dsl, exceeded the partition size and lost everything in the backup... >Every time I try to backup to hda3, Filetool seems to just hang. On the other hand, backing up to hda1 is fast. Is it supposed to take this long to back up the configuration setting files? Or is there something else that I've overlooked?
Posted by torp on April 10 2007,12:38
| Quote |
| No offense, but I find the documentation to be vague and poorly organized. (To be fair, that's the case for most of the other Linux distributions as well.) That's why I'm writing up my own instructions on how to get started in DSL and use them to help my family and friends get started on DSL as well. |
i felt that way at first, but have come to realize that DSL's current documentation facilitates experimentation, which in my opinion is a much better teacher than any documentation could ever be.
torp
Posted by roberts on April 10 2007,14:13
Hopefully you have formatted hda3This process is the same whether it is hda1 or hda3
You could use the DSLpanel and perform a manual backup and then check to see that the backup.tar.gz is where you expect it to be.
It is just common sense not to backup to a tiny 55MB partition when there is already 50MB used.
Posted by Felson on April 10 2007,17:28
I am currently running with 2 partitions. I put my backup on hda2, and it works just fine. I even booted with CD once to change my KONPIX image from 3.1 to 3.3, and it found and restored my backup, and my mydsl directory without me doing anything but hitting enter at the GRUB page. To lower the risk of a backup file going bad (had that happen to me a few times with my USB key). I added a mount command to my bootlocal.sh for hda2, and I have allot of the configuration folders (like .kde and .gaim) symlinked to the hard drive. That way only the symlink is stored in the backup file. Also means that if you computer freezes, you don't loose stuff. At least no any of the stuff that is a symlink.
If I were to add a swap partition, would I see a relevant increase in performance?
Posted by jpeters on April 12 2007,06:47
| Quote (Felson @ April 10 2007,13:28) |
| If I were to add a swap partition, would I see a relevant increase in performance? |
I'm using the recommended 2X ram in a sway partition (500M), and was impressed by the way the system seems to free up ram during idle moments by using some of the swap. If it's working the way I'm imagining, the available ram then goes to the active processes, making everything faster. I noticed that I don't have to use that much ram for some to get distributed to swap. Perhaps I'm just imagining the sophistication of the process and somebody can expound on what is actually happening. DSL rips..........