Frugal and installing packages
Forum: USB booting
Topic: Frugal and installing packages
started by: thegreatdane
Posted by thegreatdane on July 18 2006,19:22
Hey, I'm new to being an active DSL user, and I am having trouble understanding the frugal install. Maybe I haven't read enough of the Wiki or help or forums, but I can't figure out how I can install 'feh' (an image viewer) to my frugal installation of DSL permanently.I am trying to build a digital picture frame out of my old IBM TP 600, and DSL works beautifully on it. I also don't want the internal hard drive or CDROM constantly accessing to keep the noise down. So, my best option is a USB Pen Drive with a frugal install. I know that feh has a great slideshow function that I can use to display the pictures. After installing dsl-dpkg.dsl and apt-getting feh, it works perfectly, but when I reboot, both disappear and I can't load feh at startup like I want to. Does anyone have any ideas on how to permanently add feh to the system?
EDIT: Sorry, folks. I did some deeper searching (it does wonders). I'm part of the "I want it to stick" crowd, but I am also a part of the "I don't want a hard drive" crowd. Apparently those two crowds can't mix in a frugal install, so I guess I'm stuck. Moderator, delete me at will.
Posted by kerry on July 18 2006,20:25
you need to use the backup and restore function. read dillo that's the reason it pop's up at start.
Posted by Technoman on July 21 2006,14:31
I have question along these same lines. I see my problem is the frugal keyword. Could I remove the "frugal" from my boot commandline for embedded and still have it work and save my programs and extensions? And I also boot off a flash drive. If I remove frugal from that boot prompt what would happen? I guess my question is, would DSL run off my flashdrive after that and not overwrite my harddrive?I used the backup/restore tool and it didn't seem to work to keep apps installed even after I used the FAQ's to modify the file to save /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /ramdisk/usr/bin, /ramdisk/usr/lib...
Oh, and as a new user I guess it's tradition that we gush over how great dsl is. So here goes:
Dsl is not small in it's expandability, not small in it's customizability, not small in the dedication of its creaters, and no small feat of genius. It's the small OS with big features, thanks.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 21 2006,15:35
The frugal bootline code just makes /cdrom mounted as read-write afaik.I believe the way to use backup/restore is to save your configurations for the apps, not for saving the apps themselves! (You would end up having a huge backup file otherwise). You should use autoloading features of myDSL instead.
Posted by Technoman on July 22 2006,01:13
If you're referring to putting the .dsl files in the root directory that does work when booting off the flashdrive. However, that doesn't work when I load in qemu because / there is in the image and not the flash drive if I understand correctly. Anyway I could set up my flash drive install to act just like a regular linux install? I.E. It sees it as a harddrive and nothing special? No image saving just files on a disk? Please note that my tools for doing this is limited to a dsl-3.0.1.iso burned to a dvd and dsl-embedded along with my Windows XP and Ubuntu installations.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 22 2006,01:25
Do you mean you don't want to use a frugal install at all? It's unclear what you want exactly...But if you do mean this, I suppose you could enter sdXx under the hd-install scripts, or something along those lines. Tbh though, DSL frugal installs are the way to go.
Posted by Technoman on July 22 2006,03:35
All right, for clarity I will spell out exactly what I am hoping for including what I've already accomplished.I want my 1Gb flash drive to be bootable
I want my flash drive to also support embedded
I want the embedded and boot image to refer to the same thing so changes in one location are reflected in the other
I want my files, apps, installs, everything to be saved on the flash drive and be available to either system whether it be booted or embedded. Preferrably without requiring backup/restore or the like but I'll take what I can get.
Emoticons represent amount of progress I've made in getting my goals accomplished.
Current issue as I understand it:
When using backup/restore to port files and settings from boot/qemu, Qemu looks for backups in harddisk which shows up as hdb and not on the root of the flashdrive.
Solution: Got to figure out how to set qemu to store and read the flashdrive instead of a file. If I can get that then DSL will save settings and files in embedded mode that can easily be accessed by booted mode.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 22 2006,06:29
I'm just gonna paste my first google link...< http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/HowToFloppyCdrom-en.html >
Its for windows, but I'm pretty sure its similar for the linux script.
Posted by Technoman on July 22 2006,17:54
You, sir, are awesome! I had searched through the qemu pages but not that one. It's still a bit buggy but it will serve my purposes quite well. For those who want the dual boot and embedded system. This is what my dsl-windows.bat file looks like after much tweaking and testing:
| Code Sample |
REM Start qemu on windows. @ECHO OFF START qemu\qemu.exe -L qemu/ -no-kqemu -m 128 -soundhw sb16 -localtime -kernel linux24 -initrd minirt24.gz -hda KNOPPIX/knoppix -hdb \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -append "qemu sb=0x220,5,1,5 frugal quiet modules=hdb noscsi nofirewire nousb atapicd noideraid noacpi acpi=off noapm noagp ide1=noprobe ide2=noprobe nomce restore=hdb1" CLS EXIT |
A note that the bug I mentioned is one for qemu and the host operating system. In this case, when DSL creates backup.tar.gz on the flashdrive, windows sees a file but the data is not linked to the file. Thus, the file is said to be corrupt and can't be opened or even loaded back into qemu. This problem is the reason I didn't just set hda to be the flashdrive itself. It needs to have the image and ramdisk "buffering" to prevent fatal errors. So the bug is that you can only backup/restore once in embedded mode per host OS reboot, but you can do it as much as you want in booted mode.
Now to get my network cards recognized in bootable mode and we'll be cooking with gas!
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 22 2006,19:57
That's an interesting bug... what happens if you unplug and replug the usb?
Posted by Technoman on July 24 2006,01:17
It does see the file properly if ejected and reattached in the host. But this still involves shutting down DSL embedded and removing and starting everything back up again. It also (more importantly) sees the file when moved to another computer. Also, a note that I added:
mydsl=hdb1
to the end of the dsl-windows.bat qemu line so that applications will get loaded off the flashdisk as at boot as well.