Installing MyDSL

Forum: Apps
Topic: Installing MyDSL
started by: macadavy

Posted by macadavy on May 20 2006,04:15

I have a frugal install with 40G HD partitioned thus:

hda1 - DSL/Knoppix image
hda5 - home, opt, & mydsl dirs.
hda6 - swap

I can download MyDSL apps to tmp and they are functional (MyDSL menu item, desktop icon, program runs), but when I shutdown or reboot, error message appears: Apps in ramdisk, save? Y/N When I say yes, elfm opens, clicking on MyDSL I'm informed I must be user dsl to install. When I ask whoami in A term. I'm told: dsl!
So I figure there has to be another way: change dir to save MyDSL to hda5/opt - I'm told it's not mounted. Yet the boot sequence seems to automount both hda1 & 5 - and the mount tool reports both as mounted!
What to do, what to do?? Helllp!

Posted by roberts on May 20 2006,04:33

Why would you be trying to load them upon shutdown?

The shutdown warning is opening emelfm as super user so that you may drag and drop the extensions downloaded into ramdisk to a permanent storage device.

The script usually tries to figure out the from and to based on boot options.
\
The only real use of this file manager prior to shutdown is to save (copy) your extensions; not to load them again!

Posted by mikshaw on May 20 2006,13:56

What about a lua or bash script whose only function is to move the selected mydsl extensions to a target location? There would be no question about why a file manager was opened, and you wouldn't have the potentially harmful root file manager in use.

macadavy: The aterm is a different shell than the root emelfm...they are being run as different users. If you open emelfm as root, all tasks done by it will be done by root.

Posted by roberts on May 20 2006,14:45

Quote

It is the purpose of a file manager to copy,move, rename files from easily selectable locations and via a simple drag and drop technique, why would I want to duplicate that functionality? It would seem to me that the use of a common file manager should already be very familiar and therefore easiest to use. I guess what seems common sense to me, using existing functionality to move (save) ramdisk located files to the target location of the users choice, is not obvious to others. To have to offer multiple versions of programs each with limited capabilities, training wheels, seems not only a waste of time but a waste of space. I believe in reuse of code or existing systems whenever possible. Seems no what I do. I cannot win. You can't please everybody.

Posted by tedmoore99 on May 20 2006,18:28

Is there an entry in the wiki that addresses the use of the file manager at shutdown time? I also have recieved that warning and did not know exactly what to do. Your explanation was like a duh? to me. Of course I should save the extensions in memory, but I didn't know how until now. Thanks Roberts for hanging in there with us noobs!

Posted by mikshaw on May 20 2006,18:42

True, you definitely can't make something whose functionality obvious for every user...sometimes it's best just to let a user know where he went wrong and hope that he's smart enough to learn from it. =o)
'Twas only a spur-of-the-moment idea anyway, and i see your points about staying with emelfm.

Posted by cbagger01 on May 21 2006,04:51

Maybe a flua popup dialog box with a few more lines of text that explain to the user what to do, or even better yet launch dillo with a link to the DSL wiki page that explains the process in more detail.

Posted by macadavy on May 21 2006,19:47

cbagger - could you post a link here to that wiki howto? I can't find it.
I realize it seems trivial to most (which is why I haven't asked any further questions) but I still can't save my extensions to the hard drive at shutdown or reboot. The emelfm opens showing the var/tmp dir in the left window - the right window is blank. Typing /mnt/hda5 in right panel cli opens it but there is no mydsl directory in hda5, though in install the command mydsl=hda5 was given. Trying to drag-'n'-drop (middle mouse button) to /opt doesn't work. Hilighting the files and using the 'move' button appears to work, i.e. the files show up in the right panel in /mnt/hda5/opt - but after shutdown or reboot the mydsl extensions have disappeared. I tried using Rox filemanager as it is gui'd, but drag-'n'-drop just copies the files without moving them.

Posted by mikshaw on May 21 2006,21:57

You'll need to mount /dev/hda5 before copying files to it. Otherwise you're only copying to the mountpoint, which is not persistent.

Also, the "mydsl" directory is an alternative to using the mydsl boot option. If you specify mydsl=hda5 then it will grab the extensions from the top level of hda5. If you have a mydsl directory there is no need to specify mydsl=hda5 in DSL 2.3/2.4

Posted by macadavy on May 21 2006,23:02

Thanks mikshaw.
We may be talking at cross-purposes. When I did the frugal install & was asked to designate a dedicated directory for mydsl I entered 'hda5', where (earlier in the install process) I had created 'home' & 'opt' directories as well. I can find no mydsl directory in the hda5 partition, so have been trying to save to opt. I understood hda1 & 5 were automounted at boot, and indeed the mount tool shows them as mounted. My problem may be a noob's confusion about the Linux filesystem. I will try saving to dev/hd5/opt, instead of mnt/hda5/opt.

Posted by mikshaw on May 22 2006,02:19

If your persistent directories are also on hda5, then yes they would already be mounted. If hda5 is used only for mydsl, it will be mounted only long enough to load the extension(s) and then be unmounted (unless one or more of the extensions is uci, in which case the partition cannot be umounted while the uci is mounted).

/dev/hda5 is the device and cannot be accessed that way through a file manager, so you will have to access it through the mountpoint. The lack of a mydsl directory should not be a big problem...you can create one yourself and it should work fine in DSL 2.3 & later. The thing I don't understand is that you said you put the extensions in your persistent opt but they did not persist after a reboot? I am not surprised that they didn't reinstall (you must specify a directory, such as mydsl=hda5/opt, if you don't put them in either "mydsl" or the top level of the partition), but i'm surprised that the archives are not still there.

Posted by dggoldst on June 22 2006,23:01

Hmmm...I'm still not sure what to do at shutdown time when the file manager appears. Do I copy the entire contents of /ramdisk/tmp over to /cdrom? Those are the directories that show up with emelFM launches. Then of course, it asks me to save again when I shut down. Help.

I have a frugal grub install of dsl 3.0. Aside from this, so far, I'm liking DSL3. Limewire installed via MyDsl without problems.

Posted by mikshaw on June 23 2006,03:08

If you copy everything you'll be copying a lot of useless garbage.
The only files that are important here are ones ending with .dsl, .tar.gz, .uci, and .unc. You can probably tell at a glance which files are extensions you want to keep, considering the filenames should be familiar.