Hacking DSL
Forum: System
Topic: Hacking DSL
started by: spark-o-matic
Posted by spark-o-matic on April 09 2008,08:42
This is a continuation of < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=19919 >I think this would be a much better place for this.
I had actualy opened the hacking DSL Wiki page a number of times, but got busy and never actualy read it 'till Sunday. This was truly the info I needed. I am posting from a rudimentery hack of ff2, gnu utils, amsn, and a couple of other thing and their dependencies. I have begun automatiing the hack process, but not the least bit user friendly and specific to the box I am hacking on right now. There were some errors/invalid characters on the wiki page. I am posting w/ cheat codes of:
base norestore
and it seems to be a live cd duplicate of my frugal install w/out the mydsl directory or backup present. And all of my custom configurations.
I am just half in heaven right now. This is going almost right back to my roots on puters, the Apple II series, 2 diget hex characters that were the commands to the processor.
Is there any interest in expanding mkmydsl into an automated hack instead/in addition to?
One other thought crosses my mind regardiing toram. KNOPPIX contaiins drivers to everything supported. After hardware detection and the required drivers become active but before mydsl's are installed or backup, purdge the unused drivers. I think this would free up memory that could be uses for something else and be well worth a longer startup tiime (but how long would it really take to remove files from physical memory?)
web browsing in toram is gastly fast compared to the competition.
Thanks so much everyone,
Your all the greatest
Posted by stupid_idiot on April 09 2008,10:02
Just brainstorming:"mkisofs" can be used to dump a custom "KNOPPIX" file to RAM?
Maybe with the "-m" or "-exclude-list" options?
"man mkisofs":
| Quote |
| -m glob Exclude files matching glob, a shell wildcard pattern, from being written to CD-ROM. glob may match either the filename component or the full path-name. This option may be used multiple times. For example: genisoimage -o rom -m '*.o' -m core -m foobar would exclude all files ending in `.o', or called core or foobar from the image. Note that if you had a directory called foobar, it too (and of course all its descendants) would be excluded. -exclude-list file A file containing a list of shell wildcards to be excluded. See -m. |
Perhaps it could be used with existing boot options.
e.g.
"nofw", "nopcmcia", "noscsi", "nousb".
Problem: User won't be able to manually load the modules afterwards (since they will not be present).
Perhaps there should be a boot option added to disable this behaviour if the user doesn't want it.
"newtoram"? "oldtoram"?
Posted by spark-o-matic on April 09 2008,15:31
I was thinking that anything to do with Hotplug would need to stay, but I would not expect isa or pci cards to be inserted without powering down first.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on April 09 2008,17:51
| Quote |
| Is there any interest in expanding mkmydsl into an automated hack instead/in addition to? |
| Quote |
| One other thought crosses my mind regardiing toram. KNOPPIX contaiins drivers to everything supported. After hardware detection and the required drivers become active but before mydsl's are installed or backup, purdge the unused drivers. I think this would free up memory that could be uses for something else and be well worth a longer startup tiime (but how long would it really take to remove files from physical memory?) |
On a side note, I'm finding the blue text a bit harder to read than the regular black text :P
Posted by curaga on April 09 2008,18:02
If you already boot toram, a saving of 2-3MB is not really worth mentioning to me..
Posted by spark-o-matic on April 09 2008,18:53
| Quote |
| Quote Is there any interest in expanding mkmydsl into an automated hack instead/in addition to? If I'm interpreting this correctly, you want a dsl base image remastering script? I think there are some user made ones floating around. iirc those and the mkmydsl script has always been separated, since I suppose it is considered more advanced, take up more resources, and that mkmydsl was meant to do what it does specifically. |
What is giving me fits is tracking down every file that is different while excluding things such as /proc/* which would be expected to change constantly. I think my next logical step is to hack mydsl-install and the backup to place the files in the directory I have extracted KNOPPIX to instead
.
| Quote |
| Quote One other thought crosses my mind regardiing toram. KNOPPIX contaiins drivers to everything supported. After hardware detection and the required drivers become active but before mydsl's are installed or backup, purdge the unused drivers. I think this would free up memory that could be uses for something else and be well worth a longer startup tiime (but how long would it really take to remove files from physical memory?) s_i has a good idea, but I think this would take up too much time (and doesn't toram copy the image before it loads the drivers, etc?). So unless you really need save a few MB's in memory, a better way may be to cut the modules out from KNOPPIX, and just leave the ones you need (or even use the DSL modules loading feature). |
I guess I didn't catch that removing files from a compressed image is not strait forward. But perhaps as a portion of a hack frugal install. I would expect that a frugal or hd install would normaly reside only on that computer.
| Quote |
| If you already boot toram, a saving of 2-3MB is not really worth mentioning to me.. |
But I think that expanding on this idea would fall with in what I believe is the basic concept of DSL and DSL-N, not falling subject to the 'bloat' that is so typical. An ease of removing those portions which would be useless to the EU and replacing them with useful things.
Posted by lucky13 on April 09 2008,19:00
| Quote |
| If you already boot toram, a saving of 2-3MB is not really worth mentioning to me. |
No, because you're not half in heaven reminiscing about an Apple ][ with 16kb of RAM. Heh.
Posted by curaga on April 10 2008,13:02
I've never owned a mac 
Posted by spark-o-matic on April 12 2008,05:18
Just a bit of an update. I have the dsl knoppix image extracted to one directory and have hacked mydsl-load and mydsl-install so they place the files in another directory. I then merge the two to a third directory and create the compressed image. I tryed using the -M option with mkisofs to merge the extentions with an iso on the hard drive of the base dsl, but it insists on also having the -C option which would be given by cdrecord to merge with a mutisession cd. I am testing on a grub boot using the suggestion of different names for knoppix, so I can boot grub to the hack version then reboot into the stock dsl, extensions and optionals.One thing I think might be helpful would be numbered (or descriptive name) for mydsl directory and backups as a cheat code. say restorename=web or restorename=2 with it grabbing a restore file of backup_xxx.tar.gz and mydsl_xxx directory. Thus the same computer could serve many different functions. A home office by day and entertainment in the evening. Or several mkmydsl cd's could each call their own backup. But that maybe should be in the wish list other I may do it soon to make working on multiple hacks easier.
And this may belong more as a bug report, I noticed the code requiring being user dsl to install extensons is commented out. Is this intentional?
| Quote |
| curaga Posted on April 09 2008,11:02 If you already boot toram, a saving of 2-3MB is not really worth mentioning to me.. |
| Quote |
| No, because you're not half in heaven reminiscing about an Apple ][ with 16kb of RAM. Heh. |
EDIT: changed my color back to the default black (hopefully) as per request..
Posted by lucky13 on April 12 2008,13:26
| Quote |
| One thing I think might be helpful would be numbered (or descriptive name) for mydsl directory and backups as a cheat code. |
Nobody reads the documentation. Already available. You can name your mydsl directory whatever you want, put it wherever you want.
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Cheat_Codes >
PS: Thanks for changing your text color to something that doesn't make my ancient eyes scream.
Posted by spark-o-matic on April 12 2008,16:23
| Code Sample |
| if [ -z $2 ]; then tar -C / -T /opt/.filetool.lst -X /opt/.xfiletool.lst -czvf $MOUNTPOINT/backup.tar.gz echo -n "Press enter to continue:"; read ans else echo -n "${BLUE}Backing up files to ${YELLOW}$MOUNTPOINT ${BLUE}mounted on ${MAGENTA}/dev/$DEVICE ${NORMAL}" tar -C / -T /opt/.filetool.lst -X /opt/.xfiletool.lst -czf "$MOUNTPOINT/backup.tar.gz" 2>/dev/null & rotdash $! sync |
| Code Sample |
| if [ -z "$MOUNTPOINT" ]; then echo "Invalid device $DEVICE" echo -n "Press enter to continue:"; read ans exit 1 fi |
I checked over that page again. the only things I find are.
| Quote |
| base Skip myDSL load only the base system mydsl={hda1 / sda1} Restore myDSL apps (default to cdrom). Suppose you wish to run DSL from memory and your MyDSL applications are stored on hda1. Then you would use the cheatcode: dsl toram mydsl=hda1 |
Posted by spark-o-matic on April 22 2008,02:04
One quick question. Is it standard within Linux/DSL for the user to include the trailing / (forward slash) when prompted for a directory or not? It would be easy enough to check if they put one then add one if needed, but a waste of effort to check if it has been standardized.Re-reading, my last post may have been incorrectly worded.
| Quote |
| What am I missing? |
| Quote |
| How can you look up a word in a dictionary if you can't spell it? You find it here among thousands of words listed by their Wrong spellings |
The Bad Speller's Dictionary
Joseph Krevisky and Jordan L. Linfield
© 1967, 1963, by Innovation Press
It seems quite a part of my trouble transitioning to free software is the differences in what the exact same thing is called. How do I look it up on the search engine if all I know it by is its proprietary name?
Thanks Everyone
Posted by lucky13 on April 22 2008,02:45
| Quote |
| Is it standard within Linux/DSL for the user to include the trailing / (forward slash) when prompted for a directory or not? |
It seemed to be the convention more than it seems to be anymore. You'll see it applied on auto-completion in most shells and in various applications.
| Quote |
| How do I look it up on the search engine if all I know it by is its proprietary name? |
By searching for "Linux equivalent" or looking on sites like these:
< http://www.linuxalt.com/ >
< http://www.physics.drexel.edu/liki....cations >
Posted by spark-o-matic on May 11 2008,19:32
I have not posted for some time. My automated hack is progressing slow and un-surely. I would really like input from John, Robert, and the long standing DSL community especially about the user interface and DSL convention. It is nowhere near being ready even for the testing area. I could allow a limited number of downloads from one of my websites, but I use a hosting provider who does not restrict download speeds (throttling) or overload his servers (dual OC 149 for usually no more then 50 sites) . I pay based on bandwidth usage tiers.
I see an aversion to linking to other then official DSL and agree with maintaining control.
Thanks Everyone