Frugal Install?

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Frugal Install?
started by: jjoyner

Posted by jjoyner on Jan. 18 2005,03:53

I am hearing a lot about a "Frugal" Install...and I see frugal is an option under the rc menu...what the hell is it?

What I would preferable want to do is have a working HDInstall (doesn't have to be up to date) that everything works. 7.2 came close...but MyDSL doesn't work there...
This is on a laptop, which may be what I am doing wrong...
Some linguruish help would greatly be appreciated and repaid in the amount of a six of Red Stripe....

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 27 2005,10:55

I haven't used it, and dont really know all that much about it, but from what I've read it's basically the iso image sitting on your hard drive and kind of being accessed like a virtual CD-ROM - basically acts the same as if you boot and operate from CD, but it's actually coming from the HD instead, so it's faster.

From what I can tell, however, this also means that any extensions you have also only run in RAM, they don't physically install (ie. extract) on the HD, so you have the same problem of only being able to run x amount of different apps before you run out of RAM. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

What I'd like to see (again, may exist and I don't know about it) is essentially a blend of frugal and HD-install, where you can keep the frugal-iso seperate from some symlinked directory structure of your installed extras, so next time a new DSL is released, you just replace the iso file to update your complete setup, extras included?

(I'm sure that didn't make much sense, but I'm not really feeling very lucid at the moment

)

PS. When can I expect the beer to arrive?

Posted by adraker on Feb. 27 2005,12:11

Excellent roundup, Rogue-

I can't leave Frugal alone now.
There may be some persistent directory changes in the wind.
For now, though, I have gnu-utils and dsl-dpkg
in the root directory of the partition I installed to,
(along with my backup)
and an optional directory containing my extensions.
One good thing about it is that if you have a little disaster,
you reboot to a clean system.
Bomb proof.
And yeah, in essence, the iso, along with a boot directory
is sitting on a partition on your hard drive.
You can use Saidins Grub gear from his Doc section to boot it.
Warning- during shellscript install, lilo will run pretty much to the
exclusion of pre- existing operating systems (I think).It will overwrite the
MBR.
There are other threads covering other methods of installation,
essentially copying the KNOPPIX and boot directories on the
CD to the HD, and using Grub as bootloader.
Or if you have another Linux OS on disk which uses Grub,
you can use that.

But for a single O.S machine, you can just use the script in the menu.
It's a really good way to go, rather than HD install, where you can
load extensions you find you're not happy with, and can't get rid of them.

If you do Frugal, use the isolinux DSL, rather than Syslinux version.

Posted by jshaw on Feb. 28 2005,01:42

I just finished a fresh Frugal install on the HD that will be going into my new computer in a couple days when all the pieces arive. I have been toying around with the frugal install for several days now and I love it. I have .5 gig hda1 with the KNOPPIX and optional folders, and my backup.tar.gz. When I ran the install script I set hda1 for backup and mydsl partition. I then have a .5 gig hda2 setup as swap.

Then hda3 and hda4 are larger and have them set as persistent home directories, one for documents, the other for media. Seach the BootCamp faq for the instructions on how to do that.

With my setup the way it is now, I have a fast (load to ram), bulletproof (readonly), easily upgradeable (just replace KNOPPIX with new one) system. Plus with the 2 persistent directories I wont have to mount my drives when I want to listen to music or something, and so it is just as seamless as HD install.

And then to top it all off, I combined XFree86 and nVidia dsls into one along with the custom config files and some desktop themes and I have a completely customized system with all the functionality and speed I want.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Feb. 28 2005,01:56

Hats off !!

Fine business, jshaw!

THAT"S the way to run a linux boxen!

( God! I'm glad folks are getting the message.. )

Fast, Bulletproof, Easily Upgradable, Fully Customizable, Lean, Fast!?

What more could you want in a desktop distro?

73
ke4nt

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 28 2005,02:28

jshaw -

BRAVO!!

Some of us here have been preaching the word. I am glad to see that people are discovering all the possibilities!

Congrats!!

Chris

Posted by jshaw on Feb. 28 2005,03:30

Well, in two days we'll see how she really shines when I swap this HD into a new system and boot right up without configuring anything. Try that with ANY other full desktop OS. hehe.

P.S. I've done everything in DSL without asking a single question on the forums... The info is there, you just have to look a little. And when you look for things, you stumble on other neat things, like the persistent directories I'm using. And no I'm not a seasoned vet of linux, I started into linux about 1 month before 0.7.2 (which is the first version of DSL I downloaded, and from which I've never looked back). I am still a n00b just like most of the posters here. My advice, let the masters spend their time making DSL better, and use your own time to find the answers and learn a little more about linux. Knowlege is power, and with DSL, power is good.

Posted by jshaw on Mar. 02 2005,07:46

OH MY GOD!!!

I just put together my new computer, Sempron 2200+, 512 PC2700, GeForce MX4000, HD from old computer with frugal install...

Booted right up into my familiar desktop, and the only difference is how much faster everything runs. No extra config. No new device drivers to load. No "Oops, this isn't the computer Windows was intalled on, you're screwed." hehe. I love this damn distro.

josh

Posted by lucy on Mar. 23 2005,15:06

Is there is a way that I can apply updates to fugal installtion:(

Posted by clivesay on Mar. 23 2005,16:18

lucy -

You can configure it almost anyway you like. WHat type of updates are you talking about?

Chris

Posted by lucy on Mar. 23 2005,20:15

Chris,
Thanks for the info. I am just done with frugal installation of DSL onto HD. I wanted to know of how I could update the packages on my HD provided the changes has to be permanent if I reboot the system at any time. As you may know that anything written will be lost after a reboot using frugal.
Based on the stuff I know, frugal deals with RAM rather than HD and this might be the reason why the changes made will be lost after rebooting the system. I want those changes to be permanent ( atleast on the HD ). Please let me know....
thankyou chris

Posted by powerglove on Mar. 24 2005,01:45

Quote (lucy @ Mar. 23 2005,15:15)

This is exactly the question I was going to ask...I need a very specific few changes made (installation of firefox 1.0 (not PR)) and integrated into the frugal install at bootup without user interaction but I haven't been successful so far. Any way around this?

Posted by adraker on Mar. 24 2005,07:57

Lucy/Powerglove,
Have you tried adding the .dsl packages you want auto loaded into the root
directory of the partition you installed to?
In the case of FF 1.0 INSTEAD of PR, you would have to remaster
to get rid of PR, add 1.0, then Frugal install the resultant dsl iso.
I've never tried having both the default FF and FF 1 both loaded-
don't know if you'd run into conflicts there...

You can also make an optional folder, like you would on a CD,
for packages you want to show up in the mydsl menu.

When a new DSL release comes out, you just replace your KNOPPIX directory.
Triffic!

Posted by clivesay on Mar. 24 2005,13:45

adraker is correct.

Also if you want to save settings and/or files, you have to add the paths of the directories and/or files to /home/dsl/filetool.lst. Then you can run backup/restore to keep/restore all of your settings.

For example:

If you are creating docs and you want to save them, I would create something like a 'My Documents' folder in /home/dsl/. Then you would need to go into the filetool.lst file and add the path 'home/dsl/My Documents/'. Now when you do a backup, everything in My Documents will be saved.

Hope that helps

Chris

Posted by welshpjw on Mar. 24 2005,19:11

Is there any easier way to "update" a frugal install than having to do a remaster?

The reason I ask is simple... we have a mobile PC in a vehicle that NEEDS a read only filesystem MOST of the time unless there is an "update" that needs to be on the box. The box is Internet attatched, but has no monitor or keyboard. Also, the box will NOT be generally removable or even in the hands of a "techie" person.

Currently, fsck's are kickin my butt with stock HD install. We have tried the read-only HD attempts, but frugal seemed to be a little better idea overall. At least with the read-only HD method I could use the remount option with the mount command.

Posted by clivesay on Mar. 24 2005,20:28

Hmmm people around here seem to use the word 'update' in the most general of terms.

To date, I have not found anything that I cannot 'update' on a frugal install. Can you give some specifics?

Thanks

Chris

Posted by eeeeekkkkkkkkkk on Mar. 25 2005,10:20

jshaw,

where can i find this BootCamp faq? I've googled it but you could probably guess what results i got. anyway thanks if you could provide the info

Posted by lucy on Mar. 28 2005,17:28

Chris,

We can update what ever we want using apt-get etc but when we reboot the system all the updates are gone. So, my question is, is there any way that I can update the system remotely with out losing my updates when I reboot the system
Thanks