frugal install ok. Next steps...
Forum: HD Install
Topic: frugal install ok. Next steps...
started by: ruserious
Posted by ruserious on Dec. 04 2005,12:31
Hardware: P-90, 40MB Ram, 1 GB HDDSoftware: DSL2.0 with frugal install (hda1 swap, hda2 "image", hda3 everything else), boots with home=hda3 opt=hda3
I installed according to the (very nice) PDF guide, and everything worked really great. And after reading and trying out stuff I continue to like it more and more. DSL is very well done!
Some questions I weren't able to answer, hopefully you can help me.
1. When I install an extension (be it dsl or uci) I see that it creates a directory in /opt/appname. And I find that the desktop-icon to start it is made in ~/.xtdesktop.
The odd thing is - when I reboot the directory in /opt/ is still there, the app-specific direcotry in ~ is still there, but the desktop-icon (changes in ~/.xtdesktop) is gone. So I manually created one and now when I reboot it persists. Odd.
Question a: Is something screwed up (I did much around much) or is that the way it is supposed to be?
Question b: How can I make sure an application (plus the icons and the entry in the Xmenu (?) [rightclick-menu] persists? Are there different ways to do it? Is there one way which uses less ram (I read there is a difference between uci and dsl extensions in that respect...)
2. How/Where do I influence the right-click-menu (and what's the real name for that thing), like adding and removing entries.
edit: Ok, that was easy. Edit the textfile ~/.fluxbox/menu - Consider this answered.
3. Where are the boot options with which my install is being booted. How would I go about changing them?
4. And Firefox takes quite some time to boot up (longer than it took to boot up with win98 on the same machine),
a) For curiostiy: now I am guessing this is because it has to be extracted and less ram is available, because it keeps the extracted version somewhere on the ramdisk in addition to the stuff in memory where it is actually running. Are my assumptions correct?
b) Would Firefox be faster, if I did some permanent installation in /opt/ ? And how would I do that (I guess this is the same as my first question).
Thank you very much for taking the time to help me out.
Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 04 2005,15:36
1) Nothing is screwed up there. You are using persitent opt, so any tar.gz extensions installed will stay there. You are apparently not booting into the proper home, though. Did you install the application before beginning to use persistent home? Make sure that /home is actually on hda3 rather than /ramdisk/home. If it's in /ramdisk then your menu and icons will revert to defaults when you reboot. Also, when using persistent home or opt, make sure that you don't start with empty directories or some DSL features may not work.3) The boot options depend on which bootloader you're using (lilo or grub). In either case, the necessary file is located within /cdrom.
4) I think you're right, but i can't say for sure. The fastest performance will come from using the 'toram' boot option, although you should consider the amount of RAM you have before doing this...anything less than 128mb is likely to get filled up fast. Using toram sacrifices an additional 50mb.
Posted by ruserious on Dec. 04 2005,20:17
Hi mikshaw, thank you for your reposonse.1) /home is on hda3, I checked it. I think I had the CD still in there and so I think several times it started booting with lilo from HDD, but then mounted the image in the cd-drive, rather than the one in hda2 - don't know if that would explain any of the problems (Probably not, since everything else was like a regular frugal boot from hda2).
The odd thing is that I am pretty sure, that manually created files in home stay there. But the ones from an extension install don't. I think I have auto-backup/restore enabled (as per the pdf - < http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....wto.pdf > ) - would that do anything to /home even though it's on hda3?
To recap: When I use MyDSL and download stuff to /tmp, those apps will (or should) - once installed - be around permanently. And it doesn't make a difference whether it's a .tar.gz, .dsl, or .uci. Correct?
3) I am using lilo. When I look at /cdrom I see a KNOPPIX directory a handful of files but not much more. Do I have to mount the image-file in there? Can I make changes to that file when the image is mounted? Is there a howto somwhere on this?
4) I can't use tora (only have 40 MB RAM), but I will try out how noticable the difference is, and get back with the results.
Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 05 2005,02:36
If you are using a frugal install, with persistent home and opt, tar.gz extensions should stay installed. .uci extensions are unmounted when you shut down/reboot, and .dsl extensions get wiped out with the rest of the ramdisk (unless they install files to home or opt)./cdrom is the location of your DSL compressed system (KNOPPIX) and boot files. The lilo config file should also be found there. You can make changes to the contents of /cdrom if you boot with "frugal" and make the changes as root.
Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 05 2005,06:16
The builtin Firefox is very slow for intitial loading.I assume that this has something to do with the special space-saver compiled version, but I am not sure.
If you want faster full-featured web browsing, download one of the opera uci extensions from the myDSL repository.
Opera will run MUCH faster on that machine.
Posted by ruserious on Dec. 05 2005,19:08
Thank you both. Your explanations are of great help.Now I am wondering whether I am doing something else wrong: How can I make absolutely sure that my frugal install uses "home=hda3 opt=hda3" for boot? After a fresh boot I seem to have:
/home/dsl
/ramdisk/home/dsl
/mnt/hda3/home/dsl
If I "touch testing.file" in of the directories it appears in all three of them. Looking in /mnt/hda3 I do have a home and an opt directory (as well as a backup.tar.gz file). When I list the files in backup.tar.gz, I see all files from home and opt in there. I think I am a little confused...
Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 05 2005,20:09
/home/dsl is almost definely a symlink, and if adding a file in one shows up in all three, then one of the others is probably a symlink as well. You can find out which are symlinks by using the "file" command:| Code Sample |
| file /home file /ramdisk/home file /mnt/hda3/home |
My guess is that/ramdisk/home is a symlink to /mnt/hda3/home, but it seems unnecessary to have that in ramdisk if you're using a persistent home. Honestly I thought that /ramdisk/home was deleted if persistent home was used.
Posted by ruserious on Dec. 05 2005,23:24
Ok, this is how it looks:/home is symlinked to /ramdisk/home which is a real directory.
BUT /home/dsl is the mount-point for /mnt/hda3/home/dsl
and /mnt/hda3/ is the mount-point for /dev/hda3
So I guess everything is ok on that end.