HD Install :: Frugal Explanation



Hi again
I'm not sure any of us has made it absolutely clear how frugal works.  I don't think I can in a few words but here's another try.  Most of the filesystem is not loaded into memory.  Symlinks are used extensively to make it look like the files exist on hard disk but actually read directly from the compressed file /KNOPPIX.

For instance /bin normally exists on disk as a subdirectory of /.
If at a shell prompt you type
    ls -l
you will see
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           12 Jun 14 14:55 bin -> /ramdisk/bin
This would make you think that in has been loaded into ramdisk.  But if you cd to /bin and type
  ls -l
You will see as the first entry

lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           17 Jun 14 14:55 arch -> /KNOPPIX/bin/arch

Sooooooooooo

When you run the command arch it is actually read directly from the compress file /KNOPPIX.

If you follow the links for /lib and /sbin you will discover the same thing.

On the other hand /opt and /home do actually exist in /ramdisk.  This means that it will be lost after a reboot unless saved somewhere.  The permanent home allows you to do that.  Anything you load there does take up memory in the form of /ramdisk.

I hope this helps.  It made me think anyway.
good luck
hawki is correct...

A typical "HDInstall" - debian-style, of DSL takes about
250MB's of hard drive space..

We are not loading up this entire filesystem into ramspace.
Thru the "frugal" use of symlinks, and other tricks, the OS
loads into 64MB's ram easily.. I have one using 40MB's on
one of my laptops.. Many have run the X desktop with 32MB's.
(just like liveCD, look at your ram usage sometime after boot)

I have about 15 boxes, counting my laptops, car-audio,
desktops, and the studio..  all running frugal installs.

I do "test" many things in a quickly installed HDinstall ,
but just for testing pre-releases and some extensions..
But I'll reformat that, and use it for swap or other data.

(Can you imagine re-installing 15 HDInstalls
   with every new DSL release??? )   :(

Not to mention losing my custom options and tweaks that
I've added to my boxes, servers, desktop, gaming box, etc...

One thing for sure..
Nothing beats running DSL using "toram" ..
If you've not tried running your ENTIRE OS in ram... DO IT.
The performance, especially in low-end machines, is impressive.

For my daily activities, browsing, emails, burning DVD's/CD's,
games, playing music and watching DVD/Videos, and working
on DSL stuff like extensions or new applications...
Frugal + Toram is IT..  " It just works great! "

73
ke4nt
Ok, thanks to all of you and clivesay's pdf in particular I believe I have my first frugal install up and running. I do have a few questions already though.
When I am looking in emelFM, it opens up to /ramdisk/home/dsl. Is this the /home I set up on a seperate partition (I used hda2 for /home and /opt). Or do I need to mount hda2 to get to those?
Also I saw at the end of the pdf that it is recommended to use .uci extensions instead of .dsl. I was wondering how these would work because I read that they need to be mounted, and I have been using the .dsl extensions thus far.

EDIT: Another thing I have run into is I need to edit lilo.conf so that it boots in 800x600. I did this before on a regular hd install, but am now having trouble. I am trying to change vga=normal to vga=788 using vi, but when it enter "w" to write it says "readonly option is set (use ! to override). So when I enter "!w" it says "lilo.conf E166: Can't open linked file for writing". I didn't seem to have this problem before.
Sorry for all of the questions. If someone could help me figure these things out I would appreciate it.
The easiest way to change boot options is to re-run frugal_instal.sh and use the update feature. At the first prompt to enter boot options enter:

vga=788 home=hda2 opt=hda2

To use uci just mydsl-load it or using emelfm select it and then double click it
hmm... I wasn't able to get that to work. When I added vga=788 all I had was a blinking cursor and a black screen. I went back through frugal_instal.sh again and just put home=hda2 and opt=hda2 for the options and after that it booted up again but in text mode it is still at 1024x768 so I cannot see the last few lines of text while it is booting or while I am in text mode. Just to check I used the live cd and entered vga=788 at boot and got the following message:
could not find kernel image: vga=788

I know on my last hd install all I did was change lilo.conf and it worked fine for me but as I stated in my last post I am having trouble with that. I would like to be able to see all of the screen in text mode because I often use that. Any help is appreciated.
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