HD Install :: Frugal Explanation



3. I'm not sure, but i seem to recall reading something about frugal install not working right with a custom CD.  Maybe that was embedded or something, though...or maybe i'm just hallucinating.
In any case, with Frugal you don't really need to create a new CD to get custom applications.  myDSL apps are used in the same manner in frugal as they are with liveCD, so you could have them available to auto-load when you boot up.

4. the /home and /opt are not persistent by default.  You will need to pass a boot parameter to DSL from your bootloader to tell it where your files are (e.g. home=hda1 opt=hda1).
He's only got 32mb ram so he may have to remaster a few apps into the base if they are .dsl files. You can remaster apps into the base and use frugal as long as you don't change any of the DSL config files.

Chris

EDIT: I should say that remastering the base should be avoided if at all possible because yuo won't be able to easily upgrade.
Quote

Posted on June 17 2005,00:20This has been a great thread!! I realise that there are so many things with frugal installs that I haven't yet got a correct understanding of. But I am getting more and more convinced that this is the best way of running a computer!

I have one question to Green, or at least a question that popped up reading his reply. You said:

Quote
If  'toram'  is chosen as a boot time option, then  /home/dsl and /opt are loaded into ram, but not if you don't choose  'toram'.  If you've got the ram, you might as well use it.


Does that mean that if you store a lot of personal files in your /home/dsl, all of that is loaded into ram? Even documents, pictures, etc.? If I use my computer that way I guess the ram disk would be overloaded? Is that really so? Or is it just the files you have put in your filetool.lst that are loaded?


As I understand it...,

If you use the persistant /home and /opt bootoptions
they are only placed on your HD, and not in ramspace.
Same with your backup.tar.gz, it is written to HD, not ram.

If you aren't using persistancy, then the /home and /opt
dirs ARE in ram, but only contain the minimal default stuff.
From there, you add to them using your backup to
save/restore things you want to keep, and they are ALSO
added to your ramspace..

73
ke4nt
Great thread.

I've done a frugal install and done some experimenting. I probably should have done this long ago.

I don't use the toram option when I boot, I have:
dsl nomce nodma quiet restore=hdc6 frugal host=dsl120 home=hda2 mydsl=hda2 opt=hda2 fromhd=/dev/hda4

I want it to load dsl from the file on /dev/hda4
I want to save most of the other files on hda2
When it does the backup/restore I want it to use hdc6

When I booted I was worried because it looked like the home directory was in the ramdisk. I did a little test.  I opend a terminal and listed what was in the /mnt/hda2/home/dsl directory. This should actually be on my hard drive.  I then used Beaver to modify one of the files in the /ramdisk/home/dsl directory and saved it.  When I went back and relisted /mnt/hda2/home/dsl the file was modified.

So.... now I'm convinced that my home directory will be kept on my hard drive.    If this is the case then what should I put in Filetools.lst?  I guess I would only put the names of files that reside outside of the /opt  or  /home   directories  that I want saved.

Thanks again to all of you for having the patience to go over this subject again and again.
Did a little more testing, rebooting, playing....

I've answered my own question about filetool.lst

assuming you use the home= and opt= parms on bootup you still need to put file names in filetool.lst if they will be overwrittin by .dsl packages at boot time.  

So lets say you download and  install Samba.dsl   You make your mods to /opt/samba/smb.conf and life is good.  

Then you do something stupid, like rebooting your computer...

If the Samba.dsl package is in your mydsl= path then it will be reinstalled at boot time. This is probably a good thing since you may want Samba each time you boot up.  The bad thing is that since the smb.conf is part of the Samba.dsl package it gets put back into your /opt/samba directory and overlays your pretty smb.conf that you spent hours setting up.

The solution is to add the /opt/samba/smb.conf file to your filetool.lst   They made it real easy to do.  Go into emelfm. Highlight the file. Click no the Add2Filetool button.

Now the next time you reboot (you fool!).  The Samba.dsl package will be reinstalled just like before, putting the default smb.conf in the  /opt/samba directory,  but then along comes the restore and wham-bam your smb.conf is copied from the backup file to /opt/samba/smb.conf

pretty neat.  It's taking some time to get my head around such a dynamic environment. It's very different then what I was use to.
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