Porteus

Hey everyone,
Today I decided to try Porteus, so I downloaded it to a USB stick and installed it as per the installation instructions on the website. It boots fine, and works really well. However, I want to be able to save my changes, so I created a .dat file using the provided utility. I edited the porteus.cfg file, and rebooted. Unfortunately, on boot, the OS reports that it cannot find the .dat file, and that I should update my cheat codes. So my question to you is:

-Where in my file directory should I put my .dat file? In "boot", or "porteus", or what?

-What path should I be putting in the porteus.cfg file? Just "changes=/porteus/changes.dat"? Or the whole path "changes=mnt/sdb/porteus/changes/changes.dat"

Thanks

welcome, shelby!

You can put the save.dat anywhere you like, so long as it's on a physical drive, not in your 'live' filesystem. There are a lot of options and a lot of flexibility, which is why it may not seem straightforward at first (you could boot the OS off of a CD, but have it load saved changes from a hard drive, or have one installation that boots with multiple configurations, for example).

The best place for a beginner, in my opinion, is to place it inside your /porteus folder on your flash drive (e.g. /mnt/sdb/porteus/changes.dat), which is where it looks like you've placed it. Assuming it is named 'changes.dat', the cheatcode 'changes=/porteus/changes.dat' should work for it. 'changes=/mnt/sdb/porteus/changes.dat' should also work... if these aren't working for you, please try recreating the .dat container (perhaps it got corrupted on creation), and post the output of 'cat /proc/cmdline' in this thread, and also run the 'psinfo' command, and copy the contents of the file it creates to pastebin.com and put a link here. Then we'll be able to see how you've got things set up.

please also see this thread: http://porteus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=1154 for more information and read the relevant sections in /boot/docs/cheatcodes.txt if you haven't already.

Thanks!

Thanks a bunch for your reply.

I tried putting the file "changes.dat" into the "Porteus" folder on my flash drive, and modifying the porteus.cfg file with the cheatcode "changes=/porteus/changes.dat". But once again, the OS returned "could not find /porteus/changes.dat. Please correct your cheat codes. Press enter to continue booting". Now I'm going to try recreating the .dat file. I will post the info you requested after it finishes making the file.

Thanks again.

Posted after 14 minutes 23 seconds:
Ok:

-cat /proc/cmdline gave me:
root=/dev/ram0 rootfstype=ext4 rw initrd=/boot/initrd.xz vga=791 lxde changes=/porteus/changes.dat BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz

-psinfo gave me:
http://pastebin.com/wy9E6KSr

Hope that helps

Posted after 19 minutes 28 seconds:
Thanks for your help, Ahau.

I think the FAT32 file system on my key was corrupted. I just reformatted it, reinstalled porteus and the method you described worked like a charm.

Thanks again.

Awesome, glad to hear it! It looks like the second time we've seen this problem in the last month... I'm officially adding "try reformatting your flash drive" to my list of things to try when save.dat's aren't picked up...
I know that running fsck on a fat partition in linux has caused some grief, but I'd imagine there is some windows tool out there that could be used for checking a FAT filesystem for errors (EDIT: yes there is --in XP, right click on the drive, select Properties, click the tools tab, check for errors -- requires admin priveleges). That might be a first step for someone who doesn't want to reformat initially.