Porteus

Hi chaps, first post here. I've been migrating my systems between different lightweight Linuxes for nearly a year now in a rather 'ad hoc' way; am very impressed with Porteus and would like to 'settle down'. This leaves me with two very specific queries. I could probably work out the first for myself by trial and error but would appreciate experienced input. The second is likely to be one for the really knowledgeable.

1. I run a big desktop machine, a netbook, and I usually travel with a Puppy USB stick on a neckchain. Working files from 30 or 40 projects have to get manually copied between these. My ideal setup would be to have Porteus booting from hard disk on both my PCs, Porteus on a USB stick for times when I'm PC-less, and working projects on a second USB stick. Could magic folders be used to keep files on both PCs and the second USB stick in synch? If so, any pointers?

2. The desktop machine is probably worthless but fantastic -- it was designed as a webserver on a Tomcat dual-Pentium board by the guys at Fairchild in Southampton and has never let me down in nearly a decade. The storage is on a rather elderly Adaptec RAID array. I haven't had occasion to review the RAID setup since it was first supplied (it has a separate BIOS which runs at boot time before the OS loads) and it has run happily on Fedora, Ubuntu and Lubuntu. Would it be advantageous to review the drivers in view of Porteus and, if so, any pointers?

TIA muchly.

W.

hi niftyprose,

Could magic folders be used to keep files on both PCs and the second USB stick in synch?

the easiest way would be to create save.dat container on you usb stick and use it for magic folders purpose (paired with home folder i guess).
magic folders uses UUID identification by default so it should work out of the box no matter on which PC you are booting Porteus.

2 requirements:
a) copy /porteus/rootcopy/etc/magic_folders/folders.cfg to every porteus installation (netbook hard drive, usb stick, second PC) which will be using your save.dat
b) usb stick (holding save.dat) must be always plugged in even when you are booting from hard drive.

second way is to create separate save.dat for each porteus installation and just replace older one with never one in case of going out.
(easy to mix them up so i would stick to first option)

The storage is on a rather elderly Adaptec RAID array.

i'm fairly sure that driver for this controller is not compiled into porteus kernel (even as a module), so first you would have to recompile porteus kernel which is a bit of hassle (doc is on main site).
are you going to boot from this type of storage or boot from stick and just have an access to it?
if you want to install porteus directly on the hd then driver must be compiled directly into kernel (*). if you are interested in having an access to it then kernel module is enough (M).

btw: porteus userbase is growing thus we need to provide wider hardware support. for Porteus-2.1 (should be released in the middle of European summer) i will compile all SCSI drivers as modules (M).

let us know if you get into troubles.

HI Fanthom, appreciate the fast reply.

That's noted on magic folders -- I follow the logic of what you're saying and will be able to 'make it real' when I start playing around.

Adaptec really is a pain -- I checked their website, and the hardware I'm using is now squarely in the 'legacy' category. (I can only say that the array has worked brilliantly for ten years.) I'm afraid it's a recompile-the-kernel job. I won't be able to start on this for a month, but will gladly relay my experiences if it helps to do so -- just tell me where to send.

Best, W.

Hi niftyprose, wellcome an board!

A much simpler solution would be to install DropBox on all three systems. DB would synchronize them automatically!

Regards!

Thanks, Wread, and particularly Fanthom. I wrote to Adaptec and asked for an update on the driver. Here's what they sent.

"Kernel 3.7 has an embedded aacraid driver module for the 2410-SA SATA controller, so when compiling the kernel you would need to select the aacraid module."

I'm guessing that this is covered under your previous instruction to view the main docs for instrs. on recompiling the kernel, but I'd appreciate if you would update me on the status of aacraid in Porteus.

Best, W.

The first line extracts the Porteus kernel config.
The second line searches for the ACCRAID entry.
The third line shows it is not compiled in the current version (3.7.8-porteus).

yes - as confirmed by brokenman aacraid is not compiled in default porteus kernel (will be for next release).

i have updated aufs script on kernel compilation doc (aufs git address has changed, Kbuild workaround is not needed anymore) so hopefully you will have no problems with compilation of your own kernel.
let us know if you get into problems.