@Ahau
"Is that so that you can compile a driver and specify a 'fake root' folder, to easily turn it into a module?"
yes - after 'make install' all files are copied to the specified folder and not the '/'
TIPS:
1) when your pc has usb port but it's BIOS does not support booting from it directly, then you can split your porteus installation as follows:
- /boot folder on CD
- /porteus folder on usb stick
now you can boot from CD and linuxrc script will find /porteus folder on the pendrive
all cheatcodes like 'from_dev', 'from_dir=', 'changes=' does apply here as in normal usb installation.
2) to enable pre-configured (thanks to Tomas M) firewall in Porteus at every boot just add following line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
'/etc/rc.d/rc.Firewall start'
3) porteus has some aliases set in ~/.bashrc (home directory). good to know that they exist so you can use them in console
4) porteus has some nice cli utilities which may be forgotten or never find by the users. this is the list with short description:
changes-time.sh - more info:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=132
chkbase.sh - let you check if main porteus components (kernel, initrd, all modules from /porteus/base) have correct md5sum after copying to another media. useful when you are not using standard porteus installers (they have this function built in).
fromdos/todos - cli utils which converts documents between windows/unix formatting
mloop - great tool by brokenman (i use it even on gentoo) for mounting modules/iso/initrd/dat files on a loop device. just use it to find more info.
modtools.sh - cli version of famous 'module utilities'
pxe-boot - run this short script to start PXE boot services. useful when you did not choose 'PXE boot option' at the start and dont want to reboot.
save-changes - dump whole changes from the live session into a module
update_module - more info:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=252
5) Porteus has a special 'GUI helper' script /opt/porteus-scripts/paths (we could change this name as is irrelevant now) which is launched by lxde/kde autostart and does some configurations of the X environment automatically. among the other functions it sets '.terminal' and '.browser' symlinks in /tmp which are used by some porteus scripts like: language-selection-tool, power-saver, porteus-encrypter, etc..
If you can't launch for example 'magic folders' and using non standard browser/terminal (or prefer one over another) just edit /opt/porteus-scripts/paths script to get it working in your favorite application.
6) while logged into LXDE desktop use 'who rememember which?' key combination to start dmenu application - its like krunner in KDE.
7) KDE file managers (konqueror/dolphin) have added extra service menus specific to Porteus only. all what you need to do is to do right mouse click on a certain file type to get an option for an extra action:
- folders: you can build porteus module from it
- modules: you can extract it to a folder; mount it to a folder (same function as 'mloop' utility); convert lzm->xzm (32bit only)
- tgz/txz slackware packages: you can convert it to xzm; install/uninstall directly to/from live system
- rpm packages: convert to xzm
- deb packages: convert to xzm
This is it for now. will post more if something comes to my mind.
(Ahau - while creating the DOC please fix my eng)
Cheers