Trying to create a savefile and having problems with it...

[Marches]

I'm new to Porteus. I had LInux distros years ago but went back to windows for gaming. Anyway, hard drive has packed up and I'm not bothered with gaming any more (grown up since), so I just downloaded this to run of a SD card to surf the net and do basic computing.

Anyway, I'm having trouble getting the save file to work. I created a savefile and it's at the path /mnt/sdb1/boot/porteussave.dat
I then edited porteus.cfg as the savefile programme said to. I'm not sure if I did it right so I'll just post the file here and highlight the line I edited -

PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 90
UI vesamenu.c32
DEFAULT kde
MENU BACKGROUND porteus.png
MENU TITLE Porteus-3.0.1 64bit

MENU WIDTH 30
MENU MARGIN 2
MENU ROWS 10
MENU HELPMSGROW 17
MENU TIMEOUTROW 28
MENU TABMSGROW 15
MENU CMDLINEROW 22
MENU HSHIFT 4
MENU VSHIFT 5

menu color screen 37;40 #00000000 #00000000 none
menu color border 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none
menu color title 1;36;44 #ffA32F2F #30003f07 none
menu color unsel 37;44 #ff111B78 #003f7fbf none
menu color hotkey 1;37;44 #ff8037b7 #00000000 none
menu color sel 7;37;40 #ff809aef #00000000 none
menu color hotsel 1;7;37;40 #ffaf67f7 #003f7fbf none
menu color scrollbar 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none

menu color tabmsg 31;40 #ffA32222 #00000000 none
menu color cmdmark 1;36;40 #ffff0000 #00000000 none
menu color cmdline 37;40 #ffffffff #ff000000 none
menu color pwdborder 30;47 #ffff0000 #00000000 std
menu color pwdheader 31;47 #ffff0000 #00000000 std
menu color pwdentry 30;47 #ffff0000 #00000000 std
menu color timeout_msg 37;40 #ff809aef #00000000 none
menu color timeout 1;37;40 #ffb72f9f #00000000 none
menu color help 37;40 #ff666C85 #00000000 none
menu color msg07 37;40 #90ffffff #00000000 std


LABEL kde
MENU LABEL Graphics mode (kde)
KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=changes=//mnt/sdb1/boot/porteussave.dat
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus the best way we can.
Try to autoconfigure graphics
card and use the maximum
allowed resolution
ENDTEXT

LABEL fresh
MENU LABEL Always Fresh
KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.xz nomagic base_only norootcopy timezone=GB utc kmap=gb,us login=root
TEXT HELP
Normally Porteus saves all changes
to the /porteus/changes/ directory
on the boot media (if writable)
and restores them next boot.
Use this option to start a fresh
system, changes are not read from
or written to any device
ENDTEXT

LABEL copy2ram
MENU LABEL Copy To RAM
KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.xz copy2ram timezone=GB utc kmap=gb,us login=root
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus the same as above,
but first copy all data to RAM
to get a huge speed increase
(needs >768MB)
ENDTEXT

LABEL text
MENU LABEL Text mode
KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.xz 3 timezone=GB utc kmap=gb,us login=root
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus in text mode and
start the command prompt only
ENDTEXT

LABEL pxe-boot
MENU LABEL Porteus as PXE server
KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.xz pxe timezone=GB utc kmap=gb,us login=root
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus as usual, but also
initialize a PXE server.
This will allow you to boot Porteus
on other computers over a network
ENDTEXT

MENU SEPARATOR

LABEL plop
MENU LABEL PLoP BootManager
KERNEL plpbt
TEXT HELP
Run the plop boot manager.
This utility provides handy
boot-USB options for machines
with vintage/defective BIOS
ENDTEXT

LABEL hd
MENU LABEL Boot from the first hd
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1
TEXT HELP
Don't start Porteus at all, but
rather run any operating system
installed on the first partition
of the hard drive
ENDTEXT

So I saved the file and reboot and it didn't work. What have I done wrong? I'm liking this operating system and want to use it permanently off the SD card and it's a pain in the arse to set up the wifi each time, login to websites and not being able to save files to the PC so I really want to get this working.
What do I do?

Thanks.

[donald]

APPEND initrd=initrd.xz changes=/path/to/your/savefile.dat

Take a look at /boot/docs/cheatcodes.txt...

[Marches]

Still couldn't get it to work. I originally formatted the SD card in windows. So I booted Porteus from a disc and reformatted the SD card in partition manager. For some reason the USB installer wasn't working so I copied the contents of the disc to the SD card hoping it would work (being a iso burned to a disc) and then ran the Linux installer and rebooted from the SD card and it works and is saving changes just fine.
I've set up the wifi, tweaked a lot of the theme and found on how to get Chrome working in root and that's working now. Very happy to get it saving anyway, was a pain having to set everything up each time and not being able to customize. I tried Puppy Linux whilst I was having trouble and didn't like it, plus it struggled detecting the mouse. I just greatly dislike the environment on it, I'll stick to KDE I think.

Thanks for the help anyway.

[donald]

Glad to hear that it works now.
Copying the contents (from the iso) is also my preferred method to install porteus.But I always format the (flash)-drives with a linux filesystem to avoid the need of a savefile.

and welcome to porteus..

[Ed_P]

I'm new to Porteus.

We all were at one point.

Instead of:

APPEND initrd=changes=//mnt/sdb1/boot/porteussave.dat

I think you needed to use just:

APPEND initrd changes=/boot/porteussave.dat

Maybe this will help anyone else who comes along.