Porteus

Does my session live completely in the RAM? How often are the changes saved to the persistent storage (/porteus/changes on my ext4 USB drive, I guess)? Can I force it? Can I change the frequency? Or is it saved on Logout only?
Thanks
Igor

It says though, "Only required for saving changes on FATx or NTFS filesystem"
It is also asking me for existing savefile, I want an utility that already knows it. Indeed, I think I have not a file at the moment but a mounted USB folder porteus/changes

I don't know how to attach a picture to convince you.
And I don't have save.dat
So all my original questions stand.

Does my session live completely in the RAM?
yes unless you use 'changes=' cheatcode

How often are the changes saved to the persistent storage (/porteus/changes on my ext4 USB drive, I guess)?
changes are saved in real time unless you use 'changes=EXIT:' cheatcode. if you do then changes are saved on reboot/shutdown only.

Can I change the frequency?
not directly but you can use 'changes=EXIT:' cheatcode + 'dump-session' script to save session on demand. cron job will let you set the frequency.

It is also asking me for existing savefile
nope. it's asking you where you want to create the save file.

in case of other questions please read our documentation linked in the forum header.
thanks

Talking about save.dat container needed for win filesystem:
http://www.porteus.org/component/conten ... d-one.html

Save.dat are not needed for linux filesystem.

Thank you for all the answers and comments. Indeed I had guessed after posting it would be simply writing porteus/changes on the USB connected disk. That's why changing Cache folder location in Firefox to be on a different drive (host's computer HDD) made quite a difference in performance. I'll be watching my USB flash light and trying to make steps to minimize applications writing to it too much/often, so it won't be worn out too soon.

Porteus is better in this regard I think that the other live Linux distros where the persistence lives inside the file, casper-rw, is it not? Potentially porteus/changes can grow as large as needed up to the capacity of the USB disk; making Porteus indeed a full portable Linux.

Finally, a snapshot @phhpro, http://www.tiikoni.com/tis/view/?id=0ca8078

Thank you again for helping me make my portable LaTeX environment a reality,
Igor

Good job Fanthom!

A few home school questions that I can't can find here:

One is is asked to define the size of a savefile.dat in the Save File Manager; how does one know whether it's large enough or too excessively large just to save what you need?

Can you "undersize" a savefile.dat and unwittingly omit files you hope to save?

On log-off or mid-session we wish to simultaneously create or update a savefile.dat file as a off HD backup while also still having the identical date saved as "normal" Porteus Changes files. Is there any script that permits this?

Thanks for any tips!

Jim in NYC

how does one know whether it's large enough or too excessively large just to save what you need?
depends what you use Porteus for (downloading many youtube videos?). system itself should take about 50MB but mind that firefox files/kde thumbnail caches/etc will grow quickly so i would go with 1GB on start.

Can you "undersize" a savefile.dat and unwittingly omit files you hope to save?
save.dat manager offers an option to resize container so it should be possible to make it smaller. run 'df -h' and check how much free space aufs has. if it's few hundreds MB then you could make it smaller but mind above - caches will be growing so probably would be wise to disable them. go to /mnt/live/memory/changes and identify which apps produces biggest files -> search on google how to disable this.

On log-off or mid-session we wish to simultaneously create or update a savefile.dat file as a off HD backup while also still having the identical date saved as "normal" Porteus Changes files. Is there any script that permits this?
nothing i know about