Porteus

Is there a way to easily update versions without rebuilding my applications and changes file? Could I just copy over the Boot and Porteus/Changes folders over to my flash disk?

Is the change in versions enough to bother upgrading at all?

Welcome Oreo.

You can read the changelog here and decide if it worth upgrading. There are some significant security updates. Package manager update. Kernel upgrade and various software version bumps and bug fixes.

To update your existing install (without losing your current changes) you should update only the required files.
In particular the files boot/syslinux/vmlinuz and boot/syslinux/initrd.xz should be updated.
I would then recommend that you update 000-kernel.xzm and 001-core.xzm and 002-xorg.xzm

The rest could be optional for you.

So boot into fresh mode with copy2ram. Build a text only version of Porteus using the online builder. Mount the downloaded ISO and replace the files in your installation with the ones from the downloaded ISO. If you only update the files shown above then your install should remain with changes intact.

Thanks so much for your reply. A problem has cropped up. I wonder if you would know why.
One reason that I have enjoyed Porteus is that it has worked with some odd hardware. With 3.0.43 32bit version (not sure of last two digits), the wireless on my five year old IMac works immediately. With 3.0.1 32 bit version the wireless on the IMac is unrecognized. I see there is a broadcom version upgrade. Would that be the cause?

Thanks!

NOTE to anyone following this about updating: I messed up on following Brokenman's instructions and what happened is below.

I am not well versed in apple products but I do know broadcom supplies the drivers for the later module products. It could be that the iMac also used broadcom. If it worked with Porteus v3.0 and doesn't with v3.0.1 then it is a good bet that it is the driver.

I just want to say thanks for the quick responses.

@oreo

regarding wireless:
please generate 'psinfo' raport -> uload to pastebin.com and link here

btw: i dont like proprietary broadcom driver as it's 7MB in size now (3 times bigger than a whole linux kernel!). will probably get rid of it for next release and rely on opensource version which should be mature enough in 3.17 kernel to handle majority of broadcom chipsets.

thanks

brokenman wrote:Welcome Oreo.
To update your existing install (without losing your current changes) you should update only the required files. ... In particular the files boot/syslinux/vmlinuz and boot/syslinux/initrd.xz should be updated. ... Build a text only version of Porteus using the online builder. Mount the downloaded ISO and replace the files in your installation with the ones from the downloaded ISO.

Building the text ISO is taking an eternity. Given up on that, and am just going to download the ready-made KDE iso in order to get vmlinuz and initrd.xz. Do not understand why they are not available separately like the modules are, which would lessen the load on the ISO builder. (Maybe they are, but it's not very obvious where.)

Building the text ISO should take less than 2 seconds. At least it did when I tried it just now.

Do not understand why they are not available separately like the modules are

This might be a good idea. Not much extra work to put them on the server, however if one is going to download the kernel, initrd and base modules then creating a text ISO makes more sense. Everything is packed together in one ISO (assuming the builder works).

This might be a good idea.

I fully agree. To extract/burn iso image you must have suitable program (Windows) or root privileges - easier is to download needed and you are more flexible than using iso image to boot (move modules to optional directory, use load= cheatcode).
@ Bogomips
to download separately files from iso you can try some firefox/chrome extensions, I use ArchView.

To extract/burn iso image you must have suitable program (Windows) or root privileges - easier is to download needed and you are more flexible than using iso image to boot (move modules to optional directory, use load= cheatcode).

To be clear we are talking about putting the kernel and initrd on the server only. The other modules are already there. Using load= is only valid for 003-desktop.xzm modules. ISO is a most common format and everybody has access to programs that can extract/burn them. 7zip is a good example. Porteus users have root access, and if they don't they probably shouldn't be updating kernels and initrd. The (root) admin would want to take care of this.

In any case fanthom do you think we should upload the kernel and initrd?

In any case fanthom do you think we should upload the kernel and initrd?

vmlinuz should be ok but initrd is strictly connected to .sgn file and i'm worrying that users may start mixing initrd's making porteus unbootable.
initrd.xz does not get updated that often so i would exclude it.

regarding upgrades - it's quite easy:
a) backup your /porteus/modules, /porteus/changes and /porteus/rootcopy
b) delete /boot and /porteus folders from your usb
c) extract new ISO in the place of old one
d) bring back your /porteus/modules, /porteus/changes and /porteus/rootcopy (although we cant guarantee full compatibility of your own stuff with new porteus version)

job done.

takes me less than minute.

To return to my initial post and updating on what happened: I didn't follow Brokenman's advice literally. Wish I had have! What I did didn't work.

I thought, "OK, instead of doing the copying from the text version while using Porteus, I could just replace the files Brokenman listed from the Porteus CD to using my other computer running a different Linux. For whatever reason, it didn't work. The result was that my flash disk would no longer boot up.

I use an Ext4 partition on my large flash drive for the Save files. I backed up my save file and reformatted the FAT32 part of my flash drive. Then I installed Porteus using the CD to the FAT32 partition. I restored the save file and updated my porteus.cfg, and everything came back nicely.

Thanks!

tome wrote:@ Bogomips
to download separately files from iso you can try some firefox/chrome extensions, I use ArchView.

Good to know. Using SeaMonkey, hopefully they have ArchView somewhere.

I think whole boot directory (the same for all DE) from iso image should be extracted to 'current' directory on server. Why we could mix initrd.xz files but not base modules? Why someone must launch PC and download large iso if he need only see cheatcodes.txt available for next release on his smartphone? Be open but not closed like iso.

brokenman wrote:Building the text ISO should take less than 2 seconds. At least it did when I tried it just now.

Not 2 seconds. Last time kde iso was instantaneous! Varies on the time at which one builds