Unable to save files & configuration same Porteus DVD-RW

[joejac]

Hello,
Thank you for the data Francois, I have the USB key, but here I will use only the DVD-RW when going out of my home-office. It is very difficult to explain our reality to people in other countries, where human rights are taken for granted.
Best regards
joejac

[Bogomips]

why not to use a save.dat and place it on a hard drive? you could continue booting from DVD.

Proposed Portability Solution
Temporise with 2 DVDs. After placing save.dat on hard drive, fire up Puppy and save to Puppy DVD. Better solution would of course be if both Porteus and Puppy could be on same DVD.

[brokenman]

If you MUST use the DVD then perhaps a small script could be written to burn the save file to disk upon shutdown. cdrecord will do the job.

[joejac]

Hello,

Sorry for my lack of knowledge of the command line usage.
Looking for ways to write into the DVD I got this article:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-lin ... dvdrw.html
I wonder if I can use following command inside Porteus to write to its own iso DVD

To append more data for same DVD:
# growisofs -M /dev/dvd /tmp/save.dat

Unfortunately this do not solve the issue when I install something into Porteus, new programs, for example, I guess I will lose all changes I do to Porteus itself on the DVD, or all changes are stored into save.dat?

Regards
joejac

[brokenman]

Like I said. The application cdrecord will do the trick. You need to search for the manual page or some example website with cdrecord commands.

Unfortunately this do not solve the issue when I install something into Porteus, new programs, for example

Add the module you installed into the modules directory.

[Ed_P]

I'm confused @joejac.

What are you trying to write to the DVD, a save.dat file on the hard drive or the /mnt/live/memory/changes directory?

And if you write either of those to the DVD how will you be able to access them when you reboot?? Do you boot, write the file to the hard drive then reboot and access the file? Even if you convert the /mnt/live/memory/changes directory to a module and write it to the DVD how do you get the booting of Porteus to access it?

The idea of saving your changes to a DVD is intriguing but I don't understand how it will work for you.

Add the module you installed into the modules directory.

Porteus on a CD/DVD has a modules directory?!!

[Bogomips]

Most of the points Ed_P raised were also ones that were of concern to me.

Porteus on a CD/DVD has a modules directory?!!

Believe the modules folder to be initally empty in the iso: Set Up Porteus (Example shows KDE iso)

To append more data for same DVD:
# growisofs -M /dev/dvd /tmp/save.dat

IMHO joejac was on the right track.

So multisession doesn't work the same way with DVD's, and 'session info' may not be valid.

Why not use growisofs? It's sort of a combined cdrecord and mkisofs built specially for multisession DVD's, not CD's.

Code: Select all

# Burn the first session
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J backup1.tar.gz
# Burn on another session
growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J backup2.tar.gz

http://www.unix.com/unix-for-advanced-a ... ecord.html

To master and burn an ISO9660 volume with Joliet and Rock−Ridge extensions on a DVD or Blu-ray Disc:

growisofs −Z /dev/dvd −R −J /some/files
To append more data to same media:

growisofs −M /dev/dvd −R −J /more/files
Make sure to use the same options for both initial burning and when appending data.
To finalize the multisession DVD maintaining maximum compatibility:

growisofs −M /dev/dvd=/dev/zero

Procedure using: Applications > Multimedia > ISO File Editor (if like me you do not have an enormous amount of RAM it might be useful, in 'options', to select a directory on a real file system in which to place the temporary work file)

1. Create file 'rc.local_shutdown'

   Code: Select all

   cat > rc.local_shutdown
   #!/bin/bash
   growisofs -dvd-compat  -M /dev/sr0 /tmp/save.dat
   ^D
   chmod a+x rc.local_shutdown

   (Teminate input by Ctl+d)
2. Insert script file 'rc.local_shutdown' into 'rc.d'

   Code: Select all

   mkdir --parents etc/rc.d
   cp rc.local_shutdown etc/rc.d
   

3. Start up ISO File Editor
   1. Open the iso
   2. Add to directory porteus/rootcopy the folder etc, just created.
   3. Save as 'port_persist.iso', say
4. Write iso to DVD

   Code: Select all

   growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/sr0=port_persist.iso

Not using 'save.dat' nor saving 'changes', so have no idea what the setup would be like at startup. Suppose maybe something might have to go into rc.local as well.

P.S. Or maybe each time appending a 'save_000.dat', a 'save_001.dat', etc. for example.

[Ed_P]

What you seem to be recommending Bogomips is updating the ISO and thern rewriting it to the DVD so that it boots with the changes in place? Yes?

Another thought might be to have the DVD ISO boot in A/F mode, restore a backed up save.dat and Modules folder on the DVD to the C: / sda? drive, then reboot in normal mode with cheatcodes that access the restored save.dat and Modules folder. The issue here is knowing where the restored file/folder are located. On a single machine this could work but on other machines it would be a toss up.

[Bogomips]

What you seem to be recommending Bogomips is updating the ISO and thern rewriting it to the DVD so that it boots with the changes in place? Yes?

No. Advocate making a once-off iso. Thereafter the changes 'save.dat', if you will, get appended to the iso, but in what form remains to be seen.

[joejac]

Hello everybody and thanks a lot for your suggestions and time to respond.

This is getting too technical for my little knowledge. I do not pretend to compare Porteus with Puppy, they are different. I love the way Porteus ISO is being created and how it looks when running. I would like Porteus has the nice feature of writing the session to DVD that Puppy has and the ability to automatically use the last session stored for the next boot and Porteus would be the Ideal portable Linux for me. Temporarily I might use a one or two step process to store the session data including any new programs installed, a DVD has 4.7GB so it has plenty room available, I need Wine/Winetricks, a Graphic Design and a Documentation software that do not have a counterpart in Linux and I now runs under Wine. But the ideal way would be the automatic way, like if the DVD were a 4.7GB old hard drive
Best regards
joejac

[Bogomips]

@joejac

Like I said before, temporise using Puppy to save everything, while we work out a step by step method that you can follow. Think can see a light at the end of the tunnel. 8)

P.S. From the horse's mouth, so to speak: http://puppylinux.com/multi-puppy.htm

A DVD+RW could be used, but there may be unresolved issues ...stay tuned. But why? For experimenting with multisession-Puppy, yes, but otherwise, use a DVD-R -- it costs you just 35 cents (25 cents in the US) and will last for ages.

i.e. if you can still save a few cents this way.

[joejac]

Hello and thanks Bogomips.
Nice article, I did not know Puppy can do all that stuff.

Since a year and half and when I have to work outside my home-office or enter into bank or my hosting accounts, I use Slacko Puppy running from a mini DVD-RW (1.4GB) it is pretty reliable and very handy, but I was not able to run Skype and I did not bother to try Wine. The DVD was very cheap before they crashed the economy.

I have also future plans for this portable Linux, I would like to run it in a small tablet using Java to run TheBrain, a mind mapping software, so I can comfortably go to classes, take notes and create a basic knowledge base of what I study. Tablets with Android do not run Java programs.

I will "wait to see a light at the end of the tunnel", it is the way I am living in other more transcendental issues in these last 3 years.
Forward to hear from you on this matter
Best regards
joejac

[Bogomips]

The Story so Far

Session model:
Unlike other filesystems, ISO 9660 is not intended for read-write operation but rather for being generated in a single sweep and being written to media as a session.
...

Media types and states:
There are two families of media in the MMC standard:

Multi-session media are CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+R/DL, BD-R, and unformatted DVD-RW. These media provide a table of content which describes their existing sessions. See option −toc.

Overwriteable media are DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, BD-RE, and formatted DVD-RW. They allow random write access but do not provide information about their session history. If they contain one or more ISO 9660 sessions and if the first session was written by xorriso, then a table of content can be emulated. Else only a single overall session will be visible.

DVD-RW media can be formatted by -format "full". They can be made unformatted by -blank "deformat".
...
Appendable media accept further sessions. Either they are MMC multi-session media in appendable state, or they are overwriteable media which contain an ISO image suitable for xorriso.

The multi-session model of the MMC standard does not apply to all media types. But program growisofs by Andy Polyakov showed how to extend this functionality to overwriteable media or disk files which carry valid ISO 9660 filesystems

Having given growisofs a go on DVD+RW, was not able to find the appended second session. Looks like the absence of toc (Table of Contents) being something to do with it. So to get that kind of Puppy functionality, looks like xorriso emulation of toc fits the bill.

Watch this Space!

Edit 15-6-15 Burnt iso as appendable:

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:~$ xorriso -as cdrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=as_needed p10/tmp/iso_tmp/Porteus-KDE4-v3.1up-i486.iso 
xorriso 1.4.0 : RockRidge filesystem manipulator, libburnia project.

Drive current: -outdev '/dev/sr0'
Media current: DVD+RW
Media status : is blank
Media summary: 0 sessions, 0 data blocks, 0 data, 4483m free
xorriso : NOTE : -blank as_needed: no need for action detected
Beginning to write data track.
xorriso : UPDATE : Formatting. Working since 0 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE :    0 of  210 MB written (fifo  1%) [buf   6%]   0.0x.
libburn : NOTE : Write start address is  0 * 2048
xorriso : UPDATE :    0 of  210 MB written (fifo 99%) [buf   6%]   0.7x.
xorriso : UPDATE :    0 of  210 MB written (fifo 99%) [buf   6%]   0.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :    6 of  210 MB written (fifo 99%) [buf  93%]   3.9x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   11 of  210 MB written (fifo 94%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   16 of  210 MB written (fifo 97%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   22 of  210 MB written (fifo 92%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   27 of  210 MB written (fifo 95%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   32 of  210 MB written (fifo 98%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   38 of  210 MB written (fifo 93%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   43 of  210 MB written (fifo 95%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   48 of  210 MB written (fifo 99%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   54 of  210 MB written (fifo 94%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   59 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   64 of  210 MB written (fifo 93%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   70 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   75 of  210 MB written (fifo 92%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   80 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   86 of  210 MB written (fifo 92%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   91 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :   96 of  210 MB written (fifo 95%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  102 of  210 MB written (fifo 97%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  107 of  210 MB written (fifo 93%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  112 of  210 MB written (fifo 97%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  118 of  210 MB written (fifo 93%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  123 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  128 of  210 MB written (fifo 98%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  134 of  210 MB written (fifo 95%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  139 of  210 MB written (fifo 97%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  144 of  210 MB written (fifo 93%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  150 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  155 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  160 of  210 MB written (fifo 92%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  166 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  171 of  210 MB written (fifo 98%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  176 of  210 MB written (fifo 94%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  182 of  210 MB written (fifo 97%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  187 of  210 MB written (fifo 93%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  192 of  210 MB written (fifo 96%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  198 of  210 MB written (fifo 92%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  203 of  210 MB written (fifo 95%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE :  208 of  210 MB written (fifo 29%) [buf  93%]   4.0x.
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 44 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 45 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 46 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 47 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 48 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 49 seconds
xorriso : UPDATE : Closing track/session. Working since 50 seconds
Writing to '/dev/sr0' completed successfully.

xorriso : NOTE : Re-assessing -outdev '/dev/sr0'
Drive current: -outdev '/dev/sr0'
Media current: DVD+RW
Media status : is written , is appendable
Media summary: 1 session, 107499 data blocks,  210m data, 4273m free

[joejac]

Hello,
I guess the solution was not found for saving into DVD.
I used USB and that is working, but not with DVD.
Regards
joejac

[Bogomips]

@joejac
When you work with your Puppy DVD offsite, do you

• work only in ram?
• or if allowed to use hard disk, how do you know which one to use?