Resizing the kernel's partition after boot using Gparted concerns.

Dave Lister

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I have Puppy Linux installed on USB thumb drive. I partitioned the USB to have a FAT32 partition for PUPPY and a EXT4 partition for MYFILES. I anticipated the OS install would create its own linux swap partition or swapfile, but it didn't seem to. It might be using a swap partition on the internal HDD which has FreeBSD on it, but that drive doesn't appear to be mounted or even visible.

Anyway, the system sometimes chokes when browsing heavy websites and I hear the internal fan going nuts. I thought that adding a swap partition to the USB itself might help so I wanted to use Gparted to reduce the size of the partition I'd allocated to the PuPPy OS which was way too large at 10GB and create a linux swap partition.

I'm not sure if this can be done if I have booted from that PUPPY OS partition or if I'd need to move it to another system to do it unmounted, also I'm concerned I might seriously risk messing up my bootable USB if I try.

I would be grateful if someone could advise if this is fine to do and if so what precautions I might need to take so as not to mess things up.
 


@ Dave Lister
I'm concerned I might seriously risk messing up my bootable USB if I try.

Which puppy are you talking about and how large is the USB stick?
I believe puppy documentation warns about using FAT32.

In the past, using Slacko 6.3.0 and 5.7, I have used strictly ext2 fs.
Do you want to boot it up on a Windows machine? Is that why vfat is desired?
 
I can't recall where, but, I think I used fat32 under advisement - it seems to have worked ok, anyway.

I'm using a SanDisk Ultrafit 128GB 3.1 USB drive.

I allocated an excessive 10GB to BionicPup32 8.0 the rest is ext4. I have it set up so that the filesystem, new files and apps are on the ext4 partition less than 1GB of the fat32 partition is used therefore, hence I'm considering making much of it a swap partition - someone somewhere suggested 2.5 x RAM as a guide rule as to size.

I'm thinking of putting Windows or something else on the desktop's internall HDD, so if puppy is currently borrowing an existing swap partition from there then it'll need a replacement if I wipe the HDD.
 
IMPORTANT
Did you fdisk the USB stick prior to partitioning? Sandisk has built-in software that needs getting rid of.

PARTITIONS
sdb1 of 10GB vfat for puppy.sfs, zdrv.sfs. vmlinuz, and other two or three essential system files; sdb2 of 40GB ext2 for savefiles and personal files (can encrypt save files best on ext2); sdb3 of 1GB for swap ; The remainder unformatted or cleared, for later usage -- this would be my suggestion.

FILE SYSTEMS
Ext4 journaling will prematurely wear out the USB, IME. Use non-journaling fs for /home, FAT for / for compatibility with M$.

Swap is almost unnecessary, nowadays; space for swap is more dependent on RAM resources. The old 'rule' from W2k days of 2-3X RAM is obsolete and a waste of disk space.


Take it or leave it, but you asked and I give you my best answer here, OP!
 
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Thanks for the info. I took a gamble and reduced the Puppy OS partition with Gparted and created a linux swap partition on the USB. It doesn't seem to have caused any harm, and there does appear to have been a positive effect - the browser seems to handle a heavy load without stalling now. The desktop's internal fan still goes nuts but I don't have to hit my Kill switch to shut the browser down.
 
Glad of the progress!

Are you using Firefox as a browser?
 
Don't know Light.
In FF, if
Code:
about:config
is entered at address line, one can type in 'device' at search line and dbl-click to disable devices. I was wondering if Light had similar config options?
 
Yes, can confirm Light browser has the same config options - looks like dangerous stuff, there's a public health warning that comes up before you can use it.
 
looks like dangerous stuff,
not really -- check online resources for such a tweak. It may help eliminate fan concerns, is all.
They told me not to mess with the windows registry, too, but had to to get my workstation running acceptably with w2k!
 
not really -- check online resources for such a tweak. It may help eliminate fan concerns, is all.
They told me not to mess with the windows registry, too, but had to to get my workstation running acceptably with w2k!

Haha, been there.
 
Light is just a FF clone, it appears, an rpm download from sourceforge.
As such, tweaks should be easy. See attachments for examples I implement, including the one to disable device sensors, which may or may not influence your fan speed concern.

go to browser address line and enter about:config, then mod the lines listed below.

Lots of websites have details regarding tweaks for Firefox:
The Best About:Config Tweaks That Make Firefox Better
12 Ways to Speed Up Firefox Quantum
are but two examples.
 

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Thanks. I tried about:config in Light, it didn't have the config settings you posted but it had a bunch of others, though I couldn't find anything similar to the device.sensors that might control the fan. I found an autoformfill setting to disable but that was for all forms not just credit cards. I didn't know what the battery or beacon settings referred to, so I could find them or anything related to them. I'm sure knowing the about:config is there will come in useful in the future though, so thanks again.
 
No problem!
I.ve noticed that some options get left out in the name of 'liteness' -- as with LXLE that wouldn't let user Ctrl-ALT-F2(6) to console when I tried it. That is a deal-breaker for me.
Best wishes!
 
No problem!
I.ve noticed that some options get left out in the name of 'liteness' -- as with LXLE that wouldn't let user Ctrl-ALT-F2(6) to console when I tried it. That is a deal-breaker for me.
Best wishes!

As part of its Desktop Setup, Puppy has a nice feature to define hotkeys, I created a handy terminal key, a kill switch, and a shutdown key.
 
I never liked Puppy in its normal state of not being installed on the system to which it is attached. Even when it was installed on the system, and the hard drive, it really was kind of, well, boring - uninspiring. While defining hotkeys is certainly useful, every distro provides for that.

Now to be fair that was years ago and Puppy may have changed in that time. But there are so many other distros, so ...
 
I was looking for a lightweight OS for a USB boot drive to run on old machines with relatively low specs. I was pleasantly surprised by BionicPup32 8.0.

Years ago when I tried various distros I was very taken with PC-BSD which was based on FreeBSD, but came with a desktop already configured. For ideological reasons I opted for Ubuntu linux rather than unix, which I I eventually stuck with for a long time without doing much more experimentation. I find the latest incarnations of Ubuntu a bit heavy however, and I think it has suffered for trying to be too many things for too many people. Also, the ideological argument (no centralized development authority) no longer seems applicable so I fancied a return to PC-BSD. I discovered PC-BSD had given way to TrueOS which had recently been effectively discontinued as far as my purposes went. So I tried with a FreeBSD install instead with a Mint desktop, which I still have on the hard drive to experiment with but is a bit too temperamental to depend on. So, looking at reviews of various lite linux distros I finally threw BionicPup32 on a 128GB SanDisk Ultra USB. Despite a few teething problems due to unfamiliarity with its quirks I was quite taken with it for many of the same reasons I liked PC-BSD way back and the FreeBSD ports system which the Puppy Package Manager reminds me of. Now I'm a little more acquainted with how to do things on Puppy, I have a setup I'm very pleased with, and I'm even experimenting with shell scripts which is a little more involved than I would usually venture.
 
I still use Puppy Slacko 6.3.0. Though dated, it gets the jobs done I use it for!
Carry on the Puppy tradition, Dave Lister!
Best wishes and Happy Trails!
 
The BSDs are O.K., I've used some of them much earlier in my FOSS life. Some of them tend to focus on servers - commercial, enterprise, etc. Others like TrueOS are more like personal use distributions. Most of them try very (too) hard to be ideologically "pure", and therefore deliberately difficult, much like the very early Slackware. I think I have one or two BSDs in my collection of USB drives with Linux/BSD installers, but there are much better tracks to freedom from Win/Mac.

I don't mind working through difficult situations with Linux or problem solving hardware issues, but installing an OS shouldn't be one of those. BSDs don't mind being difficult, and BSD forums - in general - tend to foster that thinking. Therefore I have stayed with Linux as my FOSS choice and after years of trying this distro and that distro I am with Kubuntu, and so focus more on cooperative function, than battling purity philosophy.
 
The BSDs are O.K., I've used some of them much earlier in my FOSS life. Some of them tend to focus on servers - commercial, enterprise, etc. Others like TrueOS are more like personal use distributions. Most of them try very (too) hard to be ideologically "pure", and therefore deliberately difficult, much like the very early Slackware. I think I have one or two BSDs in my collection of USB drives with Linux/BSD installers, but there are much better tracks to freedom from Win/Mac.

I don't mind working through difficult situations with Linux or problem solving hardware issues, but installing an OS shouldn't be one of those. BSDs don't mind being difficult, and BSD forums - in general - tend to foster that thinking. Therefore I have stayed with Linux as my FOSS choice and after years of trying this distro and that distro I am with Kubuntu, and so focus more on cooperative function, than battling purity philosophy.
 

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