Other Help Topics :: HOWTO save your configuration, Work In Progress

I hope the following information is accurate, and I hope that this document will get updated often so n00bs like me don't have to go searching too far. I've got a USB drive with qemu that also boots from bios (like 5-way, but I didn't use that script so I don't know for sure), so if you're using the cd or usb-only (or hd-only for that matter) to boot and notice something wrong, please let me know.

Random notes on backing up your configuration in qemu or 5 way: If you want to experiment, copy the qemu/harddisk file somewhere else. If you break something in DSL, just replace the harddisk file and you're back to where you were.

In dsl-1.0: (mostly from cbagger01 -- my apologies)

TO SAVE YOUR CURRENT CONFIGURATION

1. Open the emelfm file manager and click on the 'H' button to the left of the address text box at the top. The 'H' shows or hides the 'hidden' files and directories (ones that begin with a period like '.fluxbox').

2. Click ONCE on the filetool.lst filename at the bottom of the list.

3. Push the "Edit button"

4. The file contents will appear in the Beaver text editor window. Here are some suggestions:

To save your firefox configuration and bookmarks add

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home/dsl/.mozilla

If you downloaded Flash for firefox, add

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opt/.firefox_plugins

These lines save your current fluxbox style (also called a 'theme'). Note that if you download new styles with myDSL you don't have to keep the downloaded files; they will be stored in the following locations anyway:

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home/dsl/.fluxbox/backgrounds
home/dsl/.fluxbox/styles
home/dsl/.fluxbox/init

I've upgraded to fluxbox-0.9.11:

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home/dsl/.fluxbox-0.9.11

To save desktop icons that aren't defaults (this is probably not necessary unless you moved your icons around and want to keep the new configuration. Don't do this if you're using /optional mydsl extensions as it will save their icons, but double-clicking them won't work until you load those extensions again.)

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home/dsl/.xtdesktop

I downloaded samba.dsl, so to save my local windows network info:

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home/dsl/.LinNeighborhood

These are just examples. If you've got the space and time to back up everything, just include the whole home/dsl directory. This is probably a bad idea, however. Keep an eye on the hidden files and directories and add any that you want to persist. For example, if you change your beaver configuration, add home/dsl/.beaver to the list.

5. Press the "Save" floppy disk icon on the toolbar.

6. Close down Beaver and Emelfm.

7. Right click on the desktop and choose from the menu:
System -> Backup/Restore

8. Type in the place where you want to store your backup file.
For example:
fd0 = usually your floppy disk drive
sda1 = usually your USB thumb drive
hda1 = First hard drive partition on IDE master drive
usually C:\ drive for MSDOS/Win95/Win98/WinME
hdb = if you boot from qemu or from your 5-way thumb drive install and you use the -hdb qemu/harddisk or restore=harddisk options (respectively)

and so on.

9. Then press the BACKUP button. Note that if you choose shut down or reboot from the 'Power Down' desktop menu, this backup will happen again.

To restore, type this in at bootup time (or add to the appropriate line in your syslinux.cfg):

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dsl restore=xxx

where xxx is the name of the backup device from step 8.

However, if booting from your usb drive you'd use 'harddisk' instead of 'hdb':

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restore=harddisk

Note: If booting from qemu, the dsl restore option is not necessary as long as your dsl-windows.bat includes
-hdb qemu/harddisk. If you screw something up, just replace your harddisk file with your backup (you did make a backup, right?) and you're ready to go again.

TO SAVE YOUR MYDSL EXTENSIONS AND HAVE THEM PERSIST WHEN YOU RESTART

1.a) If booting from qemu (with the default -hdb qemu/harddisk option), open a terminal window and type

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sudo mount /mnt/hdb

You can also open emelfm, navigate to the /mnt directory, right-click on 'hdb' and choose 'Mount'.

Then type

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sudo chmod 777 /mnt/hdb

to make the directory writable to normal users. You could also

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chown dsl /mnt/hdb
chgrp staff /mnt/hdb

if you haven't changed the default username (dsl). You should only need to do this once as it remembers the permissions between boots.

1.b) If booting from cdrom or harddrive, just make sure the drive you're saving to is writeable by a normal user as above. For example, if you're backing up to a USB drive, try /mnt/sda1.

1.c) If you're booted from your USB drive in the 5-way install, you'd still use hdb. If not, try /cdrom.

2) If you don't want the dsl extension to load at boot time, create a directory named 'optional' in hdb (or in the root directory of the drive you're backing up to, /mnt/sda1/optional for a USB drive, or /cdrom/optional if you're booting from a USB drive):

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mkdir /mnt/hdb/optional

and put your extension in there. You can then load it using the myDSL menu later.

3.a) Download the dsl extension you want to install, and instead of saving it to /tmp (where it will disappear forever when you reboot) save it to /mnt/hdb (or /mnt/hdb/optional if you don't want it to load automatically at boot time). If you already have dsl extensions elsewhere, you can move them to /mnt/hdb also.

2.b) If booting from cdrom, save to /mnt/sda1 or /mnt/sda1/optional for a USB drive (or /mnt/hda1, etc).

If you get a downloading/checksum error be sure to check that a normal user has write permission for the directory you're downloading to.

5.a) If booting from qemu, add 'mydsl=hdb' to the 'append' part of the qemu line. Mine looks like this:

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START qemu\qemu.exe -L qemu/ -enable-audio -localtime -kernel linux24 -initrd minirt24.gz -hda KNOPPIX/knoppix -hdb qemu/harddisk -append "qemu sb=0x220,5,1,1 dsl frugal quiet mydsl=hdb"

5.b) If booting from a USB drive 5-way install, type

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dsl mydsl=harddisk

at the boot: prompt, or add mydsl=harddisk to your syslinux.cfg file. Here's the DEFAULT line from mine:

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APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt24.gz nomce noapic qemu quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix frugal toram xsetup mydsl=harddisk restore=harddisk

5.c) If booting from cdrom or hd, you want

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mydsl=sda1

or whatever logical drive you saved it to from step 2.b above.

6) If they don't come back, you can always mount hdb (sda1, hda1, etc) as above, open emelfm, navigate to the files, click on them and choose the 'myDSL' button at the top middle of the window and they should work again.

Edit 4/25/2005: included information on how the /optional directory works with myDSL, thanks to cbagger01 (below) again!

FYI,

All of this "/optional" stuff is not referring to the (already booted under DSL) root filesystem.

The directory is located in your boot device or redirected file system.

So, for example a USB user who wants to add persistent mydsl applications would do this:

boot up with "frugal" cheatcode

go to:

/cdrom

and create a new directory

/cdrom/optional

and copy your mydsl files into this directory.

This is NOT /optional

it is /cdrom/optional

Or in the case of a qemu device, it might be:

mount /dev/hdb

Go to /mnt/hdb

create /mnt/hdb/optional

copy your files over to /mnt/hdb/optional

NOTE: the directory name must be "optional", NOT "OPTIONAL" or "Optional".

Hope this helps clear things up.

original here.