DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Install Script for Synaptic



I'm making serious progress: the USB flash drive is mountable and the Synaptic install script works great!

I've been experimenting and poring over threads on this forum but I'm confused about the extent to which I can back up and restore to the USB flash drive. Question: It it feasible in general to install and back up entire apps when running DSL live from CD, then restore and run them in future DSL sessions?

I've installing apps and adding their relevant directories to filetool.lst, but when I try to restore I run into read-only issues with directories like /usr.

I'm using a dialup connection, so installing Synaptic and other apps every session is kinda too slow to be useful.

Am I missing something or does DSL live from CD just not lend itself to backing up and restoring entire apps?
I know of two ways to back up applications that you have installed via the Synpatic script:

1)  Do your backup.  Reboot DSL (without automatic restore). Run "Install Synaptic" script (what is needed is the "Creating writable file system" part of the script).  Then do your restore.  You will need to back up every individual file that is needed by your programs.

2) Instead of backing up your "already installed" applications from the /usr tree, back up the *.deb package files that are stored in your /var/cache/apt/archives directory.  When you reboot, run the Install Synaptic script.  Then run a script to reinstall your packages. Something like:

Code Sample
cd /var/cache/apt/archives
dpkg -i *.deb
exit


Don't forget to run these commands as root, so you need to do an "sudo su" before executing them.

Good Luck.
Very cool - I'll give that a try! Thanks.
What are the memory requirements to run on liveCD ? I had read that it was 256MB. I am trying to run it on a 256MB machine. I have 193MB free on /ramdisk and 31,727 i-nodes. However, I get no space left on device. The system is then un-responsive? I know many people have newer machines and 512MB seems to be the new standard, thanks to Microsoft's bloatware.  But I am trying to determine the base requirments for liveCD.
OK. It seems to be over running the root directory. That is why system becomes unresponsive.  Because it was unresponsive is why I couldn't tell that is what is happening. Seems to be a problem how /var/lib/dpkg is being handled. These posts that are successful must be on hard drive installed systems.
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original here.