| By Russ Ethington |
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| December 3, 2006 08:30 AM EST |
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160,332 |
Saving Other Data
Other files that you download or create
should be handled with care. You'll want to make sure to save on the
permanent storage of your keydrive rather than a transient directory
elsewhere. This is where your /myfiles subdirectory comes in handy.
Save to this directory and you can count on finding your files again on
the next reboot, even if you boot up on a different computer next time.
Taking it Along: Everything-To-Go with MyDSL
Restoring Customization and Saved Applications
Everything
you tucked away on your keydrive will be available next time you boot
up. This happens in part because DSL makes a backup of some important
system files and directories when you shut down. To make sure this
happens properly it's a good idea to do a manual back up before you
shut down the computer.
To back up, choose the following from the DSL main menu: System |
Backup / Restore. Next enter just the device name where you want your
backup saved. If you booted from a CD and have a keydrive inserted,
use: sda1. If you have a bootable keydrive with a second partition for
data use: sda2. Click "Backup" and wait for the program to finish
before shutting down. This creates a compressed archive file called
"backup.tar.gz" in the root directory of the filesystem.
When you boot up next time, DSL will search for and discover its backup
archive on the keydrive and restore the files and settings back to the
way you last saw them. Now any computer you boot up with your
take-along CD/floppy/keydrive will seem like your very own.
Other Uses for DSL
Internet Kiosk
Let's say you want an inexpensive way to
convert some old PCs into a collection of Internet kiosks for an art
gallery, business directory, or school project. Running DSL with
Firefox would make this easy.
First, you can make Firefox start up automatically at boot time. Just edit the file called ~/.xinitrc and insert this command:
/usr/local/bin/firefox http://your.home.page &
For a kiosk it would be good to disable extraneous menus
and applications and limit the scope of the browser. For more
information on building Linux-based kiosks, there are a number of
how-tos available (Google: "linux kiosk"). Once you've got one kiosk
working, it would be easy to duplicate the contents of its keydrive
onto others to create more kiosks.
Web Server (System | Control Panel | MonkeyWeb)
For fun I
turned my bootable keydrive into a portable library of e-books hosted
on a Web server. It runs a MonkeyWeb server - included with DSL - to
serve out electronic books that I downloaded for free from Project
Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org).
First I copied a number of classic e-texts into the /dsl/Share
directory. Then I started up the MonkeyWeb Web server (included with
DSL) from the System | Control Panel menu. Now users can access these
books from any computer on the network by browsing to
http://192.168.1.102/Share. With a few changes this machine can be
configured to automatically serve out e-texts from a better-named URL
every time it boots.
Remote Desktops
Another handy trick is to make DSL
available remotely from another computer. To do this I downloaded VNC
(called "vncserver") from MyDSL. VNC is a remote desktop program. Many
client programs exist for Windows and Mac. I use the popular "Chicken
of the VNC" (Google: "vnc chicken") for OS X to access my "headless"
DSL (i.e., no monitor). Once you've installed "vncserver" from MyDSL,
select MyDSL | vncserver | vnc4x0 and connect to your DSL machine using
its DNS address, e.g. 192.168.1.102. When running full screen, the
PowerBook appears to be running DSL.
In summary, I've found this take-along operating system to be a great
companion for doing most of what I need from a computer. Once your
keydrive is configured the way you want, it will seem like you can take
your computer everywhere without really having to take your computer
anywhere.
Resources
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