Puppy live-CD and Windows

If you are running Windows and you insert the Puppy CD and view the contents, the files display truncated to the "8.3" MSDOS format and uppercase. For example, a file named 'puppy_wary_5.1.2.sfs' gets truncated to 'PUPPY_WA.SFS'. All characters are converted to uppercase, so even a file within the 8.3 format will be different, for example 'vmlinuz' becomes 'VMLINUZ'.

There are some people who copy the files off the CD, from a running Windows, to manually install Puppy to hard drive or Flash drive. There would of course be no problem if you did this from a running Linux, as the filenames would display correctly.

Anyway, to help people in this situation, who will be mystified by the "wrong" names, Woof now creates a file 'README.HTM' on the CD that explains this problem, and why it has come about. It also has a table that shows the truncated filenames and the corresponding correct names.
Thus, after copying the files off the CD, users will be able to rename the files to what they should be.

Note, Woof-built puppies no longer have a version number restricted to 3 digits (ex: 512), it is now unlimited (ex: 5.23.1). As explained in this earlier blog post:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201104/unlimited-dotted-version-numbers.html

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Comments

Joliet option
Username: shinobar
Why don't you apply the Joliet option in making the live CD? All my Quickset editions are made with the Joliet option and have no problem with the file names under Windows. Also confirmed no problem in multi-session operation.

Re Joliet
Username: BarryK
"Well, there needs to be rigorous testing of a CD/DVD with a lot of saved sessions, and deep-directories also. There was a situation some years ago, when multisession failed with Joliet, I built ISO without Joliet and problem was solved. That happened long ago, and I don't recall any further details. I do recall we had a problem with saving very deep directory hierarchies, maybe Joliet had that problem.

Puppy CD + Windows
Username: PathFinder_Cate
"Here is a sample dump using MSDOS's DIR command: [b] Volume in drive V is CDROM Volume Serial Number is 71FF-3E08 Directory of v: 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 2,048 BOOT.CAT 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 126 BOOT.MSG 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 1,235 HELP.MSG 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 1,200 HELP2.MSG 2011-04-01 10:11 PM 1,902,978 INITRD.GZ 2010-10-22 05:07 PM 24,576 ISOLINUX.BIN 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 151 ISOLINUX.CFG 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 19,804 LOGO.16 2011-04-01 10:18 PM 129,359,888 LUPU_525.SFS 2011-04-01 10:11 PM 2,228,816 VMLINUZ 10 File(s) 133,540,822 bytes 0 Dir(s) 0 bytes free [/b] This CD is lupu-5.2.5. I'm not sure if the spacing above will look OK after sending in a comment.

Puppy
Username: wombat01
"Barry some time back I put together a system that would allow windows users to burn a puppy CD/DVD with the greatest of ease. I made an installation file called puppy.exe that when run under windows would create a bootable CD/DVD of puppy. This removed all of those question like, what is an iso file, how do I run it, how do I burn it etc. The problem was it was done with windows propriety software and I was concerned that I might tick of the Microsoft crowd. They mightn't like their software being used to promote Linux. Anyway I have now found some absolutely free software that does the same thing. This might help distribute puppy to windows users who are novices and would like to try it. Smokey01

Tags: woof