Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I found this post by "Smithy" in the old forum in the "woof-CE needs you" topic:
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I've noticed woofce touching ntfs partitions (windows system 32 and other places).
This seems like ill behaviour to me and could present a security problem.
And it is causing problems with win on boot. This is persistent, even on a usb frugal with no save,
so it might be bridging some flags on the partition.
I'm not so sure the title of this thread is relevant if some maverick is planning a
partnership with microsoft!
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I was not able to find any responses to this post.

Is this still the case?
If so, under what cirumstances?

I would like to be able to state, (without being wrong), that a current woof-ce Puppy frugal install on a usb stick, with the save location on the usb stick, would not modify anything on the HD if none of the partitions were ever mounted by the user.

Could you give us a link to the post?

Woof-CE is the build system for building a Puppy version.
It has nothing to do with how a Puppy version runs installed on a USB drive.

I would like to be able to state, (without being wrong), that a current woof-ce Puppy frugal install on a usb stick, with the save location on the usb stick, would not modify anything on the HD if none of the partitions were ever mounted by the user.

This is true as you have the USB install operating.
To do anything to the internal hard drive, it has to be mounted.
If not mounted, you cannot do anything to it.

mount any partition or drive and Puppy can access it.

I wonder if the comment was about the fact that you could do a frugal install of Puppy to the hard drive Windows ntfs partition.
Run Puppy and save to this partition.
So Puppy would always have that partition mounted.
It could access anything on this partition.

bigpup wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:30 am

Could you give us a link to the post?
[...]

Here it is:

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 8#p1049858

Btw: The mentioned post #1425 is the last on page 95 out of 97 (Board Index<Taking the puppy out for a walk<Announcements<woof-CE needs you> The next page 96 does not load, page 97 loads, containing the last post #1441 by perdido in this thread before the old murga-forum went down. So 15 posts are lost!? in the conversion done by @rockedge

I'm not sure if @Smithy was talking about DPupBuster from @josejp2424, but I seem to remember that in this pup he automounts the internal hdd(s) at startup ...

peace

edit: you can type #1429 in the adressfield of the browser and then page 96 displays - but 4 post following @Smithy's question are still missing (#1426-#1429)

@bigpup, I read the post as referring to woof-ce generated Puppies, rather than woof-ce itself.
That is why I am concerned.

Yes, I get the foreground stuff, i.e. if you don't mount any ntfs partitions, then you can't change them.
So a Puppy whose boot location, install location, and save location are all on a usb stick will not provide the user with an opportunity to modify anything on any internal drive, without mounting a partition.
But is there some background process doing some writing to an internal drive?
Or is it just 'probedisk', 'probepart', or 'blkid'?

From my memory:
Some time ago, BK added a flag file to trigger a reboot after some wait period if booting to the desktop did not succeed, i.e. produced just a blank black screen.
In it's first form, this flag file was written to the first writable partition found on the machine.
Complaints, were made concerning Puppy writing to the Windows partition, and this was changed, so I assume that this is no longer happening.
No I don't have a link to this incident in the old forum. I was searching for it when I found the "Smithy" post.
But, I interpreted the "Smithy" post as referring to this kind of background thing.

@one, thanks for describing the problem with the old-forum.
I was hoping for a reply to "Smithy" in the next page, but ran into the same problem.

None of the available following posts address "Smithy"'s issue.

one wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:02 am

bigpup wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:30 am

Could you give us a link to the post?
[...]

Here it is:

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 8#p1049858

Btw: The mentioned post #1425 is the last on page 95 out of 97 (Board Index<Taking the puppy out for a walk<Announcements<woof-CE needs you> The next page 96 does not load, page 97 loads, containing the last post #1441 by perdido in this thread before the old murga-forum went down. So 15 posts are lost!? in the conversion done by @rockedge

I'm not sure if @Smithy was talking about DPupBuster from @josejp2424, but I seem to remember that in this pup he automounts the internal hdd(s) at startup ...

peace

edit: you can type #1429 in the adressfield of the browser and then page 96 displays - but 4 post following @Smithy's question are still missing (#1426-#1429)

In dpupbuster mounts the partitions at startup by the pmadas program, which is used.

one wrote:

So 15 posts are lost!? in the conversion done by.....

There are some errors made by the complex conversion process that are causing pages not to parse. All the posts exist, just can't see them at the moment due to corruption of portions of the database.
There is on going work is being done to complete version 8 of the conversion. There is a much improved copy close to completion and will be swapped in soon.

This process is complicated and every small detail must be checked. There are over a million posts to process. I am fully aware of the short comings of version 7 of the converted database

@josejp2424,
I doubt that the "Smithy" post is a reference to "dpupbuster" in particular, it still looks like a comment about all woof-ce generated Puppies.

@rockedge,
Thanks for the conversion of the old forum.
While it's frustrating that the posts immediately following the "Smithy" post are currently unavailable, there is no guarantee that they include an answer to the "Smithy" post.
That's why I am re-asking the question with this topic.