A puppy installation challenge for the ages.

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FearMeansControl · #1 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 19:49

I don't consider myself a slouch in the least when it comes to computers, but this one has got me truly stumped...

I recently took charge of a Dell Latitude LS laptop, those of you who know the model, will know that it shipped with no internal CD or floppy drives, they came as externals to be connected through a proprietary rear port. You guessed it, the friend who gave me the laptop had no such devices, as she bought the thing off ebay.

The configuration it had when i got it was a Pentium iii 500 MHz, with 128 mb ram, a 40 GB 4200 rpm HD, and XP pro installed on one big ntfs partition. XP wouldnt boot, plugging it in as an external drive and trying to manually rescue the system brought me no luck, so i figured this was the perfect time to give a small linux distro a shot.

So here I am, i downloaded the puppy iso, burned it to a live CD and put it in a desktop i have lying around (a considerably faster AMD machine). so i love the OS and decided to put it on the comp. here comes the challenge..

i first tried installing the OS to a flash drive using the "universal installer". i didnt think this would work considering the age of the machine, but it was worth a shot. the bios has these boot options: atapi cd rom (i dont have the device), removable storage (i assumed this would be usb. i assumed wrong), LAN boot, and hard drive.

so booting from usb brought me nothing, and i just got the "no operating system found" screen.

then i tried the "install to usb hard drive command" (remember the hard drive is not in the laptop at this point, but rather in an enclosure plugged into the desktop) i got an error message about a usb HD not being accessible, or ready, or something of the sort. i can try again and give the exact message if need be. here's the kicker.. i tried "install to usb flash", and the device SHOWED UP THERE. after a bit of a "WTF mate?", i decided to go through the installation as if my hd was a usb flash. needless to say, it installed but did not boot on the laptop. it did, however bring up the lan boot prompt in the laptop... (?)

so i am now utterly stumped. when i explore the HD after doing the flash drive installation on it, it has the makeBoot file on it. Can i simply delete this, and make it boot? has anyone ever encountered this problem? is there a drag-n-drop operating system anywhere? (i know the answer is no lol)

anyone that can de-stumpify me will win a jpg drawing of a rectangle i did in M$ paint. thanks.

paulsiu · #2 Post by **paulsiu** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 19:53

I had the "no operating system" once. I finally got it to work when I set the bootable flag on the vfat volume. I did this in windows (using their disk manager). There should be a way to do this in Linux as well.

Paul

FearMeansControl · #3 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 19:54

if i may ask, how did you initially install puppy to the HD?...

dancingdog777 · #4 Post by **dancingdog777** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 20:06

Good question Fear. I've tried 6 times today and when I boot the computer I get "No operating system" each time.
Heck, I like Puppy and want to use it but how the h*ll do you get it to setup on the hard drive?
Watching this thread.
*****
The make of your computer? Home made

The amount of RAM (memory) installed? 1 Gb

The CPU (processor) speed? 2.66Ghz

What Hard Drives, CDROMs and DVDs are installed? 20 gb HD

The Partitions, size and type, on any hard drives? You what?

What type of Keyboard & Mouse i.e. Serial, PS/2, USB or other? They're made of plastic.

Which version of Puppy you are working with? 2.14

rcrsn51 · #5 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 20:18

If I understand you correctly, you have the laptop drive in an external USB enclosure connected to a machine running Puppy. The following thread describes a method for making flash drive bootable using the GRUB bootloader:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16437
It should work for you. When done, remove the drive from the enclosure , replace it in the laptop and try booting. However, you will first need to make one change to the menu.lst file. Replace PMEDIA=usbhd with PMEDIA=idehd . You might also want to reformat the drive and replace the NTFS with something more friendly. FAT32 will work fine.

FearMeansControl · #6 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 20:28

rcrsn51... that sounds like a possible fix. will try and report back in a bit. in a bit could mean tomorrow, as today is st. patty's ^_^

rcrsn51 · #7 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 20:51

Reformatting the drive might be an essential step because I don't think that GRUB has native NTFS support. The good news is that you can do this in Puppy. Look in Control Panel for the Gparted Partition Manager. Once it has detected your hardware, look for your USB drive under the Devices list as /dev/sda. Since you are now working in the Linux world, ext2 is a good choice. Just don't reformat your main hard drive by mistake!

FearMeansControl · #8 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 21:04

heh, yeah, i should've mentioned that its already partitioned. however i partitioned it in ext3 (throwback to my ubuntu days?)

is ext3 a better choice? should i need a swap partition with 128 ram?

thanks for the replies btw

rcrsn51 · #9 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 22:39

Ext3 will be fine. If you don't want to bother with a swap partition, Puppy will automatically make a swap file for you.

FearMeansControl · #10 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 22:47

k sweet. i did everyhting in your grub guide, changed PMEDIA to idehd, set my bios to boot from HD...

but it still goes to the lan boot screen...?...

i am dumbfounded. about to change menu.lst to usbhd and am gonna try booting it on a more recent machine. if that works, then at least i know the installation went ok. as of now, it should be a working puppy installation, i just need it to boot.

will keep posting here.

rcrsn51 · #11 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 23:01

Hmm. Check the BIOS settings. Is the HDD actually visible?

FearMeansControl · #12 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 23:26

yeah, i just checked.. indeed it is. its a 40 gb hitatchi travelstar.. all the info comes up correctly in the bios. (btw, i ended up reformatting the drive in ext2 before i did all your steps)

rcrsn51 · #13 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sat 17 Mar 2007, 23:37

When you ran the GRUB command 'setup (hd1)', there should have been some messages confirming success. If you saw them, then the GRUB bootloader is on the MBR of this drive and it should be bootable. However, there has been some discussion about whether you also need to flag the partition bootable with GParted. I don't think that GRUB cares, but maybe you could try this too.

FearMeansControl · #14 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sun 18 Mar 2007, 18:22

yes, i will try that... though it seems like there's a missing link between the mbr and the OS (::shrug::). very strange. will regale the board with my success/failure.

iscraigh · #15 Post by **iscraigh** » Sun 18 Mar 2007, 18:45

When you install grub should it not be to /dev/sda that would be the usb drive

then go into the drive look for menu.lst file and change it to idehd

Just a thought.

Craig

FearMeansControl · #16 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sun 18 Mar 2007, 20:27

ok, so i set the bootable flag in the partition, and the laptop now sees the puppy OS. however, i seem to be missing a file. i now get this screen:

Booting 'Puppy Linux'

root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd

Error 15: File Not Found

Press Any Key To Continue...

what file is it missing? thanks for all your help so far... am in the final stretch here.

rcrsn51 · #17 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sun 18 Mar 2007, 20:50

Go back to the menu and press 'c' to get the GRUB command prompt.
Type: find /vmlinuz
This is one of the four core Puppy files and should be at the root of the drive and not in a subfolder. I looked back at my original instructions and noticed that I didn't explicitly say that.
Just to check, type: find /boot/grub/vmlinuz if that's where you put the file.
Then you will need to remove the drive one more time and copy the four files up to the root of the drive.

FearMeansControl · #18 Post by **FearMeansControl** » Sun 18 Mar 2007, 21:54

haha yeah, i saw that option to edit, so i went in and put /boot/grub in front of both and that did it, so i just moved the files up to the root.

so that means, i've got a running puppy OS. thanks very very very much for your help.. just one more question. it says that i should make a permanent storage partition, and i will be prompted for such when i shut down, but upon shutting down, not much of anything happens. i also get the same 1st time start up options every time i boot it. not a huge deal i guess, but it'd be nice to free up some ram.

rcrsn51 · #19 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sun 18 Mar 2007, 22:53

I'm not sure why you didn't get the dialog that creates your save file at showdown, but here's a way that might force it.

Go to /initrd/mnt/dev_save and drill down to your menu.lst file. Add a second entry as follows:

title Puppy Linux Safe Mode
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd pfix=ram
initrd /initrd.gz

Reboot your machine using this option, then do a shutdown. Hopefully, you'll get to make a save file.

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A puppy installation challenge for the ages.

A puppy installation challenge for the ages.

Bootable flag on the flash drive?

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