Unable to boot Puppy 2.02 from laptop hard drive

Booting, installing, newbie
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pilgrim
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon 09 Apr 2007, 13:38

Unable to boot Puppy 2.02 from laptop hard drive

#1 Post by pilgrim »

:?: i installed puppy 2.02 on an old p2 laptop hard drive successfully. For some reason i am not able to boot from grub. All things considered it appears as though a simple command is
all that is required. Every combination and request made thus far have failed and i am at loss
to come up with what i am being asked to type, on the command line. Every thing i have typed in search has lead to very confusing and frustrating information.
i just registered this morning 4/9/07. i am looking forward to using puppy as my main distro and want to learn to be familier with using all puppy applications for business. Obviously i am not computer savvy, but like linux puppy and plan on using it indefinitely.
i am no threat to anyone's ego here,so anything that is posted will not be a threat to intelligence. All i want to do is get the pc running so i can do some work.
i might mention that i volunteer at a linux based community computer recycle non profit in portland or. and we get tons of old computers and i want to learn to install puppy on old p1
laptops to get them out to people in the community. So i have a two fold agenda learn puppy
and install on discarded computers.
Back to my original post, can i get up and running on my laptop?
pilgrim

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rcrsn51
Posts: 13096
Joined: Tue 05 Sep 2006, 13:50
Location: Stratford, Ontario

#2 Post by rcrsn51 »


setecio
Posts: 326
Joined: Wed 01 Nov 2006, 12:09
Location: UK

#3 Post by setecio »

What sort of hard disc / partition /format are you installing onto ?
Is there anything else on the Hard disc / partition ?
Are you trying a frugal install ?
Do you get the GRUB menu and then it fails after this ?

setecio
Posts: 326
Joined: Wed 01 Nov 2006, 12:09
Location: UK

#4 Post by setecio »

Reply as a PM.
From: pilgrim
To: setecio
Posted: Today, at 3:49 am
Subject: help
Hello
Thank you setecio! Anyway i do not use these forum's much so sorry if i am using it wrong,
but i did not see where to respond to your questions other than sending you a private message.
I bought a used 5 GB FUJITSU hard drive that was whiped. The puppy tutorial sent me on my way and ended up with a successful download onto the harddrive. The partiation i do
not even know what! So now when i boot up comes a blue rectangle box with some choices. At the very top it says GNU GRUB version 0.96 (639K lower / 162752K upper memory. Six choices are offered from Linux (on /dev/hdal) to - for usage examples, type cat /boot/grub/usage.txt . I have tried all six choices and always comes back to this same item.
By the way i removed the CD and perhaps that should not have happened? Sorry i cannot offer you some tech information but i have only a smattering of knowledge and border on idiot, as you may have discerned when dealing with all this tech information.
pilgrim

setecio
Posts: 326
Joined: Wed 01 Nov 2006, 12:09
Location: UK

#5 Post by setecio »

What is the make / model of the laptop, and how much memory does it have.

If you put the CD in and boot from it, does it load Puppy and work ?

Other people might know more and offer a fix, but as I don't know much about Puppy, my way would be to try again : I would boot up from Puppy CD and make sure it all works from the CD before going further :

Then
use System - Gparted to set up a 4GB ext2 partition and a 1GB Linux swap partition. ( Device-set disc label (in Gparted) to erase everything first)

Then
Setup - Puppy universal installer to install to IDE Hard drive (use default settings but change selection to MBR as described in one of the choices) and install GRUB when asked.

That would be my way, but I don't know alot about Puppy to offer a simple fix.

setecio
Posts: 326
Joined: Wed 01 Nov 2006, 12:09
Location: UK

#6 Post by setecio »

................>
Hello setecio
Thank you for your patience with this situation.
i came up with some information that may help in unraveling this mystery, to me its a mystery anyway.
The laptop is a Toshiba 4020 CDT ; Model pr5402UB ; Hard disk is a Fujitsu 5 GB ,used but whiped clean ;
mdmory from BIOS say 163840 KB ;
I used a working CD and it lead to the universal installer which completed the installation successfully installing puppy onto the hard disk. This was the message that was given at the end of the install. "Grub install success. Grub was successfully installed on the MBR of /dev/hda. You should check and edit the /boot/grub/menu lst file on dev/hda3, if needed You may want to change the location /boot/vmlinuz and / or optionspassed to any linux kernal listed there.
So after all that when booted without the CD up comes GNU GRUB version 0.96 (639K lower / 162752Kupper memory) then a list of 6 options 1.Linux on /dev/hda1 2.Linux on /dev/hda3 3.Install GRUB to floppy disk /dev/fd0 (i did this) 4. Install GRUB to Linux partition on / dev/dha3 (i did this) 5. For help press c , then type: Help 6. For usage examples, type : cat /boot/grub/usage.txt
pilgrim

setecio
Posts: 326
Joined: Wed 01 Nov 2006, 12:09
Location: UK

#7 Post by setecio »

There seem to be several partitions on that disc. If you have no use for anything on it, then I suggest you use Gparted to wipe and repartition the drive, as described before, and install GRUB to same partition as you put Puppy.

Bruce B

#8 Post by Bruce B »

You are going to find different schools of thought about how to do this. I don't wish to claim my school is better. It is certainly not the only way.

I'm presuming 5GB HD and circa 160 MB RAM

I can't determine exactly what you are faced with. As there is no apparent concern for data loss, I'd go back to square one. Meaning start over and work carefully.

1) Start puppy with the cd disc, use the puppy pfix=ram option to prevent mounting any partitions or pup_save files


2) When the GUI is setup, start GParted

2a - delete any existing partitions

2b make new partitions
i recommend one or two Linux ext2 primary partitions
one swap primary partition about 256 MB

2c be sure you format the partitions appropriately

3) Start Puppy's installer and install a normal install to the already formatted partition

When the GRUB option comes up put it on the MBR of /dev/hda (which I think is your only hard drive)

---------------

I hope this helps and I think things should go pretty smoothly. The installer and other software works, so I think this failure is a result something you should have done and didn't or something you shouldn't have done and did.

Also go easy on us and be concise and throrough in your replies. A few weeks ago we lost three regulars to the funny farm, all because one person gave us sporadic and goofy information.

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