This is an early version of WakeUSB and I would like as much feedback as possible on how well it works. I'm open to any suggestions that will improve this tool. Please reply to this thread if it does (or does not) work with your USB flash device and PC. This is helpful information that can be of use to other Puppy owners.
Unlike BOOT2PUP and WakePup, WakeUSB is compatible with Puppy USB flash drives made by Puppy's 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard, 'Option 2'. This is the option recommended by Barry which creates a pupxxx file on the USB flash drive. WakeUSB will boot these drives with just the addition of the empty marker file PUPXUSB which can be copied from the WakeUSB floppy or CD.
IF you don't want to use Puppy's 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard to make the Puppy flash drive, you can do it manually by copying the following files to a FAT16 formated USB Flash drive:
VMLINUZ, IMAGE.GZ, USR_CRAM.FS and ISOLINUX.CFG (from Puppy CD)
and PUPXUSB (an empty marker file - can be copied from WakeUSB)
and you are ready to boot it with WakeUSB. No messing with the MBR is necessary.
Once you have put the Puppy files on the USB flash drive, connect it to your PC's USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 port then boot WakeUSB from floppy or CD. If WakeUSB's USB driver finds your flash drive, WakeUSB will present a list of parameters it thinks should be used to boot Puppy, including the ramdisk_size parameter if it is present. If you want to change a parameter before booting, WakeUSB has a special menu where this can be done.
When WakeUSB boots the USB flash drive for the first time, Puppy will create a PUP100 file on the flash drive (unless you have changed the PHOME parameter to put it on another drive). This may take a while, especially if the flash drive is connected to a USB 1.1 port. Puppy will then start like usual by letting you choose the keyboard keymap, the mouse and the screen resolution setting.
WakeUSB is also able to boot non-standard Puppies (such as ChubbyPuppy, PizzaPup, etc) that have the ramdisk_size parameter set in isolinux.cfg or syslinux.cfg. Please be aware that this may cause more wear on your USB device as tmpfs f.s. may not be in use with these Puppies. See Barry's warning in the 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard.
Note: You can check if tmpfs is mounted and thereby minimizing writes to the flash drive by executing the 'df' command from a terminal. If 'tmpfs' is shown under Filesystem, then writing to flash has been minimized.
OK, so why go through the bother of booting a floppy or CD which in turn boots a USB drive? Here are a couple of reasons:
- The main reason is that it allows an older PC that refuses to boot from USB to have the same advantages of using a USB flash drive with PUP100 on it as a newer PC that does. Puppy is completely on the flash drive - no files are written to the hard disk. Nice and portable.
- You may already have a Puppy USB flash drive that boots directly from USB on your latest PC but you would also like to use the flash drive on an older PC that cannot boot from USB.
- A USB flash drive is more flexible than a multisession CD which requires a CD burner.
- A USB flash drive is re-useable. Puppy's 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard will easily replace an old version of Puppy with a new one. Or just manually copy a few files from the CD to the USB device, add PUPXUSB and you are ready to boot it with WakeUSB. No messing with the MBR is necessary.
Q: Will WakeUSB work with my USB flash device?
A: There are a number of USB controller chips used in PC's as well as in USB flash drives (pens, cards, etc). The USB driver used by WakeUSB can identify and use only a number of these, so there is no guarantee of success. The only way to find out is to try to boot with your flash drive and see if the driver finds it or not.
Q: How will I know if WakeUSB finds my USB flash device?
A: WakeUSB will pause after the USB driver has scanned for USB devices. If it identifies one, it will print a short id string and assign a drive letter to it. If not, the driver will print "Target USB device not found". If it cannot find a USB device, it may help to reformat the device even if it is already FAT16-formatted. This has worked for me in one case.
Additional Note: WakeUSB runs in FreeDOS and will complain if it, during searching, tries to read an NTFS partition. You'll see a message similar to:
Code: Select all
Error reading from drive C: DOS area: general failure
(A)bort, (I)gnore, (R)etry, (F)ail?
More info in the README.TXT file in each zip archive.
UPDATE 4-Nov-05: Replaced WakeUSB v0.1d with v0.1e. Re-wrote the README.TXT to add more detail. Added drive C to the search made for 'pupxusb' (from a suggestion on the Puppy forum that some PC's may not have a hard disk). Made some cosmetic changes to autoexec.bat.
First is the CD image. Note that the burned CD will appear empty - all files are burned into the CD's boot record. Good thing CD's are cheap [/code]