Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Colonel Panic · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 1225

Thanks. Sadly the download died at about 145 MB (not your fault - more the crummy connection we have in our community centre right now), so I haven't been able to test it yet.

8-bit · Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 3013 Location: Oregon

I downloaded Transitions on the second try and the checksum matched.
I then fired up VirtualBox for a quick look-see.
I got the error message a few new users get about pup_301.sfs not found.
So I burnt a cd and tried again.
I got the same message.
Then it hit me as to why I was getting that error.
I was running a pc with both SATA cdrom and SATA hard drive.
And guess what?
301 was never compiled to support SATA anything.
SATA support came later.
So keep that in mind when trying to run older Puppy iso's on later hardware!
By the way, it booted fine on another computer with PATA (IDE) drives.
That makes me wonder about that notorious pup_xxx.sfs file not found error that more than a few users post about and if it is just a matter of their hardware not being supported by the version they are trying to boot.

puppyluvr · Posted: Thu 04 Jun 2009, 23:48 Post subject:

Hello,
I booted Transitions on my Wifes Vista Laptop, with sata drives, and it booted..
However the CD is ide....
Also, pmount is all jacked up, and switching to mut wipes both pmount and mut out completely...
You may be on to something....
When I update Transitions, I may use SlackerPup, which is 4.12 with Slackware under the hood. Works great, and may be just the ticket...

8-bit · Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 3013 Location: Oregon

Further thoughts on boot sequence.
Say you boot Puppy from CD, external usb drive, usb stick, etc.
First, you get the short help screen for boot options.
Everything ok so far.
Then the kernel boots and loads modules needed to access drives etc.
Everything ok so far.
Now comes the part where pup_xxx.sfs is not found.
The reason is that even though you were able to boot as far as the kernel, the kernel is NOT loading drivers to support ALL your hardware.
And since SATA support was added in later puppy versions, they boot but the early ones do not.
I went through something like this with a Parallel Port cd drive.
I could pass boot to it, but Puppy, not having the driver for it in the kernel, would quit at trying to find the pup_xxx.sfs file.
What I am getting at is that if some hardware support is not incorporated in the kernel, the full boot fails.

Colonel Panic · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 1225

Hi again. I've finally managed to download Transitions Linux today and am posting from it now. It's early days yet but it looks like it more than fulfils its promise to replace Windows on the desktop - at least Windows XP. Thanks puppyluvr for a good effort.

Colonel Panic · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 1225

Just one thing though; it lacks certain categories of software which people in office situations need and use, in particular a calendar program and an e-mail client.

For myself I've added Ical and xcalendar for the first and sylpheed for the second, but since this is a big Pup I'd say Thunderbird and Sunbird are good choices for each (and also correspond with Firefox as Mozilla products).