Unpredictable Intermittent Boot Failures From USB Drive

[ogobot]

Hello Puppy Linux Hardware Forum:

Here's a very very weird problem that I would like to share. I have a USB flash drive loaded with Puppy 5.2.5/2.6.33.2 in positively known good condition. I know it's good because it works on other machines and will reliably boot them into Puppy as well as read/write within Windows. So I don't believe there's any problem with the drive.

The symptom only pops up on my Hp Mini 100. It will not consistently boot off this flash drive. Sometimes it will. Sometimes it will take three cold-starts. Sometimes it will work when I move the drive from the one USB port to the second. Then it will boot. But then it won't boot a second time from the second port. Then it will boot from the third port, but not twice. There is, as best as I have been able to judge, no rhyme or reason to when the machine will and will not boot. Lack of a pattern is the main problem.

Further complicating the matter is that Puppy will hang at different points in boot-up. I'll always get the splash screen, but sometimes nothing else, sometimes the hard-drive drivers will load, sometimes they'll start to load and then hang halfway through. It's never the same.

I do not believe the USB ports are the problem, as once the machine is running it reads and writes out of the ports just fine.

I also have a USB hard drive that behaves the same way, further indicating this problem is confined the the HP Mini itself.

So if the USB drive is good and the USB ports are good, what does that leave to examine? I can't think of anything else.

Suggestions would be most appreciated.

brian

[nooby]

Sometimes one need to add enough time for the USB flash so it has time to settle but Puppy has such time already in the script but the intermittent booting could indicate it is just not enough. So there should be some code one could add to the kernel line that add another 2 or 3 or 5 seconds so it reliably settle the addresses and such.

Now I am a true nooby so I can have this all wrong. Us the search in my signature in to find those code to add.

It could also be something about power management needing some code.

Search for such codes too.

[ogobot]

You may be a nooby but whatever word there is for a sub-sub-nooby, that's me, so anything involving code is way beyond me. Although you may be on to something as I've been playing with it tonight and can say that the USBHD I'm using has a much better hit rate than the USB flash. About 50% versus 25%. No idea what that might point to.

Problem is every type of media I try it with has issues, so you can't point to one particular piece of hardware. It's across the board behavior.

THanks - brian

[nooby]

I have a former work mate that told me of his hardware problems. Him helped a sister in law with her computer and had problems and it turned out to be a memory that one needed to pull and push a few times for the contacts to be reliably connected.

So that is only a wild suggestion. It can be a hardware connection problem too but your experience that the USB HDD is more reliable do point to the timing.

How to find the code? You have to use the search in my Signature.

Or wait for some friendly user of the forum to do it for you Or them pull that from their own memory. I am too lazy at the moment.

Most likely the search words should be

usb wait flash

or similar maybe also
kernel line code

oops I could be wrong. If you boot with syslinux ? then the code may differ. I only boot using grub4dos

[Artie]

Try usbwait=[some number] (or possibly puppy usbwait=[some number]) as a parameter when you boot up and see if it makes any difference. I seem to remember I had some trouble with a USB HD once. Usbwait is mentioned here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=352150

[ogobot]

Thanks Artie.

From looking over that link it appears the main problem is that Puppy is just buggy on netbooks. I should be using a different distro. There are a lot of known problems.

Thanks for the inputp

Brian

[nooby]

I would test Puppeee puppy linux by Jemimah or why not Snow Puppy by pemasu who make use of knowledge of drivers for small notebooks or netbooks by jemimah.

I am on Acer D250 which is a small Netbook 10" screen and that one works very good with Snow Puppy and I have also used other puppies on it but Snow is best. Here is my grub4dos menu.lst frugal install

title Snow Puppy Linux 5 by Pemasu Finland 1024x768 JWM.
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /snowpuppy5/vmlinuz psubdir=snowpuppy5 puppy i915.modeset=1 nosmp pfix=fsck
initrd /snowpuppy5/initrd.gz

I would recommend you use a later version than the one I use.

No need to to go to another linux at all

[tikbalang]

- turn off "pnp os" in the bios.

- also in the bios, lower usb speed from "hispeed" (480mb/s) to "fullspeed" (12mb/s).

[ogobot]

That's all very interesting, especially the bios settings. Will try it and post back any changes.

Thanks all.

brian

[infromthepound]

I too have a HP Mini.
I have the same type of problem, and decided it was poor contacts due to poor quality on the netbook. (The power adapter is the same)
JB

[ogobot]

- turn off "pnp os" in the bios.

- also in the bios, lower usb speed from "hispeed" (480mb/s) to "fullspeed" (12mb/s).

Curiously, there are no such settable parameters in my bios. There's just about nothing except the date and time set up, and a couple of diagnostic options (none of which have anything to do with the USB).

brian

[tikbalang]

Curiously, there are no such settable parameters in my bios. There's just about nothing except the date and time set up, and a couple of diagnostic options (none of which have anything to do with the USB).

brian

that's too bad. i think the problem are the usb ports, since they function properly AFTER the drivers are loaded.

it can also ba a RAM problem. do a memtest.

[tech_jnke2]

since there is no options for usb in the bios, i wonder if you could update the bios to regain those options? some board mfg's hide those options so you cant monkey around with them, they want you to buy the newest unit from them and it's probally the same board but unlocked on bios.

goto the mfg's website and see if you can update the bios at all , maybe doing so may help for booting. it's worth a shot but don't hold me to it, it's a suggestion to get you going .

dang tempermental hardware!

[rjbrewer]

- turn off "pnp os" in the bios.

- also in the bios, lower usb speed from "hispeed" (480mb/s) to "fullspeed" (12mb/s).

Curiously, there are no such settable parameters in my bios. There's just about nothing except the date and time set up, and a couple of diagnostic options (none of which have anything to do with the USB).

brian

May need legacy usb enabled in bios.
Devices must be plugged in to show in boot list.