Trying to boot Puppy from CD with GRUB (also on the CD)

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nduanetesh
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Trying to boot Puppy from CD with GRUB (also on the CD)

#1 Post by nduanetesh »

Hi everybody,

I'm attempting to install grub on a CD to use as a boot loader for puppy (also on the cd). Thanks to some help from Ian, I have gotten to the point where I've got grub and puppy on the cd and grub boots and it's time to get puppy fired up. puppy will go through about the first 1/4 of booting, and then fail. Here are the parameters I pass to puppy when I get the grub prompt:

# kernel /vmlinuz
# initrd /image.gz

both commands are followed by an output which I'm assuming means success...

I then mash "boot" at the prompt, and puppy begins to blaze away...UNTIL

I will relay the last few lines here, before the kernel panic:

VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k nls_cp437, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k nls_iso8859-1, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k nls_iso8859-1, errno = 2
UMSDOS 0.86k (compatibility level 0.4, fast msdos)
check_pseudo_root: mounted as root
VFS: Mounted root (umsdos filesystem) readonly.
Trying to move old root to /initrd ... failed
Unmounting old root
Trying to free ramdisk memory ...okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 104k freed
Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel

Now, I thought I was passing an init option with the initrd command...but it seems like we're deeper into puppy than grub has influence. But maybe I'm just making that up. Anyway, does anybody know what's going on here? Better yet, does anybody know how to fix it?

Thanks,

ND

Bruce B

Re: Booting Puppy CD with GRUB

#2 Post by Bruce B »

nduanetesh wrote:Hi everybody,

I'm attempting to install grub on a CD to use as a boot loader for puppy (also on the cd). Thanks to some help from Ian, I have gotten to the point where I've got grub and puppy on the cd and grub boots and it's time to get puppy fired up. puppy will go through about the first 1/4 of booting, and then fail. Here are the parameters I pass to puppy when I get the grub prompt:

# kernel /vmlinuz
# initrd /image.gz
I really don't know how to help, because I've never done such a thing.

It is trying to boot from the top level of the CD-ROM disk, it looks like to me?

Do you need to tell it where /root is?

Do you need something like kernel (hd2)/vmlinuz or (sd3)/vmlinuz. In other words to you need to specify the device?

No answers from me on this, just questions. Sorry.

nduanetesh
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#3 Post by nduanetesh »

interesting that you should ask about root...

when I try the Cd on my main computer (which has a hard drive or two), there is no mention of root, and I don't give a root command.

when I try the CD on my laptop, which has no hard drive, the boot fails with:

VFS: cannot open root device "" or 03:01
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:01

Now, I believe that 03:01 is my CD drive in the laptop, and that grub has just assumed the the medium from which is it loading is "root", unless told otherwise. Why this is a problem on my laptop and not on my other computer, I don't know. There is no way (that I have found) to indicate to grub that you'd like to use ram as root; it really wants to see a hardware device...and because of the lack of hard drive in the machine, the only hardware device available is (cd), which obviously doesn't work.

ND

Oh, I just realized that I didn't answer your question...

No, I don't need to specify a device for the booting of the kernel. I think that the kernel booting is the only thing that it going right, and that the error comes when it's time for the kernel to hand things over to vmlinuz...

GuestToo
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#4 Post by GuestToo »

you can make a Grub boot floppy and make a boot cd from that

or you can boot using el-torito, which apparently avoids problems with floppy emulation:

http://snipurl.com/fxgz

you would have something like this line in menu.lst:

kernel vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PFILE=pup001-none-262144

if you don't have root=/dev/ram0, it will try to use the hard drive

(this is not telling it where /root is ... this is telling it where to mount the root of the entire file system ... / )

nduanetesh
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#5 Post by nduanetesh »

I am booting using eltorito. (Actually, using precisely the directions which are found in your link, which are also to be found on the grub site.)

using the command you gave (which I had tried before, but didn't mention)(tried it before because I stole the boot parameters from the syslinux.cfg on a regular puppy CD and tried them out), the boot fails thusly:

FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
UMSDOS: msdos_read_super failed, mount aborted
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:00

thoughts?

ND

GuestToo
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#6 Post by GuestToo »

i haven't made a boot cd using grub

it says "GRUB automatically sets the root device to (cd) when booted from a CD-ROM"

so if you have vmlinuz and image.gz on the cd (if you use a dir called iso, like the example on the webpage, you would have iso/vmlinuz, iso/image.gz, iso/boot/grub/menu.lst and iso/boot/grub/stage2_eltorito), then something like this in menu.lst might work:

title = Puppy Linux
kernel vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PFILE=pup001-none-262144
initrd image.gz

it might be better if usr_cram.fs is in image.gz

nduanetesh
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#7 Post by nduanetesh »

I didn't put a menu.lst onto the disc because I knew there'd be a lot of experimenting going on, so I just enter the commands by hand...

whether I do:

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 initrd /image.gz

or

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0

(note that grub requires absolute paths, thus the / before the file names)

doesn't seem to matter. I get the same boot failure messages.

I thought about the usr_cram inside of image.gz situation...though I'm not sure how it might make a difference here, I will give it a shot. I'll need to download JM's 50MB edition...

ND

GuestToo
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#8 Post by GuestToo »

i was thinking that if usr_cram.fs is in the el-torito image, then it might not be visible to Puppy ... it's not getting to that point, so it doesn't matter if usr_cram.fs is in image.gz or not

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 should copy vmlinuz (the linux kernel) to ram, unzip it, and start executing it

initrd /image.gz should copy image.gz to ram to /dev/ram0 (initial ram drive) ... the kernel parameter root=/dev/ram0 should tell the kernel to mount /dev/ram0 as /

from your first post, "VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)", it looks like the kernel was started and image.gz was copied to /dev/ram0, and the kernel mounted the initrd (image.gz) as / ... so vmlinuz and image.gz seemed to have loaded in ram

(i'm assuming it found image.gz, because it seems to know it's an ext2 file system)

then the kernel tries load some drivers, and has problems (kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s ...)

it seems to try unmounting image.gz, and mounting / using the defaults ... that is, it tries to mount (cd) as /, using usmdos ... this isn't going to work ... it looks for /sbin/init, and of course doesn't find it, so you get "Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel"

it's possible that vmlinuz or image.gz are corrupted or are not being read properly ... maybe you need to pass a ramsize= parameter

nduanetesh
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#9 Post by nduanetesh »

I don't have time to test anything this morning, as I'm about to head out the door, but here is some info that GuestToo's post brought to mind.

I first need to clarify that the error posted in my first post was coming from attempting to boot my main computer (desktop, with a hard drive), whereas everything else I posted last night were problems while attempting to boot my laptop. I know this is very bad troubleshooting practice, and I'll try to avoid such behavior in the future :oops:

I'm fairly certain that my image.gz and vmlinuz files are not corrupted, as I have created and burned a couple of different (grub-booted) ISOs, with pertinent files copied from a couple of different puppy disks (to try 2.4 kernel and 2.6), and the errors are consistent.

When I get back tonight, I'll try a ramsize parameter and will think really hard about GuestToo's post.

ND

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Ian
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#10 Post by Ian »

The way I see it you have to point Grub to the place where the boot files for Puppy are located on the CD.
If you can't tell Grub exactly where to look it is not going to be able to boot anything.

Remember a CD is not like a hard drive, there are no partitions that Grub can look at to find the files it requires to boot the kernel.

I don't know how Grub handles TOC on a CD, it starts at the start but if it can read past that I don't know.

This is all probably rubbish but I thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth anyway.

nduanetesh
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#11 Post by nduanetesh »

Ok, additional experimenting has produced no results, and I have to admit I'm ready to let this die, as I've come to realize that it's not going to work for the reason I originally wanted it anyway...allow me to explain.

I have a laptop that will not boot a multisession disk if the disk has more than one track on it. So, I burn multisession puppy and everything is great (it boots, that is), then I try to reboot the same disk after I've used it once, and she will not boot. The problem is not with the burn of the additional data, because the disk will boot just fine (with saved settings restored) on my other computer. It's definately just that this lappy (or the drive itself) has a problem with more than one track on a bootable CD. Anyway, not knowing much about the process of booting a CD, I thought maybe if I could get grub onto a multisession puppy CD, when I went to reboot the disk the second time, grub would fire up for the initial boot, and it would somehow bypass the part that was screwing up my computer's recognition of "oh, this is a bootable disk". Knowing a bit more about CD booting now, and having done quite a bit of experimenting, I realize now that this will not work. Even with grub on the disk, if there is more than one track, the computer does not recognize the CD as bootable.

So...experiment failed, it seems. Back to wishing I could use multisession (no hard drive, you see, and USB 1.1 connection is terribly slow :( ).

Thanks anyway for all of the help and advice.

ND

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Flash
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#12 Post by Flash »

Don't give up just yet; there's one thing you haven't tried. Or at least you didn't mention it.

Have you checked to see if there's a firmware upgrade available for the CD drive in your laptop? I've downloaded firmware upgrades for several of my CD/DVD drives and "flashed" them. I can't say it made any difference; they worked fine before I did it. I only mention it because in your case it sounds like the problem may be in the CD drive, so you never know, it's worth a try.

nduanetesh
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#13 Post by nduanetesh »

Hrmm....you know, after my last post, I was sure somebody would chime in and suggest I flash the bios for my motherboard, which was the first thing I did. But I have to admit that I didn't think about looking for a firmware upgrade for the drive. Thanks for the suggestion, Flash. I'll have to look into that.

ND

BTW, I LOVE your avatar.

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Ian
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#14 Post by Ian »

Can you replace the burner in your laptop.

nduanetesh
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#15 Post by nduanetesh »

Flash,

I've searched the web and come up with some firmare updates for my model drive, but they seem to be manufacturer specific (meaning, they seem to be associated with the company which manufactured the laptop, rather than the specific drive). I'm courageous (i.e. "foolhardy") enough to give one of them a shot, though...however, since I don't have a hard drive on the computer, I'll have to create some kind of a windows boot disk and boot and run the update from that. ugh. I have to admit, though, that I'm not too hopeful that this will clear up the problem, but you're right that it's worth a try.

Ian,

I *could* replace the drive, but I'm not terribly excited about the idea of dropping any more cash on this laptop. Also, this is my first lappy, so I have very little experience with laptop hardware. Can any laptop CDROM drive be dropped into any laptop? Or do they all have some kind of proprietary connector (that is manufacturer specific, and thus they are not all interchangeable?) If it's a $10 deal to pop a new CDRW/DVD drive into this thing, then I'll give it a try in a hearbeat. But if it's a $60 or more proposition....well, I'd rather spend that on getting a hard drive for this thing first.

ND

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Ian
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#16 Post by Ian »

I don't have a laptop so I can't help you with details but if you look up the specs for your machine you should be able to determine what hardware will fit.

I have never seen secondhand laptop HDs selling as cheap as 3.5" drives so you may have to shop around a bit for that.

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Flash
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#17 Post by Flash »

nduanetesh wrote:Flash,

I've searched the web and come up with some firmare updates for my model drive, but they seem to be manufacturer specific (meaning, they seem to be associated with the company which manufactured the laptop, rather than the specific drive). I'm courageous (i.e. "foolhardy") enough to give one of them a shot, though...however, since I don't have a hard drive on the computer, I'll have to create some kind of a windows boot disk and boot and run the update from that. ugh. I have to admit, though, that I'm not too hopeful that this will clear up the problem, but you're right that it's worth a try.
<snip>
Go ahead, we'll watch. :lol:

syzygy
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re: booting pup with grub on cd

#18 Post by syzygy »

nduanetesh,

not sure if this is any help to you, but i use following grub menu.lst config to boot cd from hdisk.


title cdrom
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/grub/memdisk.bin
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/grub/sbootmgr.dsk

see this link for howto:-

http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~bernhard/grub-chain-cd.html

syzygy

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