2.0.1 pup_save.3fs not found when booting off USB flash

[PaulBx1]

I have been booting using either a "poor man's install" or from CD, with my pup_save.3fs on the hard drive. Either way, it found it there and used it.

I then made a boot floppy and put the appropriate puppy files on my 256MB USB flash drive (this PC cannot boot directly off USB). I did NOT put my pup_save.3fs there - not enough room for a 512MB file! This is just a test; I am buying a larger flash drive.

When I booted off the USB it acted as if it were the initial boot, asking me if I wanted to save a new pup_save when I did the shutdown, and saving a clean one on the flash drive (much smaller than standard of course).

I had imagined when it came up the first time, it would look through the system for any pup_save.3fs; but no, it didn't. Also, when it did create the new one, I was surprised it didn't even ask where I wanted to save it, simply assuming the flash drive instead. Looks like when you boot off flash, then everything has to be there. No other choice.

This pc only has USB 1.1; booting off flash drive was god-awful slow even though there was no pup-save there to deal with. I'm wondering if a PCMCIA card I'm ordering, that has two USB 2.0 ports on it, will be found by the floppy boot process.

I guess if it will work that way, then when I get my 1GB flash drive I will put it there on the USB 2.0 port, copy my current pupsave.3fs from the hard drive to it, along with the usual puppy files, cross my fingers, and try booting. Hope that's the proper way to migrate my pup_save.3fs to different media...

[Sit Heel Speak]

I have been booting using either a "poor man's install" or from CD...I then made a boot floppy and put the appropriate puppy files on my 256MB USB flash drive...This pc only has USB 1.1; booting off flash drive was god-awful slow...I'm wondering if a PCMCIA card I'm ordering, that has two USB 2.0 ports on it, will be found by the floppy boot process...I guess if it will work that way, then when I get my 1GB flash drive I will put it there on the USB 2.0 port, copy my current pupsave.3fs from the hard drive to it, along with the usual puppy files, cross my fingers, and try booting. Hope that's the proper way to migrate my pup_save.3fs to different media...

Puppy user pakt was the first to figure out how to boot Puppy this way; I think I was one of the first to use pakt's special boot floppy and initrd.gz. See the thread "Booting Puppy 2.01 from USB via PCMCIA USB2 adapter card" at

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8913

Download pakt's tweaked initrd.gz from there, plus his wkpup2x_img boot floppy image which I link to, down a bit in the thread. Hurry, because the forum I linked to has been deprecated and will be closed soon.

I do not know whether it is possible to just copy your pup_save.3fs straight over from disk to the USB stick.

A bark to the wise: if you play with several iterations of pup_save.3fs or pup_201.sfs on your USB stick, then lost file fragments can very quickly become the majority of the space on the stick. The free memory applet will show something like 600 MB used and 70 MB free on a 2 GB stick. Boot into Windows and run ScanDisk on the stick to solve this.

You may wish also to keep track of the thread I just started in the Beginners Help section, "Question on the tmpfs ramdisk and the free memory applet" which has to do with booting this way.

[PaulBx1]

Thanks Sit Heel Speak, your post really is going to save me a lot of grief!

I'd like to look at what the Universal Installer script does. Have any idea where it is?

[Sit Heel Speak]

...to look at what the Universal Installer script does. Have any idea where it is?

No idea. I didn't use Setup-Puppy Universal Installer. I simply copied the files as extracted from the .iso image using ISOBuster, under Windows 98SE.

I just tried moving my disk-boot pup_save.3fs to my USB stick and booting the USB stick. It boots OK, but I've had to reinstall Firefox.