Saluki / Lucid525/528 USB Boot hang (SOLVED)

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greengeek
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Saluki / Lucid525/528 USB Boot hang (SOLVED)

#1 Post by greengeek »

Saluki and Lucid USB boot freeze problems.

I have encountered two problems trying to boot either Saluki or Lucid from USB sticks. Both of these operating systems show both of the fault symptoms. The two faults are not identical, but very similar, and can both be overcome by the same method.

I have mentioned this problem with Saluki here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... start=2865
and Brown Mouse echoed something similar with Lucid 528.005 two posts after mine. I have now done more extensive testing to confirm that both Saluki and recent Lucid versions consistently show this behaviour on my hardware.

Symptom 1:
After installing either Saluki or Lucid 528.005 to usb stick I am unable to boot from the stick due to an error early on in the boot process, where the screen hangs forever saying:

SYSLINUX 4.05 EDD 0x4f131b2f Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H Peter Anvin et al.

If I forcibly turn off the power and reboot immediately the stick will boot correctly without further problems. However, if the power is left off for 20 seconds or more before the reboot, the problem will return (making troubleshooting efforts a bit confusing and time consuming...) I thought this may have been an issue with a “slow
Last edited by greengeek on Fri 05 Sep 2014, 05:03, edited 2 times in total.

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bigpup
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#2 Post by bigpup »

First possible cause for USB flash drive boot problems.
Some computers will only boot from USB flash drives that are formatted fat, Fat16 or Fat32.
So make sure that is the format of the flash drive.
The Puppy Universal installer may not do this formatting (by default) in newer Puppies.
Bootflash install Puppy to USB program does specifically what it says. It will setup and do install using fat format.
menu->setup->Bootflash

One possible cause to check.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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greengeek
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#3 Post by greengeek »

bigpup wrote:Some computers will only boot from USB flash drives that are formatted fat, Fat16 or Fat32.
So make sure that is the format of the flash drive.
Thanks, Bigpup. In my tests I am booting from an EXT2 partition. (I should have mentioned that). The netbook seems happy to boot from EXT2, as I now have quite an extensive collection of usb sticks with different installs on them, all booting from either Fat32 or EXT2

My main concern is that Saluki and recent Lucids behave differently from all the other puppies I have tried.

I suspect many newcomers trying out Puppy will be wanting to boot their netbooks etc from USB so that they can leave their Windows installs untouched, and if Lucid and Saluki have usb boot problems those users will be put off.

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nilsonmorales
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#4 Post by nilsonmorales »

my usb install works fine whit this method
i like a frugal install
http://nilsonmorales.blogspot.com/2012/ ... linux.html
i dont know maybe help

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greengeek
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#5 Post by greengeek »

I just tried my testing again, but this time formatting the whole stick as Fat32 (incl lba and boot flags), and the results are as follows:

Racy53 gives an error message of "Missing Operating System"
Lucid 528.005 says "Could not find Linux image"

However, If I format the stick with Puppy 4.3.1 Gparted and use it's universal installer to install the 4.3.1 files the stick boots fine.

Also, if I then remove the 4.3.1 files, and manually replace them with the corresponding Lucid 528.005 files, the stick will boot Lucid correctly.

So, my message if anyone else is experiencing boot issues with recent Lucid or Saluki, is create the bootable USB stick with Puppy 4.3.1, and then copy the newer puppy files across instead of the 4.3.1 vmliuz, initrd.gz and .sfs file.

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rcrsn51
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#6 Post by rcrsn51 »

Using the Saluki 021 Live CD and the Universal Installer, I set up a flash drive that worked fine.

However, Slacko failed until I ran the following command:

Code: Select all

chmod 1777 /tmp 
I have only experienced this problem on my Acer eMachines netbook
USB bootability has always been a black art.
Last edited by rcrsn51 on Sat 05 May 2012, 02:33, edited 1 time in total.

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shinobar
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Re: Saluki and Lucid 525 / 528 USB Boot freeze.

#7 Post by shinobar »

greengeek wrote:I experience this problem with Saluki 17, 20 and 21 (no other Salukis tried yet), and Lucid 525 and 528, including 528.005

I do not experience this problem with Lucid 5.2, Racy 5.3, RacyNOP 5.2.2, Slacko 53, Slacko Fat, or Puppy 4.3.1. (I have not tried to see if other puppies show this problem or not, as I feel this is sufficient so far to confirm an issue with Saluki and recent Lucid)
Good job, greengeek, making this list. It appears an issue with the new version of extlinux and your hardware. The extlinux version on Saluki and Lupu 525/528 is 4.03. The Lupu 520 and the others have extlinux 3.73.

You can install syslinux-3.73 (extlinux is a part of the syslinux package) from Puppy-common repository.
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_pac ... x-3.73.pet
Type 'extlinux --version' to confirm the version. To re-install extlinux, mount the USB (i assume it is at '/mnt/sdb1'), type 'extlinux -i /dev/sdb1'.

The grub4dos is also worth to try instead of the extlinux. I never use the Universal Installer nor syslinux/extlinux :wink:
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Karl Godt
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#8 Post by Karl Godt »

1) Use Racy 5.3 live CD to Gparted the stick.
WE ALL KNOW THAT IT IS COMMON USUS TO GPARTED THE STICK TO WHAT ?

Gparted to some weird filesystems no one knows of like vfat-18 or xjtmpfs ??

I newer used to make a boot flag and was successful . I have read that this is only needed for programs/bootloaders that explicitly look for the boot flag ..

Will check if the bootflag may cause these problems .

I boot with legacy grub from USB and SDCARD , using /usr/sbin/grub-install . Debian grub-0.97 may not support ext4 .

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greengeek
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#9 Post by greengeek »

Karl Godt wrote:WE ALL KNOW THAT IT IS COMMON USUS TO GPARTED THE STICK TO WHAT ?
Gparted to some weird filesystems no one knows of like vfat-18 or xjtmpfs ??
Karl, you are right, my first post was not clear enough. I have made some edits to make it a bit more clear.

Also, I have made some more tests in order to try to minimise the variables. (When I tried to duplicate my results with Racy53 it seemed that the symptom was slightly different than I thought)

So here are some more detailed results of my testing with Racy 53:

(Sorry that this is a bit confusing and long winded - I want to try to find exact information)

I use an 8Gb USB stick. For this test I use Gparted to create the whole stick as one Fat32 partition. I set boot and lba flags on.

1) If I boot from the Racy53 CD and use the Racy53 Gparted and universal installer to load Racy53 the USB stick will not boot my netbook. FAIL
2) If I boot from a Puppy 4.3.1 CD and use the 4.3.1 Gparted and universal installer to load 4.3.1 to the stick it will boot my netbook correctly. SUCCESS
3) If I boot from 4.3.1 CD and use Gparted to partition the stick, then use the universal installer to load 4.3.1, then boot from Racy53 CD and use the Racy53 installer to load Racy53 to the stick it boots correctly. SUCCESS
4) If I boot from Racy53 CD and use Gparted to partition the stick then boot from 4.3.1 CD and use the universal installer to install 4.3.1, then boot from the Racy53 CD and use the universal installer to load Racy53 it will not boot. FAIL (This suggests to me that there is something different about the newer version of Gparted)
5) If I boot from 4.3.1 CD and run Gparted, then shutdown (without loading 4.3.1 files), then boot from Racy53 CD and run the universal installer the stick will not boot. FAIL This suggests to me that my USB stick is only formatted correctly when it is exposed to both the 4.3.1 Gparted, and also the 4.3.1 universal installer.

There seems to be some magic in the combination of the 4.3.1 Gparted and 4.3.1 universal installer.

So the answer is this:

Use 4.3.1 to run Gparted. Use universal installer to load 4.3.1. Boot with newer Puppy CD, run the newer universal installer and install that newer Puppy and then shutdown.

I have confirmed that this works with Racy53, but it does not quite work with Saluki or Lucid 528.005. With Saluki or Lucid 528 it is necessary for me to avoid the universal installer. So, use 4.3.1 to Gparted the stick, use 4.3.1 installer to copy 4.3.1 to stick. Boot from Saluki or Lucid CD, insert and mount stick, delete 4.3.1 vmlinuz, initrd,gz and sfs files, then manually copy the Saluki or Lucid vmlinuz, initrd.gz, and the sfs files to the usb stick.

More research to follow later.

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rcrsn51
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#10 Post by rcrsn51 »

greengeek wrote:1) If I boot from the Racy53 CD and use the Racy53 Gparted and universal installer to load Racy53 the USB stick will not boot my netbook. FAIL
That is correct. If you watch closely while the Universal Installer is running, you will see the "unsafe permissions" error message. You will also see that the file ldlinux.sys is NOT written to the flash drive, so it can't boot.

This is because the folder /tmp does not have its "sticky bit" set. I don't know why syslinux cares, but you can fix it with.

Code: Select all

chmod 1777 /tmp

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greengeek
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#11 Post by greengeek »

rcrsn51 wrote:You will also see that the file ldlinux.sys is NOT written to the flash drive, so it can't boot.
This is because the folder /tmp does not have its "sticky bit" set. I don't know why syslinux cares, but you can fix it with.

Code: Select all

chmod 1777 /tmp
I have now tried this as follows:

Boot from Racy53 CD
Accept default first run setup parameters
Open terminal and type chmod 1777 /tmp
Insert 8Gb usb stick
Run Gparted and make single FAT32 partition of whole stick
Set boot and lba flags
Run universal installer
When finished, shutdown machine and wait 5 mins
Reboot machine from usb stick

Failure message is still "Missing operating system".

Attached is a shot of the contents of the usb stick (taken from Saluki which is installed on another usb stick)
Attachments
Racy53 chmod test boot fail_.jpg
(34.09 KiB) Downloaded 2386 times

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rcrsn51
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#12 Post by rcrsn51 »

Interesting. There is definitely something slightly different about your particular machine.

Reading back through your tests, I notice that you had failures with Saluki. I checked and it DOES have the /tmp permissions set correctly.

I can't see how it's a Gparted issue, which suggests that the new syslinux is causing the trouble.

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Karl Godt
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#13 Post by Karl Godt »

HaHa all this makes me feel good running Puppy 4.3.x

And why use FAT ?

I would use a linux fs ..

Hey the sell 1GB flash for under one euro !!

I really think this all new has something to do with converting permissions/filenames into the defaults : x for textfiles and 8:3 filenames (puppy_wary_5.99.999.sfs would be a ~20:3 filename for example) and mount tells

Code: Select all

DEVICE=`echo "$@" |grep -o '/dev/.*' |awk '{print $1}' |sed 's|^"||;s|"$||' |sed "s|^'||;s|'$||"`
#[ "$DEVICE" ] || { echo "Error, DEVICE not specified (correctly).";exit 1; }
func_get_fs_type(){
if [ "$DEVICE" ];then
FS_TYPE=`guess_fstype "$DEVICE"`
if [ ! "$FSTYPE" -o "$FS_TYPE" = 'unknown' ];then
FS_TYPE=`disktype "$DEVICE" |grep 'file system' |awk '{print $1}'`;fi
if [ ! "$FSTYPE" -o "$FS_TYPE" = 'unknown' ];then
FSTYPE='';fi
#bash-3.2# guess_fstype /dev/sdb1
#unknown

#/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/sdb1 type vfat
#(rw,
#relatime,
#fmask=0022,
#dmask=0022,
#codepage=cp437,
#iocharset=iso8859-1,
#shortname=mixed,
#errors=remount-ro)
echo "FS_TYPE='$FS_TYPE'"
fi
}
[ -c "$DEVICE" -o -b "$DEVICE" ] && func_get_fs_type
This is something i have put into /bin/mount to play with the mount options (if i have time)
Mount options for fat
(Note: fat is not a separate filesystem, but a common part of the
msdos, umsdos and vfat filesystems.)

blocksize=512 / blocksize=1024 / blocksize=2048
Set blocksize (default 512).

uid=value and gid=value
Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid
of the current process.)

umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are not
present). The default is the umask of the current process. The
value is given in octal.

dmask=value
Set the umask applied to directories only. The default is the
umask of the current process. The value is given in octal.

fmask=value
Set the umask applied to regular files only. The default is the
umask of the current process. The value is given in octal.

check=value
Three different levels of pickyness can be chosen:

r[elaxed]
Upper and lower case are accepted and equivalent, long
name parts are truncated (e.g. verylongname.foobar
becomes verylong.foo), leading and embedded spaces are
accepted in each name part (name and extension).

n[ormal]
Like "relaxed", but many special characters (*, ?, <,
spaces, etc.) are rejected. This is the default.

s[trict]
Like "normal", but names may not contain long parts and
special characters that are sometimes used on Linux, but
are not accepted by MS

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greengeek
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#14 Post by greengeek »

rcrsn51 wrote:Interesting. There is definitely something slightly different about your particular machine.
Yes, it is rather annoying that there can be significant differences from one machine to another. I do hope to pin this issue down a bit better though, because I suspect any other user who tries a usb install on some of the recent puppies (and using a netbook similar to mine) may have similar troubles.
And I think there would be many people who would prefer to leave the inbuilt Windows partition alone, and simply carry a usb stick with a recent puppy to boot from. (I have to run the Windows partition for work related firmware updating programmes and DOS work but use Puppy for all my other stuff)
Karl wrote:HaHa all this makes me feel good running Puppy 4.3.x
And why use FAT ?
Yes, good old 4.3.1! The reason for using Fat at the moment is this: I want to be sure that any new Puppy user can boot their netbook with Saluki, Lucid, Slacko, Nop etc etc installed to a usb stick, and leaving their windows installation untouched.

If you buy a usb stick from the store it is likely to be formatted as some version of FAT, and many people would want to simply plug it in and install Puppy. I want to make sure that this process works.

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Karl Godt
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#15 Post by Karl Godt »

I would strongliest recommend to look at this :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/files/Ext2fsd/

I have installed this driver (comes with gui) on one XP and one 7 installation and it works even to mount ext4 partitions .

ext4 is involving and i don't know if this driver supports all current ext4 parameters, but the fs creation utilities with their default values (ie mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb#) should work OK .

The gui is a little too sophisticated especially when not run at Win bootup but otherwise works great .

When this driver is installed, then there is no need for FAT !

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greengeek
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#16 Post by greengeek »

rcrsn51 wrote: There is definitely something slightly different about your particular machine.

I can't see how it's a Gparted issue, which suggests that the new syslinux is causing the trouble.
I've been starting to wonder if I can make some sort of comparison between my successfully bootable Pup431 stick and my non-booting Racy53 stick in order to pin down what is upsetting my machine.

I've been doing a bit of research about Gparted and wondering if it is not so much Gparted that is contributing - but maybe how I am using Gparted?? I now realise that partitioning utils and bootloaders are rather more complex than the simple Gparted gui might suggest. And also that there are other partitioners that do a better job of revealing problems that a user might introduce. I have been using the default Gparted parameters, but am reading that features like round-to-cylinders and round-to MiB are critical in terms of optimising performance. I am assuming that my Bios is not happy with something that the Racy53 version of Gparted and universal installer is formatting either at the hardware partition level, logical partition level, mbr, or partition table.

(I also read something about 4k boundaries being desirable on a Windows machine - I know that is of no interest here, but it is an example of the underlying complexity of getting the disk correctly setup for the specific OS).

There has to be some parameter that varies between the two sticks - and maybe the bios is expecting a "Windows-like" parameter, rather than the way Linux wants the partitioning etc to be. Maybe my bios is the faulty component - either way I would like to drill down to compare the sticks and try to gain more info.

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#17 Post by greengeek »

Karl Godt wrote:The gui is a little too sophisticated especially when not run at Win bootup but otherwise works great .
When this driver is installed, then there is no need for FAT !
Thanks. That is probably good advice for the future (although I don't like the idea of touching the windows installation...). While I am testing I think I will stick with FAT at the moment. Once I understand better what is going on I will be ready to move further forward.

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rcrsn51
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#18 Post by rcrsn51 »

Just out of curiosity, when you set up your flash drives, do you also install boot code on the MBR? I always use /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin.

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#19 Post by greengeek »

rcrsn51 wrote:Just out of curiosity, when you set up your flash drives, do you also install boot code on the MBR? I always use /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin.
No, I don't. I have only run Gparted and then relied on the universal installer to do the rest. In the case of my testing I am also trying to rely on the default choices at each step, so that I am introducing less variables (and emulating what most newcomers would do). I have received some comments recommending to use grub4dos or other methods to set up the mbr correctly, so I need to look more closely at why this is needed.

I just printed out 50 pages or so of information explaining what I haven't been doing, and various ways to get the mbr correct, so I have a bit of reading to do :-)

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do not trust universal installer

#20 Post by shinobar »

greengeek wrote:I have only run Gparted and then relied on the universal installer to do the rest.
The universal installer is the root of the problem for all puppies.
The universal installer says 'the MBR is probably OK',
shinobar wrote:But you will be surprised Puppy do not automatically install the boot loader,
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=61348
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=62476
Last edited by shinobar on Wed 09 May 2012, 03:20, edited 1 time in total.
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