Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[linuph]

With 'combo-boot' I mean:
- Puppy is installed (frugal) on the harddisk
- there's a (remastered) liveCD in the drive bay
On boot from the CD, do nothing. Let Puppy start (no F2/pfix=ram). Puppy comes up with personal files and asks to choose one, e.g.:

0 none
1 sda1 lupusave.2fs
2 sda1 lupusave-1.2fs
3 sda1 /lupu52805/lupusave.2fs

Any choice results in a kernel panic when Puppy tries to perform a 'switch root' to the layered filesystem.
Next I fired up Puppy with pfix=ram and checked the lupusave files. I found that both sda1 lupusave-1.2fs and sda1 /lupu528005/lupusave.2fs were reported as being used by the system. Apparently, Puppy doesn't care, because it is running in RAM? However, a combo-boot leads to a kernel panic. I do not know what happens with a combo-boot and a full installed Puppy.
A boot from HD is no problem.

[bigpup]

To make sure you are using proper command.

To not use save file when booting a live Puppy CD:
boot option is puppy pfix=ram

[linuph]

Thanks for your reply, bigpup.
I see this not so much as a problem. I know now what (not) to do. It is more an observation of "what happens if" driven by remaster problems (see my post [/http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=79175].
In the above case, one can choose one of the alternative save files, or none. In the latter case Puppy should happily start up from CD without regard of any save file it has found. Except when there is a save file on the CD. It is then a liveCD. If there is no save file on the CD, it's an "installCD".
If a save file is chosen, a sanity check should be done if the save file suits the CD. If not, a message like "Incompatible save file" or the like should display. The user can then try again or cancel. There should not be a crash.

A correct fool-proof handling of save files would open the possibility of running the same, original distro with different setups on different computers with no need to remaster.

Can Windows or OSX do that? Nope. Puppy would be ideal....just my idea.

[Sylvander]

Is there an un-matched SFS file sitting beside a pupsave file that has been chosen?
Musn't be so.
Any SFS file sitting beside the pupsave must not be an imperfect match.

[linuph]

These were the choices offered:

0 none
1 sda1 lupusave.2fs /mnt/home --> original liveCD
2 sda1 lupusave-1.2fs /mnt/home --> customized1
3 sda1 /lupu52805/lupusave.2fs /mnt/home/lupusave528005 customized2

[Sylvander]

Yes, but...

Did you ever copy the SFS file from the optical disk to sit [in the same folder] beside one or more of the 3 lupusave files?

If you did that, and then [for example, you] changed to using an updated version of the live Puppy optical disk, you have trouble.

[linuph]

Good question.....I only used lupu5.2.8-005 on a freshly partitioned HD. I will try out again from a clean install....later.

[linuph]

It seems that my HD is dying...this could be/probably is why Puppy can't find save files and/or they are unreadable/corrupted. I will not further go into this untill I have e new HD. I consider it "solved" until then.