Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[niftyprose]

Hi chaps, first post. Many thanks to everyone involved with Puppy -- having spent a fair bit of time messing with both Slitaz and Tiny Core, I'm very impressed with Puppy's competence out of the box.

i. I downloaded the ISO for a 5.2.8 live CD, and used it to make a Puppy-based USB stick (Kingston 8GB) for my neck chain. I've successfully customised it with a few add-ons and have used it to run a netbook and a Toshiba portable, so I know it's working.

My office workstation is a big dual-processor box which I bought about ten years ago. It was designed as a webserver, and I had it built up with a RAID array for data security. The RAID is Adaptec and formerly supported a dual-boot (NT/Fedora) OS; last year I did a by-the-book reinstall with Lubuntu only. Lubuntu is working well but I'd like to be able to boot off the Puppy stick in case of emergency.

I can't get the Puppy stick to boot the workstation. I'm guessing that this is to do with Puppy's relationship with RAID and the way the RAID driver software handles booting, but I'm short on specialist knowledge here and don't know what I should be looking for.

Can you tell me where to start my enquiries?

ii. I made up the first 'default' version of the Puppy stick on the workstation, and it wouldn't boot anything -- not even Gill's Toshiba, which is a very standard Satellite laptop. I then rebuilt the Puppy stick on the workstation in 'superfloppy' mode, and it has worked fine since. Does this indicate that Puppy couldn't find the files it needed on the workstation, or is the creation of a startup disk independent of the host computer?

Best, W.

[bigpup]

[niftyprose]

Hi BigPup, thanks for the response. I'll try to make my query unambiguous this time.

Background:

1. I downloaded Puppy 5.2.8 ISO.

2. I made a live CD using a slow burn rate.

3. I booted the RAID workstation from it.

4. I made a 'puppy stick' USB startup disk on the RAID workstation with the universal installer.

5. This first 'puppy stick' failed to boot any computers, so...

6. I tried again using 'superfloppy' mode. The resulting 'puppy stick' works well on several different computers, but still won't boot the RAID workstation.

So, my question is: I have this working 'puppy stick' USB boot disk which will start most computers, but not my Fairchild RAID workstation. As per my first post, I suspect the problem is between the Fairchild's Adaptec ageing RAID driver and the USB. I find the Fairchild -- one of the ones built on the Tyan Tomcat board -- excellently fast, stable and secure, so don't want to replace it. What is my best line of attack in trying to update the Fairchild to support USB bootup?

Best, W.

[bigpup]

[niftyprose]

HI BigPup, thanks again for the suggestions. I know a bit about boot settings in BIOS in general, have even managed to update BIOS (but it was on a non-RAID system years ago). I was after specific advice on booting issues in RAID, especially Adaptec. Any resources you can point me towards, or should I just start with Tyan and work in an Adaptec direction? Best, W.

[bigpup]

Does the bios have specific options to boot from USB?

I am confused.

[niftyprose]

Hi BigPup, you got it.. The RAID workstation boots happily from a Puppy LiveCD but not from a Puppy USB stick made from the same CD. The USB stick boots several other computers so the issue is somewhere between the USB stick and the RAID workstation. I don't kinow enough about the Adaptec BIOS to tell what the problem is likely to be, and I arrived at the forum looking for specific advice on that Thanks for the suggestions at the bottom of your letter. If this reply prompts any further, more specific suggestions on your part I'll gladly listen, otherwise I'll update when I've sorted it. Best, W.

[rcrsn51]

@niftyprose: I don't believe that you have ever actually stated how your USB boot goes wrong. Does the BIOS fail to detect the flash drive? Does it get part way along and fail?

I doubt if this is a USB vs RAID issue. As bigpup has suggested, this is very likely a USB vs BIOS issue. Many old machines won't boot directly off a flash drive and there is nothing you can do about it.

What is your objective - to use the flash drive because it is faster?

[niftyprose]

Hi rcrsn51, thanks for the follow-up.

The objective of the 'puppy stick' is to be able to carry a complete work/recovery environment (networking, skype, text editors, office suite, browser) on a neckchain. It's working pretty well with all the computers I can test it on but not my own much-loved workstation, which is irksome.

The result of plugging the Puppy stick into the workstation is that Lubuntu startup is delayed, presumably while the system tries and fails to boot Puppy. After ~15 seconds, Lubuntu kicks in as normal from the RAID disks.

As is probably apparent from my posts, I've little hands-on with RAID and the specialized BIOS it requires. My early research on the Adaptec site suggests that I may be able to update the BIOS. Whether this would give USB support is presently unclear. Any hints or practical experience from people using older Adaptec with Puppy would be welcome.

Best, W.

[rcrsn51]

Here is something to try. With the flash drive plugged in, boot off the CD. At the short initial pause, type:

[maik.murks]

Hi niftyprose.

Maybe I‘m wrong but from my point of view I don‘t think that your problem with your USB stick that don‘t like to boot your workstation has anything to do with your build-in RAID configuration, because a hardware RAID controller like the one your have from Adaptec should give all informations transparently to the overlying operating system and vice versa. That means, that the running operating system shouldn‘t know anything of the configuration of your RAID array, no matter if you are driving a RAID level 5 or level 1 or level 0 for example. That said, you should be able to simply run a Puppy from your harddisk array, too.

The Adaptec RAID controller should connect itself into your system via a special BIOS extension. Since the RAID mimic should only look to harddisks and has nothing to do with your USB stick, it makes perhaps more sense to take a look into the BIOS of the PC and not into the BIOS of the RAID controller.

Maybe you have 2 chances to get into a BIOS while your PC is comming up. The first chance should be a keystroke like <DEL> or <F2> or whatever to get into the BIOS of the PC - The second chance is probably a keystroke like <CTRL-A> or something like that to get into the BIOS of the Adaptec.

Try to search for boot sequence within the BIOS of the PC and try to change the order: 1-USB, 2-CD, 3-Harddisk.

If you don‘t have an entry that let you boot from USB, your machine seemes to be too old to boot from USB directly.

If so, don‘t be sad - there is another way in form of some medicine, you have to give to your PC - and then, if your PC likes the medicine, you‘ll be able to boot your old workstation via USB.

The medicine.

Google 'Plop Bootmanager', should be somewhere in Austria and download the newest Plop archive.
Extract the file 'plpbt.bin' and copy it for example to the first partition of the first harddisk into the directory '/plop' of your workstation.
Assuming you habe GRUB legacy or GRUB4DOS installed, here are to examples for entries in the 'menu.lst'. This first example gives you the menu of Plop where you can choose booting via USB. The second example boots off USB directly without showing a menu.

GRUB entry example 1 for menu.lst:

title [Start PLOP with MENU]
root (hd0,0)
kernel /plop/plpbt.bin

GRUB entry example 2 for menu.lst:

title [Boot USB via PLOP without MENU]
root (hd0,0)
kernel /plop/plpbt.bin hiddenusb

In case that you like to test the functionality of Plop before copying 'plpbt.bin' to your harddisk: Somewhere on the Plop website there should be a small iso file with Plop for download. You can burn that iso to a CD - boot your workstation with the burned Plop CD - and fire up your USB stick by choosing USB from the Plop menu.

Finally, not every PC likes the Plop medicine - but from 8 PCs I‘ve tested there was only 1 in the end which really don‘t like Plop.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Maik.Murks

[niftyprose]

Hi everyone,

This is a blanket 'thanks' to everyone who replied to my initial posts.

I'm away from work, and have just learned that I will have very limited Internet access over the next few day. I won't be able to try the fixes suggested or make any detailed response for about one week.

I'll return to the issue when I get back, and I will attempt some kind of detailed followup after then. Thanks again and good luck with all Puppy projects...

Best W.