Does Puppy allow manual internet connection (wired) setup?

Using applications, configuring, problems
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zeiz
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Joined: Wed 03 Oct 2012, 21:05

Does Puppy allow manual internet connection (wired) setup?

#1 Post by zeiz »

Continuing setup Puppy 2.14X on my ThinkPad 560E. The vintage machine doesn't have network card so I use Xircom pcmcia network adapter. Win98 and W2K establish connection out of box (if correct driver is in the box :))
The cat5 cable comes from ADSL modem/router with wireless. Whatever I connect the cable to it gets connected regardless particular OS :)
However Puppy says "it's not always easy..." and indeed I couldn't connect to the Internet with my vintage machine. The setup says everything is fine, the driver (xircom pcmcia) smells correctly but Dillo says: "...cannot solve www.google.com". When I'm trying to logon to the modem/router Dillo says:"Network is unreachable". Obviously I cannot ping any site. But wizard says...and icons blinks reflected in my eyes hungry for internet connection...

Internet wizard shows:

Code: Select all

inet addr: 169.254.74.40 
bcast: 169.254.255.255 
Mask: 255.255.0.0
no modem detected
ifconfig output:

Code: Select all

eth0 Link encap: Ethernet HWaddr xx:yy:zz...
     inet addr: 169.254.74.40 Bcast: 169.254.255.255 Mask: 255.255.0.0
     UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
     RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 [b]carrier:0[/b]
     collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
     RX bytes:0 (0.0B) TX bytes:0 (0.0B)

lo   Link encap: Local Loopback
     inet addr: 127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
     UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
     RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
     collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
     RX bytes:0 (0.0B) TX bytes:0 (0.0B)
resolv.conf (was empty, I added the data):

Code: Select all

nameserver 169.254.74.40
nameserver 169.254.255.255
resolv.conf.tail (I created)

Code: Select all

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 63.226.12.96
nameserver 73.3.208.251
The driver - xirc2ps_cs indeed supports my card, just checked.
What could be wrong? Maybe possible to setup somehow everything manually?

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

Why are you using Puppy 2.14? :? I'd think the latest Wary would be a better choice. It should have all the hardware drivers you'll need, plus a better network connection wizard.

To answer your question directly, Puppy does indeed connect directly to the Ethernet and to your router. That may be its strongest suit. :) However, to get connected to the Internet through your router may require some fiddling with the settings in your router. I'd say that if Windows could connect through the router, then Puppy should be able to do it with no problem. But in any case, try a later version of Puppy.

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L18L
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Re: Does Puppy allow manual internet connection (wired) setup?

#3 Post by L18L »

... deleted
take Flash's advice :)

zeiz
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Joined: Wed 03 Oct 2012, 21:05

#4 Post by zeiz »

Many thanks guys for responding.
I used to try Wary 5.3 and it didn't start. Just in case I tried again right now and it's all the same:
Searching for Puppy files.....puppy_wary_5.3.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial ramdisk console...
The file exists in C:\ as instructed, its name is exactly "puppy_wary_5.3.sfs", I even made a defrag of the drive this time... and it's still not found.
Exactly the same happens even with 2.17 and only 2.14X boots normally.

The machine in question is 96-97 IBM ThinkPad 560E, very cute laptop with P166(mmx), 80Gb ram (it's max) and 2Gb hard drive. It has pcmcia slots type2 16bit and none other removable media. I tried pcmcia2usb adapters and it doesn't work, probably because of 16bit bus.
I'm trying to be realistic: the machine is quite old so no miracles expected...
Used to read a thread where somebody wanted to have modern desktop on P100 machine and was asking what linux distro could serve his goal. Imho the best distro recommended was Gazolinux: just pоur it on the top and fire a match...
The guy who gave me away the laptop with Win95 said: "It's useless long ago: no internet, no office, no cdrom, no usb, no way to install something...it's just a typewriter: type in Wordpad and print through parallel port."
I got w2k on it (now back to win98SE), office suite, internet/network and I even got Puppy on it running as fast as win98. The laptop is fully usable now, practically usable, I'm not about beauty of modern browsers rendering tons of commercials.
But with K-Meleon (and I believe with Dillo too) I can check e-mail, download files, get info from the Internet. Even some business work could be done from it.

So I only need the Internet on Puppy...Why not?
The driver is correct.
Win98/W2K connect like 123.
Any OS I tried before connects with the same cable/router.

The problem seems in Puppy configuration.
So the driver is fine, the interface was found...what else? Only ip/dns/host/domain configuration remains.
I could assign static IP for this machine but what's wrong with DHCP?
I never had problems with resolv.conf file so I'm not sure is it normal if it's empty or it's a trouble.
There are also other related files in /etc: hostname, hosts, host.conf.
How the files from working system look like?
Thanks again.

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Flash
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#5 Post by Flash »

I really can't help you with connecting to the Internet. I just don't know much about it. I've never needed to learn because Puppy always connects without any problem. I think we should work on getting Wary 5.3 to work in your computer. First of all, have you created a swap partition? With only 80 MB of RAM, you'll need a swap partition of at least 256 MB on the hard disk drive.

How did you install Puppy 2.14? For that matter, how did you install W2k without a CD drive?

zeiz
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#6 Post by zeiz »

Thanks for your help, Flash!
I pulled the hdd out of laptop and plugged it into desktop machine to prepare, format and copy win98/w2k installation files. Then replugged into laptop, boot to dos and ran setup.
For puppy I did simple frugal install first and then ran installer to make full install to ext2 partition. Currently I have:
hda1, fat16 - win98+office97+frugal puppy ~1.2Gb (puppy files with 64Mb save file = about 200Mb)
hda2, ext2 - puppy full -660Mb
hda3, swap -80Mb
I still keep frugal puppy because I actually don't see any difference in behavior between frugal puppy and full puppy so I'm thinking to simply delete full install, resize hda1 to full disk and have more space. But not sure yet.
Small hdd is a huge problem and I couldn't find 4-5Gb hdd so far: they recycle right away all hdds which are smaller than 20Gb. For me they found 30Gb but bios doesn't see that drive at all.
Another problem is old bios v.1.04. Last one (1.13) allows disks up to 8Gb and newer hdds so I would probably able to see 8Gb out of 30 but ibm flash utility requires fully charged battery to run but such a battery is sweet dreams nowadays. BTW I have an idea to try linux flash utility to update the bios.
Moreover the latest bios also provides full support for w2k: at the moment I can run w2k with office2K but the installation creates enormous fragmentation, I need to defrag after each session otherwise it runs too sluggish. That's why I'm back to win98SE for now.

As to Wary 5.3 I of course would be happy to run latest version (I do started with it) but besides cpu-kernel incompatibility (I'm guessing it's the reason why "not found") I'm afraid that modern puppy would run very slow (if at all) on my ancient machine.
Besides I believe it's great learning experience to setup internet on puppy manually.
If I could take a look at those puppy files (hostname, host.conf, hosts, resolv.conf) from a working system I would try to figure out what should I have in my setup. I tried Ubuntu files as samples but no luck. Could you show me your files?

zeiz
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#7 Post by zeiz »

PS. Running now Wary5.3 from LiveCD on another laptop, also not too young but it has cdrom, usb2.0, wifi, P5(centrino) 1.7Ghz, 512Mb ram and 30Gb hdd. It is Dell D800.
Puppy runs amazingly, I would say it's a rocket puppy. No problem with wired, wireless WPA - all work like a charm, just great nothing more to say... yeah...but this laptop runs XP sp3 and ubuntu 10.04. It doesn't run Ubuntu 12.04, Mageia2 and Fedora17 but it runs win7 though not really great perhaps because of only 32Mb of video ram. So... this is not a retireе but still on-duty laptop :)

I just checked those files: resolv.conf, hosts, host.conf, hostname here and they are the same as I have on TP-560E...thus still no clue :(

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Flash
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#8 Post by Flash »

Well, I'm out of my depth trying to work with such an old computer and so little RAM. Here's an article from 2007 by some guy who put Slackware Linux on a laptop like yours. Maybe what he did could be adapted to Puppy. There's a link at the bottom of the page to a company which replaces the cells in your battery. They seem to still be in business.

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greengeek
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#9 Post by greengeek »

Hi zeiz, the IP address your laptop is picking up shows that it is not successfully negotiating a dhcp connection with your router. This might be a mismatch between the firmware/design of the router, and the particular dhcpcd code that Puppy is running.

I had exactly that problem with puppy 2.14 and did not know how to get past it. Unfortunately I did not get any replies when I mentioned it here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... start=4622 and here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... start=4286

If that is the problem I would suggest trying some other puppies around that same vintage, as not all of them had the same issue. I would also suggest trying pUPnGO_2012 which is available here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=78941
It is very lightweight, so might be worth a go just to see if it will run on that laptop - but it is quite different to other puppies so really only useful to test the link to the router via linux. (pupngo is a work in progress, but surprisingly good in terms of it's inbuilt drivers. The wired connection to the router seemed to work automatically on my hardware without running any wizard)

I will try to identify some other small pups that might be worth a try - but be aware that 80Mb won't let you do much in terms of websurfing with a modern browser.

EDIT:
Here are a few suggestions that might run on your low ram lappy and hopefully connect to your router:
Pulp 0.02 (I found this was good with xircoms...)
http://flusslinie.wordpress.com/2009/04 ... ht-puplet/
(after downloading rename the file by removing the .doc suffix and replacing it with .iso)
or Pulp 0.3 (supposed to be faster than 0.02)
http://flusslinie.files.wordpress.com/2 ... lp_003.doc

meanpup
http://www.my-plan.org/storage/puppyLinux/

Barelypup (and some others)
http://puppyisos.org/isos/2007-01-to-06/
(uname=puppy, pw=linux)

I also started a topic once looking for small isos that could be burnt to a credit card cd. A small iso is not necessarily any guarantee of good ram usage, but there are links on that topic to lots of older pups that might be of interest (including Catdude's links to quite a collection):
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=76562
Last edited by greengeek on Sat 13 Oct 2012, 05:51, edited 1 time in total.

cthisbear
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Location: Sydney Australia

#10 Post by cthisbear »

The problem is that the IBM model had no network
and I checked...and that is right.

so he's put in a Xircom card.

Better if he gave us the model name..

Might be too newer for older Puppies.

++++++++++

Puppy 2.14X???....which version....there are 10

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=42553

Version 5 was pretty good I thought.

http://puppylinux.info/topic/the-origin ... x-an-intro

""""""

Script to find correct PCMCIA module

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=25782

" 2) Xircom credicard Ethernet IIps:

not detected by script and still not working in Dingo after
manually loading xirc2ps_cs.

But automatically detected and working in 3.01 (Muppy008)."

"""""

Why not try Puppy 2.15CE...might be a goer

puppy-215CE-Final.iso 14-Apr-2007 19:47 132M

http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/puppyli ... -Final.iso


FireHydrant

FH301RetroLiteV2.iso 14-Sep-2010 03:18 76M

http://smokey01.com/ttuuxxx/FireHydrant/


MicroMuppy002

http://puppylinuxstuff.meownplanet.net/ ... ppy002.iso


Muppy-Embryo-008...43mbs??

http://puppylinuxstuff.meownplanet.net/ ... 8.3-EN.iso

Muppy008.4c/English/Mini

http://puppyisos.org/isos/Muppy008.4c/English/Mini/

:::::::

Handy Puppy sites.

http://www.puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppySites
Chris.

zeiz
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Joined: Wed 03 Oct 2012, 21:05

#11 Post by zeiz »

WOW! Guys, many thanks for your help!
Obviously it will take some time to try all of that, I'll update how it's going.
In meantime I tried: 215CE, 301, 412png - neither works.
215 is still bootable but it installs with tons of errors and then preX environment doesn't work (but should) and X - oh, just tears: looks like support for ISA was dropped in this version.
With 2 others same old song: pup_whatever.sfs not found. Drop...
BTW what it really means: not found?
On the other hand I still use the same lines in menu.lst:

Code: Select all

title Puppy...
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/puppy#/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd PDEV1=hda1 psubdir=boot/puppy#
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/puppy#/inird.gz
boot
May be I supposed to change that for newer versions?

I also tried slitaz-3.0-lowram. It runs (X - out of box!) but very slow and also doesn't do networking, even worse: only "lo" in ifconfig output that means no driver loaded and ... no tools to load. I could try slitaz forums ...but it runs really really slow far from how 214 runs.

Flash, I read that article when its links weren't broken yet. The guy had machine even worse than mine. His prices are too high, I can buy for half and cheaper, however I cannot see any sense to invest some tangible money in this vintage machine.
But the main idea is good. I used to assemble FreeBSD that way. So why not to try Slackware, Debian or Gentoo (I heard it's closest to FreeBSD) and then add packages or even compile some... The problem is I played with FreeBSD having enough space on hdd to rebuild kernels and userland and I had networking and cdrom :))
Anyway thanks for reminding me the idea.

Greengeek, it seems you are right and this only make the problem worse: I could be unable to fix it without a developer's help.
But in you first post (that was hijacked :evil: ) somebody sounds like a developer promised to fix problems with update soon. Since it was a year ago the update should be done. So...it wasn't?

Cthisbear, the model is Xircom RealPort 10/100 Ethernet Card (RE100).
As to what exactly 2.14 .... it's a good question! I'm sure it was Top10 and now I went to check...
When I got my first problem with X a user bigpup, thanks him a lot, advised me to try 2.14X. I followed his link and downloaded 2.14Top10, as I expect it's the latest update.
Somehow only now I noticed that that thread has 323 pages and I took download from the first one! Can it be if it was instead the oldest Top10?
I also noticed that there a many "pets" in the tread and I didn't pay attention to that! What if one of them can fix my problem?
But most amazing...
In my post I wrote that managed to boot 2.17.1 but got X problem...
I just cannot believe this: I forgot that I boot 2.17.1! But I tried then and I couldn't boot it anymore! I'm really confused... looks I must read all the 323 pages + try 2.17.1 again.

zeiz
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Joined: Wed 03 Oct 2012, 21:05

#12 Post by zeiz »

Good news: I booted 2.17.1 (frugal) and it got connected!
I'm typing from the laptop!
Now I got a chance to try fixing 2.14...working...please wait...

No, no luck :(

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greengeek
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#13 Post by greengeek »

zeiz wrote:With 2 others same old song: pup_whatever.sfs not found. Drop...BTW what it really means: not found?
That means that the bootloader could not locate the puppy files where it was expecting them. Can be caused by a spelling mistake in a file name or folder name usually. Or maybe the files are in a totally different folder.
On the other hand I still use the same lines in menu.lst:

Code: Select all

title Puppy...
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/puppy#/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd PDEV1=hda1 psubdir=boot/puppy#
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/puppy#/inird.gz
boot
Looks like a spelling mistake in that last line "inird.gz" - is that a direct copy from the menu.lst or just a forum typo?
the model is Xircom RealPort 10/100 Ethernet Card (RE100).
Have you tried the "Pulp" puppies I mentioned? On my CD of Pulp 0.02 I had written a note that it worked well with Xircom pcmcia cards - so just might be worth another try.
As to what exactly 2.14 .... it's a good question! I'm sure it was Top10 and now I went to check...
Somehow only now I noticed that that thread has 323 pages and I took download from the first one! Can it be if it was instead the oldest Top10?
Top10 is the newest. The developer (ttuuxxx) updates the first post each time he releases a new one.

Good luck, I hope you find a puppy that boots and connects consistently.

zeiz
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#14 Post by zeiz »

Not so good so far...
217 refused to connect after I tried to fix 214. The files vmlinuz and initrd.gz (it was a typo, sorry) are located in different directories for each release under /boot but all the .sfs file are altogether in root so I'm afraid that some correlation may take place. I removed now everything and start over with freshly extracted files. I started again with sol wary5.3: "puppy_wary_5.3.sfs not found" again.

"Not found" problem (the words perhaps should be written on my tombstone :)) is about .sfs files. Those files are supposed to be in root (?) and there they are.
Indeed some of them are extracted with names in upper case or first letter in upper case... puppy_wary_5.3.sfs even was extracted as "Puppy_war.sfs" so I always rename them.
I do .iso extraction in win98 with WinRar and this bothers me a bit on the other hand I cannot pull hdd each time for each version: I would finally make the hdd (or cable that is worse) unusable...
So I do download and extraction on XP machine and transfer files with crossover network cable to win98 on that laptop.
Anyway I know that sometimes extracting tool matters...this still bothers me. Also...maybe windows renames somehow incorrectly?
This is very weird: I'm checking naming and location and lines in menu.lst every time and still "not found"
BTW when I tried DSL-4.4.10 (2008) it also couldn't find "Knoppix" that is analog to sfs file in Puppy.

I downloaded pulp003.doc and renamed it to iso. Of course I'll try it and report.
Right now I'll try pUPnGO again: I like what I saw about it.
Thank you very much for your attention.

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greengeek
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#15 Post by greengeek »

zeiz wrote:The files vmlinuz and initrd.gz (it was a typo, sorry) are located in different directories for each release under /boot but all the .sfs file are altogether in root
Not all .sfs are treated the same. The one "main" sfs for each version of puppy needs to go INSIDE the subfolder along with the initrd.gz and vmlinux for the puppy. (I have attached a pic of my first hard drive, showing all the different subfolders that hold the various puppies I use. You can see that the special .sfs files for other programs live OUTSIDE of the subfolders.
Indeed some of them are extracted with names in upper case or first letter in upper case... puppy_wary_5.3.sfs even was extracted as "Puppy_war.sfs" so I always rename them.
I do .iso extraction in win98 with WinRar and this bothers me a bit
Yes, this does sound a bit odd. Hopefully you will be able to end up with the right outcome somehow.

I have also attached a pic showing the contents inside my Pulp03 folder (you will not have the .2fs savefile yet...).

Here is a section of the code inside my /boot/menu.lst file:

Code: Select all

title Puppy Pulp03 frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /Pulp03/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=Pulp03 nosmp pfix=fsck
initrd /Pulp03/initrd.gz

title Puppy Akita8 frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /akita/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=akita nosmp pfix=fsck
initrd /akita/initrd.gz
Attachments
sda1 contents.jpg
Contents of sda1 showing various "frugal" subfolders and the other program .sfs outside
(53.99 KiB) Downloaded 795 times
Pulp3 contents.jpg
Contents of Pulp3 subfolder
(20.9 KiB) Downloaded 795 times

zeiz
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#16 Post by zeiz »

Beautiful! Greengeek, what kind of machine it is?

Well in meantime I tried: wary5.3, pUPnGO412, pulp_03, puppy3.01. All clean, all extracted with Linux's Archive Manager, all lowcase, correct names.
All of them "not found" their respective .sfs files. pulp_03 "not found" pup_412.sfs though expected pup_412pulp.sfs. Tried to rename but didn't help.
With pupngo I tried to copy "invisible" file also to ext2 partition - no luck.
With puppy301 I copied the file into /boot i.e next to vmlinuz and initrd.gz. No luck.

Finally I installed 2.17.1 and thought it's enough for now. However it is not.
The internet connection lasts for just a few minutes. Maybe SeaMonkey is too heavy? I decided to download Dillo. And...I couldn't wget 261K! The download starts with high speed and then crashes down to 0. No more connection unless reboot. After reboot connection lasts for few minutes: enough to ping router, google.com, open Google, Distrowatch...then stop.
But if download - just few seconds and stop.
One session it stated again for a minute but then stopped completely.
In that session I pinged: 80% loss, 50%, 31%, 0%, 50%,62%...just crazy.
It looks like my router just heavily disrespect Puppy... like some people indeed disrespect puppies :lol:
So... I've never seen something like this. Ok, dead is dead, I understand, that happens but start (after reboot!), then "notice puppy" and shut down the connection?... :shock:
Overheating? No, it's uncovered and it's not hot, usually it could be hotter,
Anyway other apps run fine.
But windows is welcome: I used to live it on for hours, downloads up to 40 minutes - no problem....damn!
If I had "winrouter" I would complain 3 year ago: 90% time I work in Lunux...
Dunno what to think.

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greengeek
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#17 Post by greengeek »

Hi zeiz, It is a Toshiba TE2100 laptop. I used to use lots of the smaller, older laptops (mostly Toshiba) but I got very mixed results when trying different puppies, so I stick with this machine now.

Do you have access to a machine which you could boot from a live cd? I feel like there must be something wrong with the basic setup of the files on your thinkpad HDD. I think it should be working something like this:

Fit Thinkpad HDD to another machine which has a CD drive.
Boot 2.17 from live CD and at the boot prompt enter puppy pfix=ram
Run Gparted and check that the Thinkpad HDD is formatted the way you want.
Run the puppy universal installer (choose frugal), but don't choose the "keep mbr" setting - instead choose the syslinux "mbr.bin" option.
Run the Grub installer to the Thinkpad HDD

Is that the method you are using?

If you don't want to use the universal installer you can just make a folder on the HDD called pup217 (or something) and put the 3 puppy files into it. Then run Grub installer and make sure the folder names etc are correct. I would recommend leaving all the program .sfs files off at the moment till you get the basic files and grub setup ok.
With puppy301 I copied the file into /boot i.e next to vmlinuz and initrd.gz. No luck.
Those files should not be in the /boot folder for a frugal install. Just in their own folder (whatever name you choose...). The /boot folder is where the grub folder should be.

zeiz
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#18 Post by zeiz »

Tecra TE2100? Oh, this is 4-th generation after my retiree :))
I used to have Thinkpads :) My first was TP 380 but I sold (overseas) it in 1 year with good profit. Then I got TP i1452 with Celeron366, 64Mb ram and 4Gb hdd. This one served me up to 2008! I believe I upgraded memory to 256Mb and I'm sure I ran XP on it with full Office2003, adobe CS and bunch of other soft. Unfortunately I lost it (also overseas) so my first profit has returned to God :)
This TP 560E wasn't mine as I wrote but I remember what money did it costs when I was buying TP 380. While looking inside it's just amazing how much money they did that time on such a primitive aggregate...
I mostly work with desktops and they are mine: I used to buy only first one then I opened it and then I only buy parts so for the same money I have 3 times better hardware :wink:

Well in details I did the following:
Assuming I already pulled hdd, plug it in desktop machine, zeroed everything (and mbr) with zap63 (just in case) and dd (I used PartedMagic), partitioned and formated ext2 and swap partitions. First partition for win98 I formated with "format c: /s" using old win95 CD (it appear as A:\>), copied win98SE installation files to a folder on c:, replug to laptop boot to dos prompt and installed win98. Having win98 I got access to network and then transferred files from another laptop with crossover cable. Since another laptop got working wireless I finally setup networking to connect with regular cat5 cable to network and access the second laptop filled with files.
Then I did:
1. Copied (from grub4dos) grub.exe and menu.lst to C:\
2. Edited C:\config.sys (empty by default) to look like this:

Code: Select all

[menu]
menuitem=WINDOWS, Windows98
menuitem=GRUB, Puppy Linux
menudefault=WINDOWS,10
menucolor=7,0

[GRUB]
install=grub.exe

[WINDOWS]
3. Copied vmlinuz and initrd.gz to /boot (or /boot/try when tried various versions)
4. Copied both pup_xxxx.sfs and zdrv_xxx.sfs to root C:\
(here as I wrote I tried to place pup_xxxx.sfs also to /boot/try together with vmlinuz and initrd.gz)
5. Edited menu.lst to look like this:

Code: Select all

color white/dark-gray yellow/black
timeout=5
default=0
title Puppy Linux 217 full install on hda2
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 PMEDIA=idehd
boot
title Puppy Linux 217 frugal on hda1
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEIDA=idehd PDEV1=hda1 psubdir=boot
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.gz
boot
title Puppy Linux CurrentTry frugal on hda1
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/try/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEIDA=atahd PDEV1=hda1 psubdir=boot/try
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/try/initrd.gz
boot
title Default Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot
For "tries" I tried pmedia=idehd and atahd - no difference noted.
This menu.lst I corrected also in e3 during boot because notepad.exe placed too many extra dots/periods, I just deleted them.
That's it about frugal install.

To make full install on hdd I booted frugal install and ran universal installer pointing to hda2(ext2).
When asked about grub I chose
a) "update" when installing 214x and then picked the line to edit C:\menu.lst
b) "install" (no "update" option in 2.17.1) when installing 2.17.1 (2.17 didn't boot) to install it on mbr so I do have now grub1 installed on mbr and it's files in (hd0,1)/boot/grub (including its menu.lst).
I should mention here that during grub setup the installer made a backup of windows mbr that is handy. Windows was detected correctly so I only edited timeout (30 sec to 5) and "DOS" by default to "Window98".
No booting problem with 2.14xT10 and 2.17.1 installations.

When I just started playing with Puppy I did perhaps what you wrote:
I installed Wary5.3 (full install on ext2) to that hdd and replugged it to the laptop. The result was as expected: no boot because hardware is quite different. So I wiped everything with exemption of /boot/grub/*
That time knowing nothing about grub4dos I just tried to make my hdd bootable by grub (without windoze) to install then puppy from hdd (from files copied to hdd).
I'm guessing that Puppy live CD always boots to ram so I don't understand "pfix=ram".
The idea to boot having only barebond kernel and initial ram disk is good but diring booting kernel is looking for (and cannot find) pup_xxxx.sfs files, that were available. Would kernel behavior change if there are no such files at all? A assume that the function to find pup_xxx.fsf file and stop if not found is in the kernel and something else should be added to kernel line before boot. Something like "nosfs" :)
Again: grub's job is to boot kernel then it's done. If grub cannot find something is sends "Error 15: not found" in plain white on black.
What I see on screen is "extracting/unlzmaing...ok, booting kernel... installing drivers to access hdd (green OK) and then suddenly infamous "not found" in red. It's not grub. It's either kernel or more likely the installer.
Some tweaky switches could exist to ride a kernel or/and the installer but I don't know them as I don't know where kernel or installer is looking for .sfs files. In howtos I was told that they must be in root (frugal install) and the universal installer (full install) is asking for the files location. Perhaps Puppy version also matters.

I could try with syslinux mbr.bin but since it's "big deal" (I also can loose win98+office97+other soft) I'd like to ask what actually the advantage is of using syslinux's mbr.bin since as I know the syslinux is used to boot usb not hdd?

PS. I just tried pulp_003 again with all 3 files in c:\boot\try

Code: Select all

..uncompressing Linux ... OK
Booting kernel.
Loading kernel drivers needed to access disk drives...    done (green)
Searching for Puppy files in computer disk drives... pup_412.sfs not found. Dropping to initial-ramdisk console...(red)
/bin/sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
#
Indeed there is no such file but pup_412pulp.sfs instead. Let's try to rename... no luck. Let's try to move renamed file to root...no luck. Let's try to rename the file back in root...no luck. That's it.
Nonetheless I have 2.17.1 frugal and full install and they work great except networking. As I wrote the issue is incredibly weird at least I've never seen that ever. Perhaps it somehow connected with damn old bios. Probably I'll buy the battery for $30 (with no beer for a month :))

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greengeek
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#19 Post by greengeek »

zeiz wrote:I'm guessing that Puppy live CD always boots to ram so I don't understand "pfix=ram".
Yes, puppy boots from CD to ram, but the ram files will be altered if there is any puppy savefile available. If you set pfix=ram at boot time, the ram files will remain "pure" as they were on the CD. (If you have no savefiles anywhere you don't need pfix=ram but I find it is a good precaution to use it initially because otherwise puppy is smart enough to find the files on other devices other than your HDD - like if a usb stick was left plugged in - even though the machine may not be capable of usb boot the savefile still affects the puppy behaviour)
I could try with syslinux mbr.bin but since it's "big deal" (I also can loose win98+office97+other soft) I'd like to ask what actually the advantage is of using syslinux's mbr.bin since as I know the syslinux is used to boot usb not hdd?
I think you should ignore my advice because you know more than I do :-)
I don't use dual booting with both Win and puppy, so my methods won't be much use I'm afraid. Sorry I didn't realise you were keeping the Win98.

All I can suggest is to boot a different laptop from a live CD of puppy 2.17 and see if it seems compatible with your router. (The problem could still be to do with the dhcpcd version in that puppy...). Once you get acceptable performance on 2.17 you can have confidence in it and maybe copy some files from that computer back to the TP. (and I guess use the xircom in the other bootable laptop too, so that it is all proven compatible).
Last edited by greengeek on Mon 15 Oct 2012, 18:55, edited 1 time in total.

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greengeek
Posts: 5789
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2010, 09:34
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#20 Post by greengeek »

The idea to boot having only barebond kernel and initial ram disk is good but diring booting kernel is looking for (and cannot find) pup_xxxx.sfs files, that were available. Would kernel behavior change if there are no such files at all?
The pup_xxx.sfs is a very important file, and it has to be exactly where the initrd.gz expects it to be (or where you tell the initrd.gz to find it...). I believe that the "psubdir=xxx" parameter is important here. However, I can't offer helpful advice because the "pupmode" you are using seems different to what I have used. (Pupmode refers to what device is storing the pup files, where the savefile is, whether to run in ram etc etc etc - there are forum topics that clarify this).
The main thing is that you cannot run without the pup_xxx.sfs - it must have exactly the right name, and be in exactly the right place, then magic - it will boot ok.
I hope some of the other pup users will recognise the method of dual booting you are using and be able to clarify where to put the pup_xxx.sfs and what to put in the menu.lst.
(also - each pup_xxx.sfs only works with it's own version of vmlinuz and initrd.gz - although the names are identical the contents are different. You already know that I guess)

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