Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 - Updated ISO Version 005 - APR 05 2012

A home for all kinds of Puppy related projects
Message
Author
User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2181 Post by bigpup »

otropogo,
Damn! I forgot Gparted doesn't work in Puppy any more...
Works OK for me.
Explain?

With all the save files you seem to have.
Very important they each have a specific unique name.
If you have more than one with the same name, it could be causing some of your problems.
Even a copy of a save file should be given a specific name.
Better yet give it a name that has nothing to do with lupusave.
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)

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2182 Post by otropogo »

bigpup wrote:otropogo,
Damn! I forgot Gparted doesn't work in Puppy any more...
Works OK for me.
Explain?
When I click on the menu/system/gparted tab, I get the menu of drives on the system. When I click on one of them, the menu disappears, and nothing happens. When I look at running processes, there's no sign of gparted.

With all the save files you seem to have.
Very important they each have a specific unique name.
If you have more than one with the same name, it could be causing some of your problems.
Even a copy of a save file should be given a specific name.
Better yet give it a name that has nothing to do with lupusave.
Never have a problem with this when booting from the LiveCD, and yes, all of my 2fs files are distinctively named.

But in any case, I reduced my 2fs files to two on hdd and one on the flash in the course of this experiment.

The problems seem to me to be in the flash installer.

It doesn't have adequate controls over the process, for one thing. It didn't detect any issues with the MBR (pmount doesn't give any amount for free space).

It went through the motions of redoing the MBR, and didn't report any problems. It then proceeded to "wipe" the disk and install lupupluslibre to the disk from the LiveCD, and again reported no problems, although it was only able to copy 11MB of data (8MB of the 353 lupu528.sfs) and 2MB for initrd.gz) to a disk pmount reported at 500MB.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
rcrsn51
Posts: 13096
Joined: Tue 05 Sep 2006, 13:50
Location: Stratford, Ontario

#2183 Post by rcrsn51 »

otropogo wrote:Thanks for your suggestion. I'm afraid there's no cigar yet though.
You now have a frugal install that starts its boot sequence on a flash drive. In this scenario, Puppy wants to find all its core files in the same location as the main sfs file. So copy vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the flash drive onto the hard drive.

Now Puppy is finding all its files in the same place, so it will also see the save files.

To improve the search process, include the boot argument "psubdir=xxx" in your syslinux.cfg file.

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2184 Post by bigpup »

When I click on the menu/system/gparted tab, I get the menu of drives on the system. When I click on one of them, the menu disappears, and nothing happens. When I look at running processes, there's no sign of gparted.
This is starting to look like a bad download of the Puppy version iso.

Try this to see if it makes a difference.
Boot with the Puppy live CD
Use boot option puppy pfix=ram
Now try to use Gparted.
What happens?
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)

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2185 Post by otropogo »

rcrsn51 wrote:
otropogo wrote:Thanks for your suggestion. I'm afraid there's no cigar yet though.
You now have a frugal install that starts its boot sequence on a flash drive. In this scenario, Puppy wants to find all its core files in the same location as the main sfs file. So copy vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the flash drive onto the hard drive.

Now Puppy is finding all its files in the same place, so it will also see the save files.
Ah, yes. Wish I had known that yesterday. Happily, I'm still able to edit the syslinux.cfg file on the flash card, but Windows couldn't format it, and eraser said it couldn't establish cluster size,probably because Puppy's universal installer messed up the ext3 2fs save (for which it failed to ask for a size...). I'll have to try to run Gparted under Knoppix to try to get the full capacity back.

Glad I didn't use a pricey 64GB flash card for this install.

To improve the search process, include the boot argument "psubdir=xxx" in your syslinux.cfg file.
I don't know if it will improve the search speed any, since it only takes 10 seconds now. Maybe that's because it's in a folder named "pupsave" in the root directory of disk 0.

Apparently, the 2fs files, and presumably any other sfs files, must be in the same directory where the loader finds lupu_528.sfs , vmlinuz, and initrd.gz, or it won't offer them for use.

At least it looked no further once it found the directory with the last three. To get it to offer my other 2fs file for use, I had to copy it to the same folder.

But I'm curious as to the exact format required for psubdir=xxx?

I tried

Code: Select all

psubdir=/mnt/sda1/pupsave 
which is the path to the directory containing the necessary files.

But then the boot failed with the message "lupu_528.sfs" not found, and left me at the command line.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2186 Post by bigpup »

This is the way I use Gparted for heavy work.
Gparted live CD

For partitioning I would suggest you use the Gparted live CD that you can get from here.
You can download a free version to make your own Gparted live CD.
It is up to date and specifically made to run Gparted.
Info:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Download:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted ... ve-stable/
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)

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

2fs enlargement glich

#2187 Post by otropogo »

I happened to boot with a smallish 2fs file, and decided to increase the size by 64MB.

Then rebooted with the original file I had meant to use, only to see that it was enlarged (at least, that's what the popup said) instead of the intended target.

Guess I'll have to reboot with the file I intended to enlarge, to see if it grows as well or not.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2188 Post by bigpup »

How finding save files works.
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01922
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)

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

Re: 2fs enlargement glich

#2189 Post by bigpup »

otropogo wrote:I happened to boot with a smallish 2fs file, and decided to increase the size by 64MB.

Then rebooted with the original file I had meant to use, only to see that it was enlarged (at least, that's what the popup said) instead of the intended target.

Guess I'll have to reboot with the file I intended to enlarge, to see if it grows as well or not.
Yes if you select to re-size a save file you have to reboot using that same save file. At boot is when the re-size is done.
When you select to re-size it works only on the next boot/reboot one time.
New selection to re-size has to be made each time you want to do it.
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)

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2190 Post by otropogo »

bigpup wrote:How finding save files works.
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01922
However, do note that Puppy now has a confirmation dialog if only one save-file found, enabling you to back off and not auto-update it. I announced this a couple of days ago.
Not what happened to me just now.

Until I copied a second 2fs file into the /pupsave directory, Puppy simply booted with the file it found there, without any dialogue allowing me to "back off" as Barry puts it.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: 2fs enlargement glich

#2191 Post by otropogo »

bigpup wrote:
otropogo wrote:I happened to boot with a smallish 2fs file, and decided to increase the size by 64MB.

Then rebooted with the original file I had meant to use, only to see that it was enlarged (at least, that's what the popup said) instead of the intended target.

Guess I'll have to reboot with the file I intended to enlarge, to see if it grows as well or not.
Yes if you select to re-size a save file you have to reboot using that same save file. At boot is when the re-size is done.
When you select to re-size it works only on the next boot/reboot one time.
New selection to re-size has to be made each time you want to do it.
Curious. Where is the information to resize the file kept while you're rebooting? Surely, wherever it is, it should also contain the information regarding the name of the file to be enlarged?

Missing the enlargement by failing to reboot the same 2fs file is just a minor annoyance. But enlarging a file you didn't mean to enlarge could be a serious problem, since it can't be undone.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2192 Post by otropogo »

bigpup wrote:This is the way I use Gparted for heavy work.
Gparted live CD

For partitioning I would suggest you use the Gparted live CD that you can get from here.
You can download a free version to make your own Gparted live CD.
It is up to date and specifically made to run Gparted.
Info:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Download:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted ... ve-stable/
Thanks. I knew that, probably have an older copy around, but it always irks me that I can't get it to work in Puppy anymore.

BTW - I did try to download the latest version just now, but for some reason sourceforge and its mirrors are downloading like molasses today, at least at this end.

Will try again later.

Update, after downloading Gparted from Taiwan at top speed, the download failed with a series of nonsensical error messages, starting with "no room, try another directory" or words to that effect, and ending with "unable to read source file", after supposedly tranferring 126/127MB.

So I booted Knoppix 7.0.4, went to Preferences/Gparted (v 070), and viewed the corrupted SD card with it. Apparently, the only thing I could do was to reformat the card (I used FAT16). I then copied the files from the LiveCD, edited syslinux.cfg, set the boot flag, and tried to boot with it. But the system reported the disk was unbootable.

So I took it back to the Universal Installer, used the USB Flash drive function, left the MBR alone, re-edited the syslinux.cfg, renamed the sfs file to .bak, and tried booting again. Finally, success...

What have I learned?

...

UPDATE: several hours of further experience with both flash installers have changed my mind. Bootflash is more versatile and faster, it just takes a bit more attention.

...

It also turns out to be unnecessary to rename or delete the sfs file from the flash media when changing pmedia=usbflash to =atahd in syslinux.cfg to with sfs and 2fs files on the hard drive.

Nor is it even necessary to place all the 2fs files in the same folder with the sfs file. But it may be necessary to keep lupu_528.sfs in the root directory or in a folder in the root directory. I haven't tested this.





PS. thanks again, rcrsn51 and bigpup
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2193 Post by otropogo »

bigpup wrote:
When I click on the menu/system/gparted tab, I get the menu of drives on the system. When I click on one of them, the menu disappears, and nothing happens. When I look at running processes, there's no sign of gparted.
This is starting to look like a bad download of the Puppy version iso.

Try this to see if it makes a difference.
Boot with the Puppy live CD
Use boot option puppy pfix=ram
Now try to use Gparted.
What happens?
Sorry I've taken so long to reply to your suggestion above. The answer is yes, gparted works when I use the option pfix=ram. However, I booted from the usbflash install. Apparently the issue has something to do with the 2fs file.

But now I'm trying to figure out why I can't install puppy to flash on a 2GB SD card although I can do it on a 500MB SD or a 256MB CF card.

Every time I do, Universal install declares success, but the card merely becomes unreadable, and I have to go to Gparted, or to a camera, to reformat it. Even Windows 7 can't fix it.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Inconsistent syslinux.cfg behaviour

#2194 Post by otropogo »

After considerable fiddling, I managed to compose a 256CF flash card that reliably boots lupuplus from the hard drive.

But unlike the 500MB SD card I've been using up to now, simply changing pmedia=usbflash to pmedia=atahd in syslinux.cfg didn't do the trick. It would only load from the card itself, ignoring the change.

But if I booted with the command puppy pdev1=sda1, then the hard drive was searched, the 2fs files on it were presented, and the lupuplus sfs (which is too large to fit on the CF card) was loaded into RAM.

I then found that adding the line

Code: Select all

pdev1=sda1
after

Code: Select all

pmedia=atahd
in syslinux.cfg achieved the same result.

However, either way, the loader then displays :
searching deeper in sub-sub-folders in partitions
which has never appeared with the atahd argument on the SD card.

And the message makes no sense, since the lupu_528.sfs file is in a folder in the root directory of sda1. And this message still displays if I add the argument
/pupsave
(the folder where the sfs and 2fs files reside), nor does the search (the longest part of the loading process) seem any faster than when booting with the SD card with only

Code: Select all

atahd
specified.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2195 Post by bigpup »

And the message makes no sense, since the lupu_528.sfs file is in a folder in the root directory of sda1. And this message still displays if I add the argument

/pupsave
Try making this

Code: Select all

psubdir=pupsave
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)

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2196 Post by otropogo »

bigpup wrote:
And the message makes no sense, since the lupu_528.sfs file is in a folder in the root directory of sda1. And this message still displays if I add the argument

/pupsave
Try making this

Code: Select all

psubdir=pupsave
Yes, bigpup. That worked. I timed the interval from hitting ENTER at the puppy boot prompt to the moment the 2fs files were displayed at

81 seconds without the spsubdir argument, and
38 seconds after it was added

A substantial speed-up, thanks.

Interestingly, I then added pdev1=sda1 psubdir=pupsave to the SD card's syslinux.cfg file also, but the gain was much smaller in that case, a mere 10 seconds shaved off.

49 vs 39 seconds.

My guess is that the loader on the CF card was searching further than the one on the SD card before the psubdir argument was added. But I can't imagine why.

Presumably pmedia=atahd automatically sets the SD loader to search the root directory of the first partition of disk0 first, followed by the the folders in that directory.

But the argument that the CF card required to find the same directory would have set it to do exactly the same thing, since sda1 is the first partition of disk0.

I'm tempted to experiment further by putting extra 2fs files elsewhere on the hard drives, including in folders within folders, where they're not supposed to be found at all. I know that when I boot from a LiveCd (I don't have one burned at the moment), the loader searches all storage devices on the system for 2fs files, and the partition on which the chosen 2fs file is located becomes "home" and can't be unmounted.

However, I wonder whether more than a handful of us care about this.

I couldn't resist moving one 2fs file into the root directory of sda1 and removing all but the pmedia=atahd argument from the SD card's cfg file. The loader then showed only the two 2fs files remaining in the pupsave folder.

So I conclude that it takes the loader 10 seconds to examine the 21 files and 99 folders (or as many of the latter as precede "pupsave' in its search order) in the root directory of sda1 looking for lupu_528.sfs. And this explains the time saved by adding the psubdir=pupsave .
argument.

But why it takes the loader launched from the CF card 32 seconds longer to do exactly the same thing remains a mystery to me.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

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

#2197 Post by greengeek »

otropogo wrote:However, I wonder whether more than a handful of us care about this.
Sometimes only one person digs deep enough to discover new information, but it is still very helpful. This sort of thing is always useful information. It adds to the overall knowledge pool and helps us understand the finer points of what is going on. Good research.

User avatar
ETP
Posts: 1193
Joined: Tue 19 Oct 2010, 19:55
Location: UK

#2198 Post by ETP »

Hi greengeek,
Please access your PMs. (I need feedback on MK5 & MK7) :)
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

User avatar
bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2199 Post by bigpup »

otropogo,

Some of this speed difference could be caused by the different storage devices read speeds.
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)

User avatar
otropogo
Posts: 764
Joined: Sat 24 Oct 2009, 15:17
Location: Montreal
Contact:

#2200 Post by otropogo »

greengeek wrote:
otropogo wrote:However, I wonder whether more than a handful of us care about this.
Sometimes only one person digs deep enough to discover new information, but it is still very helpful. This sort of thing is always useful information. It adds to the overall knowledge pool and helps us understand the finer points of what is going on. Good research.
Thanks for your encouragement, greengeek.
otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

Post Reply