Power outage crashed HD, 'bootable' CD won't boot!

Booting, installing, newbie
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tallboy
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#21 Post by tallboy »

n9viw wrote:I finally figured out that the 'puppy' needs to be inserted at the beginning of the command... not because anyone TOLD me, OH no- that would be too simple. Let the feeb struggle! Wonderful. No, I found it through several hours of 'net searching... apparently it's "understood", whatever that means. So I don't 'understand', la-di-dah.
n9viw also wrote:The next person who advocates for Linux, particularly this strain, gets a flying PC to the face.
Well, I have put on my helmet, and I am on the lookout for flying PCs! :shock:

To really rub it in, I have to tell you that I had the same experience first time I tried pfix=ram. Uhh, that is until I noted the example written further down in the text, where it clearly says "puppy pfix=ram". :oops:

I can assure you of one thing; you're not the first one to make that mistake! On the other hand, the very fact that you actually can do something to improve or alter your Linux, should also be what attracts you to it! Try dissecting your Windoze to do the same; then you'll be flinging PCs all over the place for days! Frustration is one of the things that moves us forward, and your effort so far clearly show you're a real stayer, so I will take the opportunity to welcome you to the Puppy Linux community forever! We love to have you onboard!

tallboy
True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

starhawk
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#22 Post by starhawk »

n9viw wrote:Also, how is it that a WINDOWS emulator recovery disk can repair or recover LINUX files?
That's one I've not heard before. Usually Windows can't even read the partition -- Puppy is usually installed to an ext2 or ext3 partition, and IIRC Windows needs additional software to recognize that.

IIRC, if you're installing to NTFS or FAT32, that will cause you problems as well -- I particularly recall the blatant warnings in the Universal Installer about frugal on NFTS being slow and tedious but functional, but I've never done it. It just didn't sound like a good idea (which I think was the goal of that text).

I seem to recall making that mistake about "puppy pfix=ram" vs "pfix=ram" myself a couple times. Someone on here was quite patient with me when that happened ;) I do think that's a problem that could be easily fixed in software, but I don't program, so I'm somewhat talking out my you-know-what here.

FWIW, I'm sorta a Puppy hypocrite. I like Puppy a lot, and I recommend it to a lot of people, but my main system (Dell laptop) still runs XP every day. *shrugs* I'm not sure why. I think it's one of those "taking comfort in familiarity" sorts of things, but I'm really not sure. I'm not a representative sample here, though -- most of the people on this forum haven't used Windows (unless forced) in a couple years at least. I know one fellow (no longer active, sadly) who NEVER used Windows. Puppy was his intro to computers -- not quite sure how that worked, though.

My us$0.02: every Puppy (real or software-based) poops the carpet once in a while. You really shouldn't hold that against it.

To expand: while I'm sorry for your troubles... firstly, I'm not sure that they're Puppy related (you had hardware problems, too, etc.), and secondly, if Windows had been the OS that borked, you'd be reinstalling, having (most likely) lost everything, meanwhile swearing that "next time" you'd have backups. You'd likely also be just plain swearing, too.

While you should always have working backups of the important stuff (I'm something of a hypocrite here as well -- I'm not very good at that), an OS that's somewhat more fault-tolerant is good for you. Puppy has that fault-tolerance built in, if you do a frugal install -- you can usually recover a corrupt savefile by booting "puppy pfix=ram", mounting the corrupt savefile (just like a drive), then copy over your files, unmount the bad savefile, and create a new one over the old.

All of that said... there are over a hundred thousand Linuxes out there. Maybe Puppy isn't for you (I think you're giving up too soon, but that's me). Check out some others. Give them a chance. But it's really not fair to say "WHOOPS! Had ONE SMALL PROBLEM with this one distro! Guess I better go back to Windows and stay!" Linux is (generally, and --IMO-- supposed to be) free. It doesn't cost you anything but time to try it.

Oh, one other thing... I promise this is the end of my sermon :P

This forum has two purposes, one being to spread Puppy knowledge around us.

The other is to help people like you.

Give us a chance, too.

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tallboy
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#23 Post by tallboy »

BTW, if you haven't thrown you linuxbox out from a high place yet, I have some suggestions for you. 8)
Try following cthisbear's advice about the power turnoff process, and start up your puppy CD again with the boot command 'puppy pfix=ram', which let the puppy load itself into RAM and run from there. It also lets you remove the CD afterwards. If you then can mount and open the HD, I suggest you burn the files you want to keep, to one or more CDs. When finished, try reformatting the HD, and start from scratch again. Alternatively, you could make a new partition on the HD, and move all your files there.
My own preferences is to have one large swap partiton for the puppy, and the rest (in ext3 format) just for storage. But then again, I always run my puppies from a live disk...

tallboy
True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

n9viw
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed 18 Apr 2012, 01:23

Got it fixed

#24 Post by n9viw »

Well, back on the HD, everything back to normal (so far). On previous attempts, I had typed "puppy pfix=ram", or "puppy pfix=fsck", but for some reason it would boot Puppy and load the savefile onto the HD, rendering it un-umountable, then load Xwin.

I noted when I selected F2 from the CD help selection that one can 'stack' options to get it to do multiple things. The winning combination turned out to be "puppy pfix=ram,nox,fsck". This ensured puppy loaded into ram, did NOT load X, and left me at the shell. I typed "fsck /dev/sda1", which loaded e2fsck, and started the ball rolling.

In hindsight, for all my concern about fsck auto-correcting errors it found, I certainly could have used -a or -y... as it turned out, I sat through MANY errors pressing the 'Y' key, hoping against hope that Linux/fsck 'knew' what it was doing.

I had a brief bit of issue on the first boot after the savefile was created; I tried to set my monitor resolution, and all I got was a black screen. No keyboard response, CTRL-ALT-BKSP did nothing. I wound up forcing a cold-cycle by holding down the power button until the system shut down, which of course was followed by the usual auto-fsck, which found nothing.

On the subsequent power-up, I selected a lower resolution, loaded X, then re-ran the Xorg setup. I was able to set the appropriate resolution, and here I am.

Thanks to all who stuck by my ornery @$$ to get this fixed. I am by no means a programmer or code-fiddler, and for that reason I suppose I should stick to MS-Win, but the un-monopoly of it always chafed me. Perhaps someday I may learn enough to be comfortable with Linux, but for now, it's enough to have it running correctly. I think I'll build another cheap PC and load MS-Win on it, just to have a backup to get to the 'net to ask more inane questions here. :)

Nick

starhawk
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#25 Post by starhawk »

I'm no programmer either. I've made one program all on my own -- in a language that was already dead when I did it (M$ QuickBASIC -- went out of fashion in the mid-eighties).

I've rolled out my own Puppy a couple times, never completely successfully. It's dang easy to roll-your-own with Puppy. That's one of the main ideas of the thing. But if you don't know what you're doing, you WILL muck it up. I know. I've done it.

Be a Puppy user, if you like it. Just remember: you don't have to program, to Puppy ;)

Also, my last post in this thread has some maybe-useful-in-the-future info in it -- even if it IS something of a wall of text.

Good luck -- and if not, we're here to help :)

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Flash
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Re: Got it fixed

#26 Post by Flash »

n9viw wrote:..Thanks to all who stuck by my ornery @$$ to get this fixed.
We're used to it. We've all been there too. :lol:
I think I'll build another cheap PC and load MS-Win on it, just to have a backup to get to the 'net to ask more inane questions here. :)

Nick
The last PC I built, I got a quiet case and didn't put a hard disk in it, only a DVD burner. I've been running Puppy from a multisession DVD for about 6 years. Hard disk drives have proven to be too unreliable for me, and running Puppy from a multisession DVD has advantages that no other way can boast.

Lately I've been considering upgrading to a motherboard that has USB 3, but it's a lot cheaper to simply install a USB 3 expansion board.

Pence
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#27 Post by Pence »

I apologize. I should have said to type, " puppy pfix=ram " without the quotation marks and leave a space between puppy and pfix=ram. My propensity for error is embarrassing.

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RetroTechGuy
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Re: Well, poop!

#28 Post by RetroTechGuy »

n9viw wrote:While I have you on the horn, anyone have a link to an idiot's tutorial to the use of fsck? Might be in order, if I can even get this install back up and running.
We're talking a manual scan below. As noted elsewhere, first try:

Code: Select all

puppy pfix=fsck
I like to Google for:

Code: Select all

linux.die fsck
The linux.die site has a man page, and is readable.

http://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck

Note the "-a" option, if you have a lot of errors, and don't want to manually answer "yes, fix that error" about a thousand times...

The basics for using fsck are:

1) Open a terminal

2) Do NOT mount the drive/filesystem you wish to check. If mounted, unmount.

3) For a device (e.g. "sdc1"), you will use:

Code: Select all

fsck /dev/sdc1
The device is located at /dev/*name*, prior to being mounted.

For a Puppy save file, you would do something like (where you need to tell it where the file is physically located):

Code: Select all

fsck /mnt/home/lupusave.2fs
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58615]Add swapfile[/url]
[url=http://wellminded.net63.net/]WellMinded Search[/url]
[url=http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html]PuppyLinux.US Search[/url]

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tallboy
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#29 Post by tallboy »

Hi n9viw, glad to see you're hooked now! :mrgreen:

A good place to find info is TLDP -The Linux Documentation Project
Under the section 'Guides', you will find 'Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide' and 'GNU/Linux Command-Line Tools Summary', both very useful.
The Bash guides also have a lot of info on Linux built-in commands, but remember that the selection of commands may be limited in puppy, to save space.
This is an address you should revisit from time to time - the brain needs to be topped up!

I also hope that RetroTechGuy forgive me if I suggest an even quicker way to get info from manual pages, on any Linux command:

In the address line in a browser, just type 'man fsck', and the manual page from linux.die.net automagically opens.
The same thing should happen if you just type 'man fsck' in a terminal window, a browser should open with the manual page.

If you type 'linux fsck' in a browser, google gives you a couple of millon hits, but it's worth looking at some of them, many Linux distros have made their own comments on various commands.

tallboy
True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

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