Dell Optiplex 745 and all puppies fail

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scsijon
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Dell Optiplex 745 and all puppies fail

#1 Post by scsijon »

I've come across this, any ideas folks how to fix as i have a chance of a palet load cheap.

Dell Optiplex 745 fitted with dvdr/s, 160g HD, 1gig ram, internal video.

Problem is that whatever version of iso CD puppy (from 214 to racy55 to precise 596 and light wheezy2) all boot ok to start with and fail in the same place

Booting, either standard, pfix=???? or acpi=off, all gives the same result.
i've shown racy5.4.91 as an example

----
Loading drivers needed to access disc drives. done
Searching for puppy files.......puppy_racy_5.4.91.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisc console....
#
------

watchdog
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#2 Post by watchdog »

Try to boot from hd. You can frugal install a puppy in a dir: copy all the content of the cd to hd in a dir. Then boot the cd with boot option:

Code: Select all

boot: puppy pmedia=atahd 

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Karl Godt
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#3 Post by Karl Godt »

Dell has 4 different form factors for that Series.

I assume that you took off your second harddrive out of the old computer with the Pupps on it
and build it into the Dell as first.

Me my self has one 745 of the small form factors and had problems with Xorg intel driver using Puppy-4.3 .

Other than this I think your burns or downloads or raw-media were "bad" .

PANZERKOPF
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Re: Dell Optiplex 745 and all puppies fail

#4 Post by PANZERKOPF »

scsijon wrote: Loading drivers needed to access disc drives. done
Searching for puppy files.......puppy_racy_5.4.91.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisc console....
Initial ramdisk contains busybox so you can use it's tools for investigation.
At first time make sure that CDROM is correctly recognised:
cat /proc/devices
cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
then try to mount it somewhere:
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom
Also see what says kernel:
dmesg
SUUM CUIQUE.

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bigpup
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#5 Post by bigpup »

Loading drivers needed to access disc drives. done
Searching for puppy files.......puppy_racy_5.4.91.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisc console....
#
What program are you using to burn iso image to disk?

This is usually caused by:
Bad download of the Puppy iso file
Bad burn of the iso image to the disk
Too high a burn speed

Long shot, but are you sure disk type (+R -R ) is usable with the CD drive?

Could try:
Boot with Puppy live CD
At boot screen select F2 key
Try using one of these boot options

1. puppy acpi=off

2. puppy acpi=on

3. puppy ide=nodma

4. puppy ide=nodma acpi=off
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)

scsijon
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#6 Post by scsijon »

Karl Godt wrote:Dell has 4 different form factors for that Series.

I assume that you took off your second harddrive out of the old computer with the Pupps on it
and build it into the Dell as first.

Me my self has one 745 of the small form factors and had problems with Xorg intel driver using Puppy-4.3 .

Other than this I think your burns or downloads or raw-media were "bad" .
thanks karl, but the same racy55 cdrom works beautifully in the acer f1 boxes i've built in the past, which is why I started trying it out with other cdroms in my collection, getting the same result. The box is the smaller of the two medium sized, 1dvd, 1 hard drive, both sata. I shall try the next sugestion next.

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ally
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#7 Post by ally »

hey jon

have a quick look at mem sticks, had a similar issue once on an asus box

removed both sticks and tried one at a time, one was flaky

:)

scsijon
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Re: Dell Optiplex 745 and all puppies fail

#8 Post by scsijon »

PANZERKOPF wrote:
scsijon wrote: Loading drivers needed to access disc drives. done
Searching for puppy files.......puppy_racy_5.4.91.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisc console....
Initial ramdisk contains busybox so you can use it's tools for investigation.
At first time make sure that CDROM is correctly recognised:
cat /proc/devices
cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
then try to mount it somewhere:
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom
Also see what says kernel:
dmesg
Hi Panzerkopf

results are:

there is a sr in the list

..../info gives

CD-ROM Information, ID: cdrom.c 3.20 2003/12/17

drive name sr0
drive speed: 24
drive # of slots: 1
can close tray: 1
can open tray: 1
can lock tray: 1
can change speed: 1
can select disc: 0
can read multisession: 1
can read mcn: 1
reports media change: 1
can play audio: 1
can write cd-r: 1
can write cd-rw: 1
can read dvd: 1
can write dvd-r: 1
can write dvd-ram: 1
can read mrw: 1
can write mrw: 1
can write ram:1

initial dmesg attached below (fake .gz EXTENSION)

I can mount it when I create a /mnt/cdrom directory
and the cdrom reads ok

dmesg on mounting just adds
<7>[ 62.148793] ISO9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
to the bottom
Attachments
dmesg.op.gz
(55.07 KiB) Downloaded 254 times

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Karl Godt
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#9 Post by Karl Godt »

My Dells DVD and CD drives are lousy noisy and slow

Your dmesg tells

<6>[ 2.418600] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xfe20 ctl 0xfe30 bmdma 0xfec8 irq 20

<6>[ 3.210070] ata2.00: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
<6>[ 3.210086] ata2.01: SATA link down (SStatus 4 SControl 300)
<7>[ 3.210104] ata2.01: link offline, clearing class 3 to NONE

<6>[ 3.280319] ata2.00: ATAPI: PBDS DVD+/-RW DS-8W1P, BD1B, max UDMA/33
<6>[ 3.280322] ata2.00: applying bridge limits
<6>[ 3.310200] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33 <-- 33 is LOUSY LOW

<5>[ 3.402732] scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM PBDS DVD+-RW DS-8W1P BD1B PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
<4>[ 3.463185] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
<6>[ 3.463190] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
<7>[ 3.463307] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0

-- otherwise seems OK


Did you boot from USB-Pen-Drive ?

<4>[ 10.398561] EXT2-fs (sdb1): warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
<4>[ 93.556327] EXT2-fs (sdb1): warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
<2>[ 101.077687] EXT2-fs (sdb1): error: ext2_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 301329
<2>[ 101.079311] EXT2-fs (sdb1): error: ext2_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 13

FWIW my Dell has Core2Duo CPU

<6>[ 0.168704] CPU0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.40GHz stepping 05

PANZERKOPF
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Re: Dell Optiplex 745 and all puppies fail

#10 Post by PANZERKOPF »

scsijon wrote: I can mount it when I create a /mnt/cdrom directory
and the cdrom reads ok
This means no hardware problems in Your box. It seems something was happened in
media searching function of init script.
Dmesg says that CDROM is sucessfully detected but no any message about mounting it.
SUUM CUIQUE.

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bigpup
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#11 Post by bigpup »

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)

scsijon
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#12 Post by scsijon »

I in the end followed the thread sugesting to load the three main files onto a memory stick and use
"puppy pmedia=usbflash"
at the command starting line as none of the other sugestions worked.

This time it started out OK until the screen changed page then

Loading drivers needed to access disc drives done
searching for puppy files........ done
loading the 'puppy_racy_5.5.sfs main file... copying to ram done
setting up the layered filesystem.... done
performing a switch_root' to the layered filesystem [ 16.194873] Kernel Pan
ic - not syncing: attempting to kill init!
[ 16.194933] Pid:1, comm : switch_root not tainted 3.0.66 #1
[ 16.194987] Call Trace:
[ 16.195036] [<c1335a57>] ? panic+0x4d/0x12b
[ 16.195088] [<c102a5ee>] ? do_exit+0x92/0x60e
[ 16.195139] [<c102ac0c>] ? sys_exit+0x11/0x11
[ 16.195189] [<c133797d>] ? syscall_call+0x7/0xb

I'm was beginning to think that either the dvd drive or hard drive was stuffed!

However I downloaded the latest 4mlinux version 8.1 (it's a minimal linux system I use as a rescue system) and tried that.

It:
started up from the cd ok
formatted the hard drive ok
installed the 4mlinux system ok
rebooted ok
and after quite a few hours of running loop copies and test programs
and numerous reboots
has still not failed.

now wthwp? (what-the-hells-with-puppy)

And yet my puppy cdrom does everything ok on another of my testing workstations so it can't be a failed media problem.
I'm beginning to think it must be something to do with the chipset.

And both cdrom's were burnt the sane way on the same workstation, so that is out of the possabilities too.

Anyway i've told the guys I was getting the pallet load of bases and monitors from to forget it for now, although I am still retaining this one as I really want to work out the problem.

Any ideas?

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Karl Godt
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#13 Post by Karl Godt »

I have no idea .

One crude idea is that the machine is too fast for Puppy ( ie init starts searching before drivers are loaded ).
My Core2Duo is 2x1.8 GHz at Optiplex 745 ( year=2007) and 2x2.6 GHz at Optiplex 755 (year=2008).

Booting Puppy Lupu-5.x and Slacko-5.3 from USB never failed for me there , also Puppy-4 with CD (Macpup) .

But am using full installs there mostly, that were copied from an IDE harddrive of some P-4 board.

So no searching for Knuppy files anywhere.

PANZERKOPF
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#14 Post by PANZERKOPF »

scsijon wrote: However I downloaded the latest 4mlinux version 8.1 (it's a minimal linux system I use as a rescue system) and tried that.
IIRC 4mlinux has different boot process. It Does not mount compressed file from CD/DVD.
You should try to boot some other distro which has same boot method as Puppy ( Ubuntu, Debian-live, Knoppix etc...).

scsijon wrote:Any ideas?
Currently have no ideas.
Something happens with mounted CDROM and squashfs file...
SUUM CUIQUE.

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sc0ttman
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#15 Post by sc0ttman »

not sure if i can help, but i have 3 or 4 optiplexes - all Pentium4, some Core 2 Duo...

i bought them off a kid who got them out a skip by his college - the local hospital chucked out about 20 of them, all working fine, he took them all! ..
so i bough a few, for £20 each...

Akita works on all of the ones I have.. As does wary 51x... but what i have discovered while updating some parts inside, it that even optiplexes of the same model may have totally different hardware inside...
[b][url=https://bit.ly/2KjtxoD]Pkg[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2U6dzxV]mdsh[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2G49OE8]Woofy[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/bzBU1]Akita[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/SO5ug]VLC-GTK[/url], [url=https://tiny.cc/c2hnfz]Search[/url][/b]

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Karl Godt
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#16 Post by Karl Godt »

for £20 each...
That would make around 25€ .

Such 2nd hand Optiplex are sold around 130-250 € here in shops. The price mostly depends on RAM size.
My are fair solid.
HDDs were running for another 12 month with much rsync, mksquashfs and make.
Have replaced/upgraded them after that time just in case.

Serious problem had with untight speaker and fan cable joint ends to the board ( no sound or fan sometimes did not run ) .

They have memory check in the BIOS.

As ally says : Check the memory bar(s) .
The smaller Optiplex seems to need pairs of memory bars.

oldland-dog
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#17 Post by oldland-dog »

Hi all. Came across this post by accident while looking up another problem. I have a cupboard full of 745's SFF all destined for charity.

Using a tested CD drive I can not get Slacko 5.3 or Wary 5.3 to boot. It says 'Searching for puppy files... pausing...puppy_slacko_5.3.3.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console...

The Ubuntu live disk loads no problem and I can boot puppy when it is pre-installed on a hard drive. I would also note that when Ubuntu is installed on the hard drive I find that the computer overheats unless I swith the SATA Operation to Legacy in the BIOS. This also helps for booting Freedos for flashing the BIOS.

620 SFF no probs. I'll have a look around for a 755 see what it does.

About 80% of our Fells :wink: need there Capacitors replaced.

Jon

Edit: Yep 755 same problem but no probs with 780.

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