Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[greengeek]

[greengeek]

[bigpup]

About the hard drive problems.

Do a check on the hard drive file system.

If this is formatted fat32 or ntfs.
Windows is the only operating system that has the best programs to check it. Windows chkdsk and defrag programs.

Gparted program in Puppy can do limited checks on these file systems.
If formatted Linux ext formats it can do very good checks and error correction.

Boot a Puppy form the USB.
DO NOT HAVE THE HARD DRIVE MOUNTED.
Run Gparted and choose the hard drive as the device to access.
Right click on a partition.
Select check.
Select apply.
If any errors are found, keep running the check until no errors.

You could just be dealing with an old hard drive that is going bad.

[bigpup]

In the testing for wireless you say some Puppies find your wireless hardware, but do not find your wireless network.

On Laptops some have an off/on switch for wireless.
So make sure it is turned on. Puppy does not automatically do this.

Scanning and not finding a wireless network is usually about signal strength of the wireless signal.
Have the laptop in the same room as the wireless network transmitter to eliminate that possible problem.

Also the transmitter signal channel being used could be a problem of signal interference.
I had to change my transmitted signal channel for just such a problem. Other things in the area interfered with that channel.

Use the network Wizard to do the wireless network connections.

menu->Setup->Internet Connection Wizard->Wired or wireless LAN->Network Wizard

Network Wizard wireless connection steps.

1. Select Network Wizard
2. Select wlan0 (your network card may have a different description)
3. Select Wireless in the Configure wireless network box.
4. Select Scan and your ESSID should come up.
5. Select your ESSID and OK
6. Give a name to your profile. It should already be what you selected in step 5.
7. Most people use WPA/TKIP - select it or WPA2.
8. A box will open for you to write the WPA password. It is called a Shared Key. Enter the password.
9. Leave the other boxes as they are. Rarely do these need adjustment.
9. Select Save
10. Select Use This Profile
11. A box will appear showing Puppy trying to connect
12. A box will come up “REPORT ON TEST 0f wlan0CONNECTION”
13. Select Auto DHCP in the Configure interface box and it will go through a handshake routine. and declare itself successful
14. Select done

If something does not work.
What step?
You do what?
You see what?

Also make sure your system's time zone setting is correct - if not, many website's certificates then act as if they are expired, and the webpage won't display.

[rimatheou]

Slacko 5.6

free booted from usb

[greengeek]

Thanks Rimatheou - that confirms that the missing mouse is not caused by overflowing the RAM - the HDD boot uses less RAM than the USB boot (not what I expected...).

I reckon Slacko would have been a good puppy to use on that laptop - but if you need to boot from HDD then I think you will have to move away from Slacko as I think Slackos have some sort of hardware timing issue when trying to detect usb mice during boot (something I have experienced intermittently on my Slacko installs).

Now that you have got usb multi-boot sorted I think you may have to be adventurous and try a whole bunch of different puppies - look for a puppy modern enough to have a kernel that supports your hardware (trial and error) but old enough to be small and easy on RAM.

There is one other thing that is critical in order to make the most of your tiny RAM - you should set up a swap partition of approx 2GB if possible. Make this partition on HDD if possible - but if you are unable to use HDD for swap then make a fast usb stick with one big swap partition and plug it in as soon as the bootloader starts loading puppy.

There are lots of possible puppies that might be ok for your machine but here are a few options to try:
(set up the swap partition first...)


Saluki NOP
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=658402&sid=50f8b362a0bd1f9e80fa084628b33b55
download:
http://download.tuxfamily.org/nop/

Quirky/Racy 5.5
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=689113#689113
Download:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/racy-5.5/

Wary mediaplayer edition
http://45.33.15.200/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=67137&sid=3d007421b936ff288bacc5317783ce10
Download:
http://www.smokey01.com/ttuuxxx/Wary/Custom/wary-511-k2.6.32.28_MediaPlayers.iso

Unicornpup
http://45.33.15.200/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=96973&sid=3d007421b936ff288bacc5317783ce10
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2071hgqycf1o35a/AAAGZwwHt91QDlay7nRpiZxHa?dl=0
(Marv said "In summary, it's just as at home on a thoroughly modern Intel based motherboard as it is on the 2004 era Pentium M laptop"
http://45.33.15.200/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=817096&sid=3d007421b936ff288bacc5317783ce10#817096

[rimatheou]

@ bigpup

Before I installed Puppy to HD, I made the HD completely new: I made two primary partitions (os1 and os2), one extended with one logical (data) and a swap partition (512MB). The first primary partition (sda1) was newly formatted in ext3. This is where Puppy is installed to. I now made a file system check with gparted, but no errors were found.

[rimatheou]

@greengeek

Swap Partition is now 2,5GB.

Racy Puppy HD install: mouse is not working, but it is working booting from USB. No wlan interface detected, but booting from USB two wireless networks were found.

[rimatheou]

@ bigpup

There is no on/off switch for wireless. I have Fn+F9 for switching on/off, but this is a windows command. The jvc laptop is in the same room as the router. There is a Xubuntu Laptop besides the jvc, that is connected via wlan.

[ally]

is the router wpa2

had a similar trouble on an older machine that could only see wep

[mikeslr]

You might want to try Carolina 1.2, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=656241#656241 a continuation of Saluki after jemimah, its dev, left. I'm not sure your computer would be able to manage the newer glibcs of 1.3. Something to try later. These OSes are forks of Racy.

Although the ISOs of Saluki and Carolina are large, these are very modular OSes. The ISO contain an adrv_sfs which contain all 'user' applications, except for geany and another small application. If you move the adrv_sfs into a folder where it won't be found on bootup --or even delete it-- they will still boot to desktop using little RAM, and having builtin applications to access their Repos so that you can install pets, create SFSes and built your own custom adrv.

You might also want to try frisbee as wifi manager. I've found that on some puppy-hardware-combinations frisbee will find networks when SNS can't, and vice-versa. Others have also had similar experiences. It's one of the reasons both are included.

mikesLr

[rimatheou]

[greengeek]

[bigpup]

[rimatheou]