How to activate .sfs files in Tahrpup64_6.0.6? (Solved)

[Sky Aisling]

Hello,
EDIT: for 'solution' see post in this thread:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 017#983017
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Machine: HP HDX premium Series 4GB RAM dual Intel CPU T9400

I just did a frugal install of Tahrpup64_6.0.5 to sda1 on the HDD.
During the install, I was asked to take an update to Tahrpup64_6.0.6 which I did.

The system boots with no issues except devx_tahr64_6.0.6.sfs and LibreOffice-5.3.7_64_en-US_xz.sfs won't auto load.
I have to manually load them from SFS-load-on-the-fly after X appears.
I took the devx from Quickpet.

Here are the contents of the menu lists and a couple of screenshots of sda1 contents:

menu.lst

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.9.2
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
#splashimage=/splash.xpm
timeout 10
default 0

# Frugal installed Puppy

title Puppy tahr64 6.0.6 (sda1/tahr646.0.6frugal)
uuid 315e5cbc-59d1-4908-9bd2-3a3e39bdac4b
kernel /tahr646.0.6frugal/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=tahr646.0.6frugal pfix=fsck
initrd /tahr646.0.6frugal/initrd.gz

title Puppy tahr64 6.0.6 (sdc1)
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /puppy_tahr64_6.0.6.sfs
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck
initrd /initrd.gz

# Windows
# this entry searches Windows on the HDD and boot it up
title Windows\nBoot up Windows if installed
errorcheck off
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
errorcheck on[

BACKGROUND NOTE: Prior to installing to HDD I was running with a live flash drive as a recovery procedure from loosing the DVD drive to mechanical failure.
See thread http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 797#982797

[headfound]

The Devx and libreoffice sfs both need to be in the frugal folder I think otherwise they won't get picked up. Mine are in with my puppy files.

[Sky Aisling]

Thank you, headfound

The Devx and libreoffice sfs both need to be in the frugal folder I think otherwise they won't get picked up.

I just put the two sfs in the frugal folder and rebooted. No joy.

[bigpup]

You had the sfs's in the correct place /mnt/home of sda1 partition.

Left click on the tahr64save to open it.
Navigate to /etc/rc.d/BOOTCONFIG
left click on this file to open in text editor.

The top line should list all the extra sfs files you want to load at boot.

Code: Select all

EXTRASFSLIST=

Can also look at BOOTCONFIG.save

[bigpup]

Could try to load the sfs's by using the menu>System>Boot Manager>SFS-packages

[Sky Aisling]

Thank you bigpup,
We almost have it, but, not quite.

Left click on the tahr64save to open it.
Navigate to /etc/rc.d/BOOTCONFIG
left click on this file to open in text editor.

The top line should list all the extra sfs files you want to load at boot.
Code:
EXTRASFSLIST=

Can also look at BOOTCONFIG.save

Results:
Made code change to BootConfig.
Rebooted
Success: .sfs presented properly
Rebooted a second time
Failed: On the second reboot, it appears to put the coding change into 'BootConfig.save' and bring the BootConfig back to blank.

[Sky Aisling]

bigpup

I have found, in trying to help people, that the things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.

You helped me last week with an issue of installing tahrpup64 onto the machine's hard drive, sda1 partition because of a mechanical failure of the DVD/CD drive. I normally run from a Live CD but the drive went south on me.
See thread: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 797#982797
I'm wondering...
In the process of installing to the HDD, the install placed sda1 boot partition in a lower position on the drive than what I am accustomed to seeing. I had deleted the old sda1 in preparation of installing a new sda1 configuration and thought the install would place the new sda1 in the same position.

Could the positioning of sda1 on the drive have anything to do with the OS not correctly saving the BootConfig data?

I used 'Universal Installer' for the frugal install to HDD.

[musher0]

Hello Sky Aisling.

I have little experience of the Tahr Puppies, except for petihar's Triton Puppy, which
is a bit different.

That said, in my experience, if the version number of your main Puppy sfs and of its
devx sfs are the same, the devx should load automatically. That is an old feature of
Puppy that has not changed through the years. I never had such a problem.

Please check if the version numbers are identical for those two files? If they match,
Puppy should load its devx without fail.
-- If they do not match, I would suggest that you rename your devx file with the
TahrPup version number. Maybe this is all you have to do to have it load.
-- If they match and you still have this problem, I would report this behaviour to the
dev of the TahrPup64.

On the other hand, the LibreOffice sfs, or the java sfs, or any other program sfs, I
had to load with the sfs_load utility -- the first time I loaded them; after that, they
were -- and still are -- automatically loaded.

I have never done it, but the devx sfs being a true-and-blue sfs, you should be able
to load it with sfs_load as well as any other sfs. Maybe as a stop-gap solution until
you get an answer or a corrective from the dev.

Edit -- To be frank, I have done it when testing some Puppies "in constuction" by
colleagues (e.g. petihar's Triton). Also with the old DPup-4.87 (not sure of the
version number) by dejan555. Dejan had two devx's available, the normal one and
another for java development, and I tried his java one once. Now this java devx was
a special devx meant to be loaded through sfs_load. In both cases, it worked.

I have attached a scrot of my sfs_load panel. My devx was loaded automatically,
the other sfs's I loaded the first time with sfs_load. Also attached is my
BOOTCONFIG file.

IHTH.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My BOOTCONFIG file:

EXTRASFSLIST='devx_xenial_7.0.6.sfs tcltk-8.6.6_6.sfs PupLin_PDF-0.1.sfs jre-8u144-linux-i586.sfs Emul_DOS_Toutou-0.2_021.sfs aOO-4.1.5_x86_fr.sfs mplayer-37926-i686-stretch.sfs light-49.0.linux-i686_6.sfs'
PREVUNIONRECORD='xenialsave-waf2.2fs puppy_xenial_7.0.6.sfs zdrv_xenial_7.0.6.sfs adrv_xenial_7.0.6.sfs'
LASTUNIONRECORD='xenialsave-waf2.2fs puppy_xenial_7.0.6.sfs zdrv_xenial_7.0.6.sfs adrv_xenial_7.0.6.sfs'

[musher0]

Last minute news!

Any sfs in a Puppy can be:
-- in the frugal folder of the Puppy

-- or above (in other words, in /mnt/home).


It should never be:
-- in a sub-directory of the frugal folder: the Puppy will not see it.

-- on another partition. The latter is theoretically possible. However it seldom works
because the programs in a sfs located there take a few milliseconds more to load.
The Puppy's attention span to receiving commands is quite short and it may ignore
them, considering they are coming in too late or out of sync.

In short, you may try having a sfs on another partition, but your Puppy will likely
become unstable because of it.

Regarding your previous post: re-partitioning won't help you with this, gparted has
nothing to do with this problem. (Sorry for being so frank!)

IHTH

[musher0]

Just a short note.

I remembered that I have indeed loaded devx sfs's through sfs_load and that it worked.
I have edited my previous post accordingly.

BFN.

[Sky Aisling]

Hi Musher,

You write:

That said, in my experience, if the version number of your main Puppy sfs and of its
devx sfs are the same, the devx should load automatically. That is an old feature of
Puppy that has not changed through the years. I never had such a problem.

Yes, the file names are the same. See original screenshots.
I too have never had this problem before with any Puppy.

Any sfs in a Puppy can be:
-- in the frugal folder of the Puppy

I tried that via headfound's suggestion. The results were negative.

I checked another machine I have set up with Tahrpup64.6.0.5 and the configuration shows the .sfs in /mnt/home position. That system works.

I remembered that I have indeed loaded devx sfs's through sfs_load and that it worked.

I've activated the sfs_load multiple times in this debugging effort. It simply does not stick on reboot.

Regarding your previous post: re-partitioning won't help you with this, gparted has
nothing to do with this problem. (Sorry for being so frank!)

Thank you, 'Frank' is a good friend of mine. I was 'brainstorming' a thought that there might be a tiny delay in Puppy searching for what to load and missing the .sfs files. That's why I sent the Gparted screenshot.

I've eliminated thinking about the HP Bios (circa 2009) as I've run several versions of Puppies on this machine and had no issues with .sfs loading. However, that was before I physically removed the DVD/CD drive from the machine.

Perhaps the physical absence of the DVD/CD Drive is causing the BIOs to take extra time in setting up the boot and it's missing the .sfs save.

My fallback will be to re-install Tahrpup64.6.0.5 and see if 6.0.5 correctly sees and saves the .sfs info. Is so then there might be a bug in 6.0.6 version?

[musher0]

HI Sky Aisling.

You wrote:

> Perhaps the physical absence of the DVD/CD Drive is causing the BIOs to take extra
time in setting up the boot and it's missing the .sfs save.

Here's a thought: have you changed the boot order of the devices in the BIOS accordingly?

You are indeed an experienced Puppyist, testing all possibilities like that! Here's another
thought: If the same Pup boots sfs's without problem on another computer, perhaps not
insist on this one?

Have a great day! TWYL.

[matchpoint]

Hmmm....

Could the fact that I made the recovery flash drive with tahrpup64.6.0.6-uefi and NOT tahrpup64.6.0.5 be part of the issue? Different kernels?

I set up a new partition as ext 4 primary and installed tahrpup64_6.0.5....

Makes me wonder Sky. Maybe you need to get all your ducks in a row and reload?

You know, bypass the upgrade and start with a full-blown 6.0.6 ISO.

Maybe stick to ext3 in the process.

[Sky Aisling]

Thank you Musher, good ideas.

Here's a thought: have you changed the boot order of the devices in the BIOS accordingly?

Yes, I've checked the Bios boot order. Took a picture of it with my flip phone but don't know how to get it off the phone to post. lol.

I've checked bootinit.log for this boot. It is Greek to me but wouldn't it show the .sfs saves if it happened? It shows only the OS save but no other .sfs saves.

Here's another
thought: If the same Pup boots sfs's without problem on another computer, perhaps not
insist on this one?

The other machine is a small screen HP pavillion dm1. My main machine (the one we are working on) is connected to a 23" monitor. Me 78 year old eyes work best with this big screen.

[Sky Aisling]

Hello matchpoint,

You write:

Makes me wonder Sky. Maybe you need to get all your ducks in a row and reload?

You know, bypass the upgrade and start with a full-blown 6.0.6 ISO.

Yes, I think that's where I'm headed. Sigh.
But, I'll loose all my bookmarks and bowser formating.
Thank you for the nudge.

[Sky Aisling]

Thank you everyone,

I'm going off line for a while and put into place my next cunning plan.
Start all over again, but, with tahrpup64.6.0.5 and not take the upgrade.
That way I can put the 6.0.5 savefile associated with the original 6.0.5 in place and not loose all my setups.

6.0.5 was running with no issues around .sfs booting at startup.

I intend to post on this thread the results of that procedure.

[matchpoint]

Puppy makes starting over "quick" and easy. Bookmarks you can export.

[bigpup]

Still trying to figure out why the settings get lost when you reboot.
Something in the save is making it reset, but what is it

If you just got a bad install and or download of the iso for Tahrpup64 6.0.6, that would explain this.

You did an update of 6.0.5 to 6.0.6 and that update process can go wrong.
That process is only going to change stuff in the save.
That update process may have a bug.
Nothing with computers ever seems to be 100% all the time.

Using a Tahrpup64 6.0.6 iso
I have an install of Tahrpup64 6.0.6, with several added sfs loading at boot up, with no problem. So, it is not a bug in Tahrpup64 6.0.6.

About your partition layout on the hard drive.
That is a strange setup.
Having a patch of unallocated space at the very start of the drive could maybe be causing some delay problem finding partition locations of data.
Computer bios usually like to see the boot partition as the very start of the hard drive. The first partition it sees.
Then it looks for the boot flag to tell it that is the boot partition.

If it was me, I would totally delete every partition on that drive and start over fresh.
Use all the space for partitions.
sda1 first partition, starting at very beginning of drive. Flagged boot.
sda2
sda3
sda4 linux swap. (I usually make the linux swap the last partition I make)

All formatted ext 3.

About ext 4 format. Everyone thinks it is the best, well because it is ext 4, so it must be better than ext 3.
This may change your mind:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=112632

[Sky Aisling]

Good Afternoon All,

I believe I have the issue solved.

I started with an fresh install of Tahrpup64_6.0.5, LibreOffice_5.2.7, and, the devx_tahr64_6.0.5.
I took the devx and LibreOffice downloads from QuickPet.

The first attempt appeared to be a failure.
LibreOffice wouldn't fire up even though it was clearly installed.

Just when I was about to give up and think it was a machine-hardware issue, I had a small light go off...
It occurred to me that I was taking the devx and LibreOffice from QuickPet and I'm guessing QuickPet goes to PPM to download.
I updated all the libraries in the repositories of Puppy Package Manager.

After updating the libraries, I took another download of devx and LibreOffice.

The .sfs are now auto-loading at startup.

I haven't taken the QuickPet update for Tahrpup64_6.0.5 for fear of screwing up what I've got now.

The only issue on the new setup is The Default Applications Chooser doesn't show the LibreOffice .sfs as an option for the 'write' icon on the desktop.
I want LibreOffice to be the default writer application. That's part of reason I was doing this little project. I use LibreOffice a lot.
I'll work on this issue later tonight as I have to go out now. I'll mark the thread solved if I'm satisfied with new setup. I'll edit with some screenshots when I return later.

Thank you again!
More news at 11.

EDIT: Thank you, bigpup.

About ext 4 format. Everyone thinks it is the best, well because it is ext 4, so it must be better than ext 3.
This may change your mind:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=112632

I already had set up the new partitions with ext. 4 before I read your notes.

[bigpup]

Default Applications Chooser

try manually typing in libreoffice --writer in the selection slot for writer (word processor).

The exec file for libreoffice may be something like libreoffice5.3 --writer. You may have to use that as entry.

I am using libreoffice 5.4.2 sfs and it runs by exec file libreoffice5.4 --writer.