Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

JonathanBrickman0000 · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

Not sure what to make of my problem. Am using 1.0.3, booting directly from the CD. Puppy won't do anything more than text mode; it gives several messages saying that it cannot find the compressed file containing the /usr filesystem, which contains X. I'd like to help fix this. Am running XP as main OS. What kind of diagnostic data would help?

Rich · Joined: 04 May 2005 Posts: 278 Location: Middlesbrough - UK

a few questions to help clear some things up first.

Does the CD work on other PCs?
Has the CD ever worked - or is it a new download?
Did you check the MD5SUM to verify the download?
Did you burn the iso image at the slowest speed available?

( you may have noticed that all the questions here are pointing to the CD itself. This turns out to be the problem more often than not. )

Also, did you download and unzip the pup001 file to the C: drive?
Pup001 file is what puppy uses as a partition. It shows up on drive C as 1 file, 256mb in size. This does not interfere with anything in windows. It's seen as just another file.

Ian · Posted: Mon 04 Jul 2005, 15:31 Post_subject:

Have you verified that the download is not corrupt, there is a file at the download site to allow you to do this which you can use before you burn the iso.
Also could you supply details of your machine.

JonathanBrickman0000 · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

I just verified my downloaded ISO using md5sum.exe and the .iso.txt. So that's out.

I did try building the C:\pup001 via pup001.zip. No change.

The CD is a new download. I will reburn it at lower settings (I used 40x).

I'll post a PC hardware rundown if the reburning doesn't solve.

JonathanBrickman0000 · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

Used CD-RW this time, turned off all background apps incl. antivirus et al., burned at 6X instead of 40X; still no dice.

Many system specs are below. If any relevant data are missing, please let me know, and I'll post them.

Storage data:

C drive is 40G EIDE on primary controller on motherboard.

Boot CD-ROM is EIDE DVD RW+ on secondary controller on motherboard. Boot is controlled simply from motherboard BIOS.

There is a PCI IDE controller which runs another CD-ROM, which is a CD-RW. This is a Promise controller, with a Silicon Image 0680 chipset, seen by XP as a SCSI device. This is not bootable.

There is another 80G EIDE hard drive also attached to the Promise controller. Not bootable.

From CPU-Z:

CPU-Z Report
CPU-Z version 1.21.

CPU(s)
Number of CPUs 1
Code Name Spitfire
Specification AMD Duron(tm) processor
Family / Model / Stepping 6 3 1
Extended Family / Model 7 3
Package Socket A
Technology 0.18 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, Extended MMX, 3DNow!, Extended 3DNow!
CPU Clock Speed 854.7 MHz
Clock multiplier x 8.5
Front Side Bus Frequency 100.6 MHz
Bus Speed 201.1 MHz
L1 Data Cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Instruction Cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Cache 64 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 854.7 MHz (Full)
L2 Location On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic no
L2 Bus Width 64 bits

Mainboard and chipset
Motherboard model VT8366-8233,
BIOS vendor Award Software International, Inc.
BIOS revision 6.00 PG
BIOS release date 11/02/2001
Chipset VIA KT266/333 rev. 0
Southbridge VIA VT8233 rev. 0
Sensor chip Winbond W83697HF
AGP Status enabled, rev. 2.0
AGP Data Transfert Rate 4x
AGP Side Band Addressing supported, not enabled
AGP Aperture Size 128 MBytes

Memory
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 768 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 133.9 MHz
FSB:DRAM FSB + 33 MHz
DRAM Interleave 4-way
CAS# Latency 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 2 clocks
RAS# Precharge 2 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 5 clocks
# of memory modules 2
Module 0 DDR-SDRAM PC2700 - 512 MBytes
Module 1 Micron Technology DDR-SDRAM PC2100 - 256 MBytes

Software
Windows version Microsoft Windows XP Workstation Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)

danleff · Joined: 08 May 2005 Posts: 294 Location: Albany, NY

I just downloaded the iso this afternoon and did a burn on a cdrw disk. Puppy's burner defaulted to 4X. Same problem, unless I booted with the option to allow files to be written to the hard drive.

I have found that on cdrw disks, Puppy needs to be burned at 2X on a cdrw disk.

4X seems to work fine on a good quality cd-r disk.

The Puppy iso file need to be burned slow. Very slow.

BarryK · Posted: Mon 04 Jul 2005, 19:58 Post_subject:

Jonathan,
When you boot Puppy and get to the prompt, try this and let us know what it returned:

Guest · Guest

I've noticed, sorry bit off topic, but vmware/puppy has a problem finding usr_cram.fs when booting from an iso......but it can be manually mounted...

But Barry's suggesting kinda gives me a clue......

JonathanBrickman0000 · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

I ran

Guest · Guest

I've found a similar thing (using vmware). Puppy cannot find the usr file from the cd, but I can mount the cd from the command prompt, copy the usr file onto the hard disk and reboot. The usr file is then found from the hard disk and everything seems to work fine. (The cd and hard disk are mapped to files on my XP system)

The dmesg command line finds the cdrom drive (hdc:) 3 times.

BarryK · Posted: Sat 09 Jul 2005, 05:55 Post_subject:

Yes, hdg should work.
Now, let's try the next part of the boot script:

rarsa · Posted: Sat 09 Jul 2005, 09:55 Post_subject:

Besides following Barry's instructions to find out the root of the problem so it can be properly solved in puppy, you can try the following:

Boot from windows and copy the usr_cram.fs from the cd to C:\
Then reboot puppy from CD

This has two effects:
- Puppy will find that file without looking for the CD drive
- Puppy will boot very fast as the usr_cram.fs will be mounted at HDD speed and not at CD-drive speed. (In My case it went from about 3 minutes to under a minute)

Please note that I am advising this 'Besides' helping finding the root cause.

JonathanBrickman0000 · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

Now this is getting interesting. The command given:

BarryK · Posted: Sat 09 Jul 2005, 19:49 Post_subject:

Okay, in an rxvt terminal you type:

# disktype /dev/hdg

I would like to know the exact error message returned -- just drag the mouse pointer over the message to highlight the text and it will automatically go into the clipboard when you release the left mouse button -- then ctrl-v to paste it into this forum.

Also try this:

# probepart

...if this works, what i could do is modify the bootup code so if disktype returns error msg, then use probepart.

Although you have worked around the problem i would like to solve the original problem!

Jesse · Joined: 08 May 2005 Posts: 465 Location: Auckland, NZ

Hi Barry,
There is code in the MUT program to create any additional device nodes for disks and cdroms in /dev so that the devices can be accessed. Is tcl in the initial image.gz ? If so you could almost copy and paste it.
Jesse