Puppy linux frugal installation, problem booting [Solved]

Booting, installing, newbie
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LidiaS
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Puppy linux frugal installation, problem booting [Solved]

#1 Post by LidiaS »

Hello everyone,

please excuse my ignorance; I have been using Linux Ubuntu and Linux Mint for quite some time now but I cannot say I have good understanding of the more deep issues of Linux.

I have a netbook with poor performance (2 GB DD3, Intel Atom N2600) for which I have been trying to find the best software to make it work faster, with no luck so far. I have tried Ubuntu, Mint, other variations and the latest was Lubuntu. More or less I was happy with that, it only takes too much time to boot and also relatively bad speed when I'm browsing, when I build latex etc.

Yesterday, I thought of trying puppy and see what performance I get. I booted from a USB stick with the iso on it, and then performed a frungal install; I don't understand the details, but I thought that my Lubuntu would stay on the computer (which I wanted for the time being), and I would be able to test Puppy whenever I had time, something about being on the same partition was quite confusing though. In the process, I also think I installed Grub4dos (haven't used this before either).

Next time I boot my netbook, without the USB stick (I thought that was the point), in the boot setup (F12) I didn't have a choice for Lubuntu or Puppy as I thought (I later understood that is the frungal and not full installation), just HDD, and then there was a strange message as follows:

wee 0> find --set-root /grldr (0x80,0)
wee 0> /grldr
wee 13>

I spent hours googling to try to understand what's going on with no luck. I then noticed that when I plug the USB, it works 'normally', going directly to puppy. I tried to also erase Grub4dos since I got the feeling that this could solve my problem, but no luck. I tried to configure it but again, I wasn't sure what I was doing.

Finally, this morning, my computer instead of the `wee' message, it only says `Error loading operating system'.

Any comments that would help me understand what has happened would be welcome. More importantly, since I will need my netbook for traveling soon, can you guide me through uninstalling puppy and everything that came with it, and go back to my Lubuntu state? I guess later I will try to create a partition for Puppy but right now, I just want to use my netbook again!

Thank you very much in advance.
Last edited by LidiaS on Fri 03 Mar 2017, 09:31, edited 2 times in total.

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Galbi
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#2 Post by Galbi »

Hi, how did you make the USB stick bootable?
Which Puppy did you try?

For what I know, wee it's a bootloader, Grub4Dos it's another one.

I'm not familiar with wee, but Grub4dos (if it's correctly installed) it's very keen on finding other OS in the hard drive and presenting them in the menu to choose which OS to boot.

Please give more information to can help you:

You do what?
You see what?

Saludos.
Remember: [b][i]"pecunia pecuniam parere non potest"[/i][/b]

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mikeslr
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#3 Post by mikeslr »

Hi wee,

I'm not familiar with the wee bootloader either. But it seems that was the bootloader you had on your hard-drive which was being used to boot Lubuntu.

Then you did a frugal install of Puppy. To where? To the USB-Stick? To a folder on your hard-drive? To your hard-drive without specifying a Folder? My guess is probably the last as it seems you've somehow over-written wee's booting instructions as it no longer finds Lubuntu.

When you boot with your USB-stick plugged in (?and press F12), do you get a menu giving you the choice to boot into either Puppy or Lubuntu? If you have that choice, can you then boot into Lubuntu?

I think what you want to be able to do is (1) boot into Puppy if the USB-Stick is plugged in and (2) boot into Lubuntu if the USB-Stick isn't plugged in.

That, by the way is how I dual-boot Puppy and Linux Mint Sarah. So, how to get there?

First read the P.S. concerning Toshibas. If you don't have a Toshiba, you should be able to following these instructions. If you do have a Toshiba, follow the instructions in the P.S.

Since the wee bootloader is no longer working, boot into Puppy and then call up grub4dos: Menu>system>grub4dos bootloader. You'll see a Graphical User Interface like that in the attached screen shot [except that I have 2 hard-drives and the USB-Key which was plugged in to boot Puppies]. By default, the first hard-drive on your computer, as Puppy sees it, is high-lighted indicating that is where grub4dos will install itself if you don't select another location. You can change that location by clicking your the listing for your USB-stick. Don't. You want grub4dos to install itself to your hard-drive so that you can boot without your USB-Stick being plugged in. Just Click OK. Grub4dos will install itself to your hard-drive and create a Menu.lst. When you next boot your computer a menu will appear giving you the choice between booting into Puppy and booting into Lubuntu.

You don't have to do anything else. [Except before Update Lubuntu --which will install Grub-- see the instructions in the P.S.] But if you want to set your computer up so that it will automatically boot into Lubuntu, and only boot into Puppy if the USB-Stick is plugged in, please tell us how you initially booted into Puppy. Was it from a CD? Some other way?

Making those changes can be as simple as having Grub4dos on both the Hard-drive and the USB-Stick and just editing their Menu.lsts --they are just text files-- but can also involve moving Puppy's files into a folder so they aren't scattered around your hard-drive.

In that case, we have to know what operating systems you have available. Puppy on your hard-drive and Puppy from a CD are two operating systems. And --getting back to my original questions-- where your Puppy files are located?

mikesLr

P.S. Is your computer a Toshiba? My wife has a Toshiba Satellite L775d. It booted Puppies fine with Grub4dos on the USB-Key. But when I installed Grub4dos to the hard-drive, it wouldn't boot anything at all without the USB-key plugged in. I don't know what Toshiba does with computers. Others have experienced similar problems after installing Grub4dos on Toshibas and only Toshibas. In the end I had to install a Linux which used Grub --not grub4dos. If that's the case, your best option would be to somehow boot into Lubuntu --perhaps from grub4dos on your USB-Stick-- and run its Grub boot-loader installing it to your hard-drive. Grub, however, doesn't recognize a Frugal Puppy as an operating system. So, if you wanted to boot a Puppy, you'd have to customize Grub's confg file, or install grub4dos on your USB-Stick. Recommend the latter.
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LidiaS
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#4 Post by LidiaS »

Hi and thank you both for your answers.

The operating system is puppy Tahrpup 6.0.5 PAE, I burned the .iso to my USB stick on Windows using the Rufus USB installer, and my current state of affairs is: after installing Grub4dos as mikeslr suggested with his helpful picture, (although I did this also before fore sure), when I boot without the USB stick, the exact same wee messages come up again, whereas when I boot with the USB stick I can either choose to go puppy, or to HDD (from the F12 menu), but when I choose HDD the wee messages arise again. So if I understand correctly, instead of the wee mesages I should be able to boot to Lubunu. Unfortunately that is not the case.

To reply to the rest of questions, I did a frugal install to my hard drive. About the specifying a folder part, I remember being asked for a name for some folder, which I called somehow; I kind of remember if that's useful.

To sum up, no, I never get the option to log on Lubuntu, the wee messages are back, and I don't have a Toshiba, I have a packard bell. But still without being able to log to my old system, I couldn't do the Grup solution.

By the way, when I pressed 'ok' to installing Grub4dos on my hard drive, it showed me the image attached. I just pressed 'ok'. Is it alarming that it says Ubuntu is there and no Lubuntu?

Any ideas are very welcome, and thanks already for your help.
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puppytahruser
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re

#5 Post by puppytahruser »

I am also using tahrpup 6.0.5. What I feel that you might choose the usb stick for frugal install instead of hdd. You can try reinstall tahrpup again but this time more carefully and taking more time understanding each step. May that can solve your problem. Though I am not linux expert either, may be this can help you.

foxpup
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#6 Post by foxpup »

It looks as if the wee bootloader was used for lubuntu and still is in use, but it seems to have gone wrong.

Can you find weemenu.txt on your sda1 (home)? What is in it?
Can you find grldr on sda1?
Can you find menu.lst on sda1? What is in it?

(Rufus puts isolinux, or something similar, on the usb, another bootloader.)

LidiaS
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#7 Post by LidiaS »

foxpup wrote: Can you find weemenu.txt on your sda1 (home)? What is in it?
Can you find grldr on sda1?
Can you find menu.lst on sda1? What is in it?
weemenu.txt: I cannot find it anywhere.

grldr: I find it, yes.

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 tahr 6.0.5 (sda1/tahr6.0.5frugal)
uuid 3711e60d-bb1a-4de4-b789-44271b599c68
kernel /tahr6.0.5frugal/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=tahr6.0.5frugal pfix=fsck
initrd /tahr6.0.5frugal/initrd.gz

title Puppy tahr 6.0.5 (sdb1)
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck
initrd /initrd.gz

# Full installed Linux

title Ubuntu 16.10 (sda1)
uuid 3711e60d-bb1a-4de4-b789-44271b599c68
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro
initrd /initrd.img

# 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

# Advanced Menu
title Advanced menu
configfile /menu-advanced.lst
commandline

In fact, grldr and menu.lst, along with that folder which I gave my own name while installing, are all together in the directory /initrd/mnt/dev_save, if that gives any clue.

Thank you so much for trying to help!

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mikeslr
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Grub4dos did find your Lubuntu

#8 Post by mikeslr »

Hi Lidia5,

Grub4dos did find your Lubuntu installation. Lubuntu is Ubuntu with the openbox window manager and Lxde desktop (and a few other tweaks). The files relating to the window manager are opened during the bootup process. [You could, if you wanted, install some other Window manager --such as Mate or Unity-- and choose which desktop you want to use]. But the initial files loaded into Random Access Memory are identical whichever desktop you are using. Grub4dos doesn't read that far into the bootup process. Consequently, it sees only that the installation is Ubuntu.

You can edit Grub4dos's Menu.lst and just add an "L" to the front of "Ubuntu" if it will make you happier. [A real problem exists when Grub4dos sees several Ubuntu installations, but gives them each the same name. But, as each Ubuntu must use an entire partition, and Grub4dos and its menu.lst tells you where the OS is located, see below, you can figure it out and edit menu.lst to give each the name you want].

At any rate, Grub4dos and its menu.lst also see two "Frugal" installs: one on Sda1 and the other on Sdb1, "Sdb" is your USB-Stick: pmedia=usbflash means grub4dos saw it as a flash-drive. So it appears that somehow Puppy's necessary files were copied to both your hard-drive and your USB-Stick.

Go ahead and install Grub4dos to sda so that you can boot into Lubuntu without having to first plug in your stick. Do follow foxpup’s suggestion below and call up Menu>system>gparted to make certain that the “boot flag
Last edited by mikeslr on Wed 01 Mar 2017, 03:14, edited 2 times in total.

foxpup
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#9 Post by foxpup »

I agree with mikeslr: grub4dos finds all your installations - it looks very good - and will boot them ... when given the chance.
Go ahead and install Grub4dos to sda so that you can boot into Lubuntu without having to first plug in your stick.

I've got to run now. But I'll post later regarding what may have gone wrong with wee, ... .
LidiaS, if I understand correctly you already tried to install grub4dos on sda. But the problem is exactly that you still find wee on your way.
When choosing to boot from hdd, you should get the menu.lst and have the possibility to boot either (l)ubuntu or puppy from hdd or puppy from usb (if your usb is plugged in) or whatever is in the menu.lst (and is also available).

It still looks as if grub4dos is not correctly installed. Could you reinstall grub4dos to be sure? You have to overwrite the boot record, I think that is where wee is installled.
Also, before that, look with Gparted if the sda1, where you install grub4dos (grldr and menu.lst), has the flag "boot".
Do this with your puppy on usb.

If that does not work, mikeslr will have to guide you further with removing wee/coping with wee.

LidiaS
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#10 Post by LidiaS »

Thanks for all the comments. I reinstalled grub4dos (for the third time) and the same things happen. Straight to puppy when USB is in, wee messages when USB is not it. Should I perhaps edit menu.lst?

If this wee bootloader cannot be deleted, if this causes the problem, should I do any of the following?

1) Try to install puppy at a partition? Will the frugal installation remain or go away?
2) Can I completely remove puppy? And later re-try or something.

Thanks again.

PS. Thanks for the suggestion for another puppy, I might give it a try after I fix this. Also yes, that was the case, I installed grub4dos at sda1 after first checking that it had the flag 'boot' at gparted.

foxpup
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#11 Post by foxpup »

Hi LidiaS
I just found this: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=95015
You could try fdisk /mbr to cleanup wee from the mbr and install grub4dos again.

foxpup
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#12 Post by foxpup »

I have a netbook with poor performance (2 GB DD3, Intel Atom N2600)
Your machine is not that bad at all. It must be from 2011 or later. I have tahr puppy running on a machine that is almost 10 years older and my main machine is from 2008, dual core, 64bit, 2G ram and SSE3 like yours. It also mainly runs tahr. I am looking for a 64bit distro: I am trying out Slacko, Carolina Vanguard and Fatdog64 at the moment. You can probably choose any puppy you like and they will run fast and safe on your machine. :-)

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mikeslr
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#13 Post by mikeslr »

Well I'm back. In the meantime, you posted some more information and foxpup made a very good suggestion. Together, those provided me with another idea as to what the problem might be.

It was easier for me to place that idea in context of my previous post. So I edited that post --in LibreOffice Writer-- and substituted the new text for the old.

Please refer back to my previous --now significantly re-written-- post.

mikesLr

LidiaS
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Re: Grub4dos did find your Lubuntu

#14 Post by LidiaS »

First of all, thanks a million for all the helpful suggestions!

[quote="mikeslr"]
I’m pretty certain that you have the required Puppy files on both sda (your hard-drive) and sdb (your usb-stick). But just to make sure, see if you can boot into both. In booting, Puppy automatically mounts the drive from which it booted. There will be an “x

foxpup
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#15 Post by foxpup »

I should delete Puppy and hope to have Lubuntu back
Hi LidiaS, that will most likely not work.
I tried the fdisk/mbr both at the wee blinking messages and at the terminal of my puppy, and nothing happened. In the terminal, it told me there is no such directory.
Okee, that will not work.
Surprisingly or not (relevantly to both wee's and grub4dos's grldr case), at the directory /initrd/pup_ro2/usr/lib/grub4dos I found two files, another grldr and one wee.mbr that I cannot erase, I receive errors.
I am surprised too :shock: But it is true! I checked in my puppy.
You are in your puppy on the usbflash then. You probably cannot delete the grldr and wee.mbr there because you use this path /initrd... . You should click the sdb1 to mount and access this place in a more 'accessible' manner. (Do the same to access sda1) But it would not do anything to remove them. It is on the sda1, where you try to install grub4dos, next to the puppy and the lubuntu (I thought l was for light) that the problem lies. The 2 files you found are just aids to grub4dos when you ask it to install on sda1. But this could mean that grub4dos is installed by installing wee.mbr first, certainly by puppy, maybe also by lubuntu (of lubuntu I guessed it from the start). Maybe something mismatched.

I found the info about wee also. But this is for installing linux next to windows. The first 4 steps in the chain are done in windows style.

If you are in a hurry, and do not want to get to the bottom of this, you may do a complete new installation. You would probably loose less time. And consider just one installation.
Reformat with gParted to remove all leftovers first.
WARNING: REFORMATTING WITH GPARTED OR ANY OTHER TOOL WILL ENTIRELY WHIPE OUT ANYTHING ON YOUR PARTITION!!!
FIRST BACKUP ANY ESSENTIAL DATA

USE AS A LAST RESORT ONLY!!!

If you need some help installing a puppy, please ask. It can be done very quickly, since you have it on usb.
Last edited by foxpup on Thu 02 Mar 2017, 09:19, edited 1 time in total.

LidiaS
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#16 Post by LidiaS »

foxpup wrote: If you are in a hurry, and do not want to get to the bottom of this, you may do a complete new installation. You would probably loose less time. And consider just one installation.
Reformat with gParted to remove all leftovers first.
If you need some help installing a puppy, please ask. It can be done very quickly, since you have it on usb.
Great, I think that's what I will do. What do you mean by 'reformatting with gParted'?

I guess I would install the puppy from puppy install as I did before, but this time choose a full installation on a partition rather than the frugal one. Does this sound about right?

Thanks!

foxpup
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#17 Post by foxpup »

You should reformat your sda1 where you will install your distribution. That's what Rufus also does, or any installer, to clear the partition. With this booting troubles, you should definitly do it!
You can use gparted from your puppy on usb to do it.
WARNING: REFORMATTING WITH GPARTED OR ANY OTHER TOOL WILL ENTIRELY WHIPE OUT ANYTHING ON YOUR PARTITION!!!
FIRST BACKUP ANY ESSENTIAL DATA

USE AS A LAST RESORT ONLY!!!

I never do a full install for puppy (except for Gamer/legacy).
Frugal is quite easy. Put the iso of your puppy on the usb you made with rufus. You can do it in the windows you used for rufus.
Boot your puppy from usb in your linux machine. Reformat the partition for your linux installations with gparted (menu, system), use ext3.
Create a map, name it.
Go to the icon on your desktop for your usb (sdb1?) and click on it. Click on the iso and mount it. Drag (copy) initrd.gz, vmlinuz, puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs, zdrv_tahr_6.0.5.sfs from the iso to your map. Run grub4dos from menu, system and install grub4dos on sda1. Close your computer and boot from hdd. (you have to go into bios (F12 or del or F2) to set the order for booting) It should boot.
At the end of your first session you will be offered to make a save-file (pupsave). Do it.
Last edited by foxpup on Thu 02 Mar 2017, 09:16, edited 2 times in total.

theru
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#18 Post by theru »

It looks like there are some leftovers from a previous bootloader that are interfering with the grub4dos install.

The /mbr switch seems to be for the windows version of fdisk. It basically wipes the mbr and overwrites it with it's own bootloader. There is a way to do the same in linux but it uses the dd command which, if used incorrectly, can wipe everything on the drive so I recommend to create a backup before trying it.

Disclaimer: the following is based on what I've read here. I haven't tried it myself but it should work.

First we need to create a backup of mbr + partition table (make sure the drive isn't mounted):

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/root/mbr.bin bs=512 count=1
Replace X with the drive you want to work on.

Next we need to clear the mbr but not touch the partition table:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1
This *should* zero out only the mbr and not the partition table. After that you can try installing grub4dos to the mbr. It should work now.

Should it go wrong and you need to restore your partition table then you can do this with the following command:

Code: Select all

dd if=/root/mbr.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1
Hope this helps
Last edited by theru on Wed 01 Mar 2017, 20:55, edited 1 time in total.

LidiaS
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#19 Post by LidiaS »

foxpup wrote:You should reformat your sda1 where you will install your distribution. That's what Rufus also does, or any installer, to clear the partition. With this booting troubles, you should definitly do it!
You can use gparted from your puppy on usb to do it.

I never do a full install for puppy (except for Gamer/legacy).
Frugal is quite easy. Put the iso of your puppy on the usb you made with rufus. You can do it in the windows you used for rufus.
Boot your puppy from usb in your linux machine. Reformat the partition for your linux installations with gparted (menu, system), use ext3.
Create a map, name it.
Go to the icon on your desktop for your usb (sdb1?) and click on it. Click on the iso and mount it. Drag (copy) initrd.gz, vmlinuz, puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs, zdrv_tahr_6.0.5.sfs from the iso to your map. Run grub4dos from menu, system and install grub4dos on sda1. Close your computer and boot from hdd. (you have to go into bios (F12 or del or F2) to set the order for booting) It should boot.
At the end of your first session you will be offered to make a save-file (pupsave). Do it.
Sorry, I am really afraid I will mess up.

I open gParted but I do not see a button of formatting! Just sda1 etc.

For the reinstallation, I don't understand: the iso is already in the USB! This is the same USB I've been using all along. Then I completely lose you: I don't know how to reformat, I don't see ext3 (only ext4), I don't know how to make a map. The rest maybe I can follow.

I think I am beyond saving and I should just reinstall Lubuntu :( and stick to easier things. I'm only thinking about the fuss of reinstalling full Latex. Anyway! Thanks again and sorry for being so bad at this. I
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foxpup
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multiple booting

#20 Post by foxpup »

A remark concerning the problem you encountered.

If you want to install multiple OS on one machine, you should stop the second and folowing installations where they install their bootloader. It is better to run the installation of the bootloader, in this case grub4dos, from/on the very first installation again.

When you want both windows and linux however, you could install windows first and linux next and let linux also take care of setting up the booting. Although I would not recommend it even then; there other non-intrusive ways.
(You gave one yourself where you quote about wee, but it is not the best method.)

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