(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

By unplugging the built-in 6-in-1 card reader my external HDD is now the only device and is visible as sda (yay) if......I mount it every time I reboot. How do I tell puppy to mount it for me?

Why does it sometimes show up as dev/flash and sometimes dev/cdrive?

Why can't I boot off the bloody thing? I let puppy do his magic USB install wizard thing but when I boot from "USB-HDD" in my bios it just falls through to the internal HDD. USB HDD is how it shows up in the bios bootmenu. The little red light comes on for a second and then it falls though. Do I have to do something to the drive to make it bootable? Didn't puppy do that for me?

Won't somebody please tell me?

Mr Doolie, I can't help you myself, but I'm sure that someone else will come along who can. I don't have any experience with external HD's.

(And my experience with internal ones isn't anything for me to spout off about either, hahahah)

Have you looked in this index, under "Installing on and booting from USB"?

Well, now I have. The problem isn't really getting it to boot all the way. The problem is getting it to boot at all. When I choose "USB-HDD" (the option that shows under the boot menu) the external light flashes for a second and then the boot defaults to the internal drive. It's like the system is saying

"Checking the external....I see it but it's not bootable".

I have formatted the drive FAT16, installed the three puppy files and run "syslinux.exe -f d:". (I have to use "-f" because syslinux tells "the drive is not removable") Syslinux does in fact write something to the drive but it isn't whatever you need to make the drive bootable.

No big deal I guess but I was really wanting a bootable drive to carry around.

Also the other question was how do I get the external to automount under puppy. At the present time I have to always run the wizard.

In other words where do I add a line that says
"mount sda"
or whatever the Linuxspeak is.

Mr Doolie, I can field that last one. There is a file here-
/etc/rc.d/rc.local
-append the line to the file rc.local. The line would be something akin to-
If this is done the drive should auto mount at every bootup. I have a bunch of extra software on /mnt/data and have been doing this for several weeks. You can even have a daemon startup automatically at boot. If you are running the Morizot firewall this is the file that tells it to auto start. I had it set to run beta-ftpd at bootup. This is a very handy file.

I'm sorry to say, however, that if the thread on booting from usb couldn;t solve that issue for you then I probably can't either. Hope this much at least helps.

Nathan

Well a couple of thoughts come to mind. You used syslinux from Windows XP to prepare the drive? What version of syslinux did you use?

You did the syslinux stuff after removing the 6/1 card reader?

What version of Puppy are you using? See this thread.

Are there any other options to boot from USB on this system in the bios? Some systems bios' are finicky about how they boot usb. It's not all standard between systems and their bios. Do you have the option to boot USB-FDD or USB-ZIP in the bios?

Does the syslinux.cfg file on the external drive point to the correct drive designation? Sda1?

Nathan F, "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash" didn't work at all! But after a lot of searching and watching the USB Wizard I put the line "modprobe usb-storage" before it and then it worked just fine.
Thank you

Danleff,

>You used syslinux from Windows XP to prepare the drive?

XP? No way. I'm using Win2000. Mr Bill can kiss my hairy face with his WinXP. Any OS that has to be serialized and verified and registered just to get it running and then you have to verify it AGAIN for each and every little update.....no way! Win2000 is like XP with all the bloat and horse-hockey removed.Plus it takes up WAY less drive space (XP-over 1 Gig 2000-300 megs) and runs games better.

>What version of syslinux did you use?

3.09 I believe.

>You did the syslinux stuff after removing the 6/1 card reader?

Yep

>What version of Puppy are you using?

1.04

>Are there any other options to boot from USB on this system in the bios?

USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM and USB-HDD. The only one that even looks at the drive is USB-HDD. With the external HDD it flashes the light and then falls through to the internal drive. With the thumbdrive the BIOS gets stuck at "Verifying DMI Pool" (or something like that).

>Does the syslinux.cfg file on the external drive point to the correct drive designation? Sda1?

Yes

>I love it when a plan comes together - --Hannibal Smith

I ate his liver with some faval beans and a nice chiante - Hannibal Lechter

"mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash" didn't work at all! But after a lot of searching and watching the USB Wizard I put the line "modprobe usb-storage" before it and then it worked just fine.

Sorry, didn't think of that wrinkle. Glad you found the rest of the answer on your own.

Mr Doolie wrote:Nathan F, "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash" didn't work at all! But after a lot of searching and watching the USB Wizard I put the line "modprobe usb-storage" before it and then it worked just fine.
Thank you

Nice going! That would be the ticket. Sometimes finding the answer on your own is quite satisfying.

I'm going to give this a try on my external 2.5" drive enclosure.