(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

2.15 CE has been running faultlessly on my laptop, and I am definately smitten...Congratulations to all who were involved, I am looking forward to the final version. .

BUT, I have been unable to ever boot puppy on my old desktop. I stumbled across a thread started by josjl in the Developer Forum which suggested 2.14 (therefore also 2.15) had been modified and should boot ok if failure occurs at loading kernel modules. Dougal said " if you still have problems, let us know." Well, that forum is now read only so I have posted here.

I tried using debug and this was the output just before it hung:
Loading kernel modules...ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
sis630_smbus 0000:00:02.0: SIS630 comp. bus not detected, module not inserted.

The PC SPECS are:
MSI MS-6561 mobo
Chipset SIS745 CPU to PCI Bridge
AMD Athlon XP1800+ processor.

Cheers, Mike

What are your machine specs, msumner?

[Edit - I must be blind, sorry, just saw them at bottom of your post, lol]

You say "old" desktop; I have several old ones, I'd like to try to reproduce this.

I'm still playing with it as a live distribution, and I'm so impressed, absolutely marvellous job the guys have done

Richard in steenking hot Adelaide

By old, I mean 2002....maybe thats not old by some peoples standards.
Has someone moved this post?
Could have sworn it was in beginners help

Ok, lets try and see if we can figure thise out...

Get the file I've got here. gunzip it: then copy it onto one of your HD partitions (remember which!).

Then boot Puppy like this: ("debug" is optional-- just so you can see if the kernel complains about anything)
This will leave you at a commandline.
now mount the /proc directory: now mount the partition with the script on (say it's hda1): Now run the script: This will load the modules and tell you before each one which it is...
This way we'll know exactly where the problem is.
If the script finishes with no errors, we'll know the problem is later. In such a case you can always try to see if the init script will (for some reason) run... (be sure to unmount the partition first: umount /mnt/data)

Note: you can also try booting an older Puppy -- 2.02 or earlier (maybe also a 1. Puppy) to see if the problem isn't specific to newer kernels.

Hi Dougal, does the partition for the script need to be ext2 or 3? The partition I am using is fat32.
Error msgs:

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev hda3

FAT: codepage cp437 not found

mount: Mounting /dev/hda3 on /mnt failed: Invalid argument


When I try to mount it, it appears to be expecting ext2 or some linux partition I guess. Should I make an ext2 partition and try again?

Off to bed now as it's 1 am.
Cheers, Mike

There is a chance that the fs has to be ext2/3, but the kernel is compiled with vfat support built in, so I don't see why...

You should first try You can also try having the script on a floppy -- you can always format it as ext2...

Hi Dougal, no joy yet. Tried everything so far suggested except the floppy. Only got win xp on this machine and its the only one with a floppy. Will try formatting floppy with mepis later using live cd.

Tried meanpup 2.02 with puppy debug on. It got to:
Now executing /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit...
Mounting /proc:
Mounting devpts:
mounting /sys:

and then hangs with flashing cursor.
Don't know if this is diagnostic?
Will post results of floppy attempt later.
Cheers, Mike

Hi Dougal, not having much luck. Can't seem to format the floppy with mepis, and even if I could, I can't find a way to mount sda3 to retreive the file. Everything seems so much easier using puppy!

I dont know if it is significant but during boot, I saw several error msgs relating to mounting partitions like:
EXT3-fs warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended

Cheers, Mike

Dougal, partial success I managed to get grafpup 1.0.4 running ok so maybe you can tell from that where things are going wrong with the later versions?

I have made a new ext2 prtition with just the file in it and nothing else. This time it got further, maybe completed? Last message was :
# usb 2-1: configuration #2 chosen from 2 choices

EDIT: Ok......tried to carry on with exec /sbin/init, which seemed to go normally until a screen came on with the MSI logo which normally appears during the early few seconds after power on, about the time you would get into the bios. It is broken into vertical bars and appears an abnormal colour. Hangs at this point. Could it be something to do with the video card?

Any ideas?

Cheers, mike

msumner wrote:I have made a new ext2 prtition with just the file in it and nothing else. This time it got further, maybe completed? Last message was :
# usb 2-1: configuration #2 chosen from 2 choices

When did you get this? when running my script (after haing mounted the ext2 partition)? or are you talking about a kernel debug message?

Note that Grafpup-1.4 is (I think) based on Puppy1, which has the 2.4 kernel -- so that might give us a hint.
As for MeanPup, you actually got past the init script and it froze in the rc.sysinit, so I don't know what causes that...

Oh, sorry I didn't get back earlier... Barry's forum is a better place to find me.

Hi Dougal, I have managed to get the latest Grafpup 2 (alpha 4) iso installed out of the box.
This seems to show that the difficulty with all the 2 series puppies I tried and failed with, was something to do with the kernel or unionfs/aufs, which have both been upgraded for Grafpup. The kernel used is 2.6.20.2. Maybe when these get into Puppy, that will solve the problem.
Cheers, Mike