(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I have bought a new (and tested) CD-RW external USB 2.0 drive.
(Iomega CD-RW Plus)

When I try too boot all seems to work until a message 'usr_cram.fs not found..." shows up. (Then not X, just console)

That happens in my two systems:
1. IBM thinkpad X31
2. VIA EPIA Eden ME9000

The same CD media (disc) (Puppy 1.0.5.a2) works perfectly in other machine with an standard IDE CD-RW

Thx in advance
Sirexel

yep that's to be expected...you'll get the same thing happening with a scsi cdrom.....booting from usb or scsi cdrom hasn't been allowed for....so it's not a bug....just something that hasn't been included.....usb cd burning from linux is patchy on supported devices...just thought I'd add that

OK. Understand: USB-CD boot not supported.

Thx a lot.

Sirexel

Strange that the boot process would proceed that far before it was unable to proceed.

It goes this far, because at the beginning only the hardware (BIOS) is responsible for booting. So, your BIOS apparently supports booting from rhe USB cdrom. The bootloader is started up and it knows where to find the kernel image. After that, the kernel is solely responsible for mounting the root filesystem. It does not have the necessary drivers, so it fails.

bladehunter wrote:yep that's to be expected...you'll get the same thing happening with a scsi cdrom.....booting from usb or scsi cdrom hasn't been allowed for....so it's not a bug....just something that hasn't been included.....usb cd burning from linux is patchy on supported devices...just thought I'd add that

But why isn't it allowed for in Puppy ?
To be honest: I wrote this posting after booting Feather Linux from a SCSI-CDROM (No HD!) perfectly into RAM, because Puppy 1.0.4 refused starting X ;o)
As I really like Puppy, and have a lot of SCSI devices/controllers in my surplus box, I'm really interested in overcoming this obstacle.

d.

To keep the size down and I'm guessing Barry didn't/doesn't have access to SCSI hardware. Really hard to get something working if you don't have access to the hardware and besides SCSI isn't really that widespread in the desktop market, tho some of still do use it

This is the reason why my Puppy builds will continue to be 128Mb RAM variety ...

So I can make sure they'll boot.

Cheers
JohnM

But why isn't it allowed for in Puppy ?

I think that 'allowed' is not the right word to use here.

It is not included with the standard puppy image. Of course it is allowed, you just have to find the right modules or Kernel compilation parameters and do it yourself.

That's the tradeoff for keeping puppy small.

The good news is that there are people compiling and releasing modules and kernels for puppy that do things that aren't included in the standard puppy image.

If you can make it work I'm sure that someone else will benefit.

What I would recommend to findout what you need to do is:
1. Compare the kernel configuration file for puppy agains the kernel configuration file for Feather to see if something jumps up.
2. 'lsmod' to check what modules have been loaded into Feather. See if something jumps up.
3.a If nothing jumps up at you, then send those pieces of information to the appropriate forum/thread
3.b If you find something obvious, then try to compile it for puppy and remaster puppy.

Sirexel, could you try the image in :

http://www.murga.org/_puppy/

This is an older build, but it boots a little differently ... You might find it works.

Works for me on PCMCIA external drives (where the standard doesn't).

Cheers
JohnM

JohnM,

i'll burn me a CD with your 128 MB build and try - need no download, just found the ISO on my HD (never tested)!
On the other hand, this "non-bug" should encourage me to learn more about Linux, kernel building and compiling etc. When I have made remarkable progress with this in the future, I will post here again.

Tnx a lot

Strange ... thought I had logged in, but appeared as guest ?

ducwiz