(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Actually, I might have found a different symptom/cause (referring to the boot issue).

I reaccomplished the boot loading in XP and successfully rebooted the FAT32 thumb drive. Shutdown and created a 218Mb ext3 save file on the thumb drive.....

and "Boot error"

So, is it the presence of an ext3 save file on the FAT32 thumb drive that is killing the boot sequence?

-Roy

Saving works fine for me with ext2, 3, and 4. Only the Usb drive needs a FAT filesystem.

That doesn't match with what I am seeing on my end. My thumbdrive is a FAT32 filesystem (formatted by XP, not Puppy), but as soon as I create the ext3 save file -- I can't reboot.

There has to be something different that we are doing on our respective ends but -- since you are the developer and I am the dumb end-user -- I humbly defer to your wisdom.

-Roy

EDIT: re-running the XP bootloader again after creating the savefile does restore bootability.

The XP bootloader works perfectly AFAIK - only the Linux version creates the ldlinux.sys file.

Just tried the rfkill commands you provided earlier...
shows eth0 and bluetooth unblocked (both soft and hard); blocking both of those with the block all command does not bring up wlan0.

Will continue playing with this for a while....

-Roy

jemimah,

Re: wireless connectivity... Does my attachment show anything useful? If I am reading it correctly, ndiswrapper is not installed -- but the quirky b43 module isn't loaded either. #iwconfig doesn't show wlan0, either.

-Roy

Roy, the driver is not being detected - also I didn't compile the ndiswrapper kernel module for Fluppy yet.

Did you say the proprietary wl driver works well for this card and the b43 driver in Quirky does not work? I can build the wl module and you can test it.

Big_Bass has kindly created an uploaded an ISO of Fluppy02.

http://www.puppy2.org/slaxer/Fluppy-002.iso

Md5sum: 39522428dff632abb35ed8ccce18fbfb


Grab it with:

jemimah,

The proprietary wl.ko driver works wonderfully with the newer broadcom cards found in netbooks. Tempestuous had made a .pet for the Puppy 4.2x kernel (the numbers escape my memory at the moment), but has stated that Puppy 4.3x onwards has a different file arrangement in the .iso directories. The wl.ko seems to require ssb and b43 (and others maybe?) to be removed for proper operation without conflict. jrb accomplished this in a Special Puppy431 for broadcom 4312 (and other?) wifi cards (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=50570).

I found that the b43 driver in Quirky 1.0 allowed a connection with my Broadcom 4312 wireless card, too -- but I'm kinda' in travel status and have never sat down long enough in a single period to see if it had problems staying connected for any length of time. Apparently, it is with this newer kernel that a freshly redesigned (reverse engineered) Broadcom b43 driver can be implemented.

rcrsn51 had problems maintaining connectivity with the b43 driver in Quirky 1.2 (noted in bug thread) and came up with the ndiswrapper fix referenced previously. Note that ndiswrapper, from my limited understanding, allows WEP encryption but not WAP or WAP2.

A dirty little secret of mine is that I have one of tempestuous' .pets for the wl.ko wireless driver that I use in Boxpup431. It's not supposed to work -- but I have never had any problems with it. [Developers' shrieks may be heard in the background now.] Of course, that particular academic exercise may be irrelevant to this discussion as Puppy431 is an even earlier kernel than you are using in Fluppy....

I realize that this is all rather undefinitive, but the bottom line is that if you want a tester for Fluppy with the broadcom card, I'm game. You just choose whichever route you want to take....

-Roy

Roy,

Can you run lsmod and see if the b43 driver loaded?

If not, try 'modprobe b43' then run iwconfig and see if a wireless interface shows up.

Also running 'dmesg|grep b43' might provide a clue.

I've been reading some. It seems the b43 module requires firmware. You can try copying this firmware from Quirky. The file is /lib/modules/all-firmware/b43.tar.gz. Just copy this file to the same place in Fluppy and reboot and that may solve it.

It looks to me as if the b43 is being loaded (I still have the ndiswrapper file, though). See attachment.

-Roy

EDIT: The attachment is only a .txt file! I labeled it as a .gz file only to allow the upload. Remove .gz and substitute .txt for viewing.

The file is /lib/modules/all-firmware/b43.tar.gz.

Sorry, Jemimah. I don't have access to Quirky at the moment. Maybe next week sometime? (That almost reads badly -- but what can I do?)

-Roy

EDIT: I have found a bcm43xx-firmware.pet that I used with Boxpup413 on my external hard drive. Let's give that a try, shall we?

Here it is.

Just an accurate observation here:

I have a folder named 'documents' on Fluppy's FAT32 USB drive. Every time I add a file to that folder, I have to fix the boot with XP before the next Puppy session can begin.

jemimah,

Still no joy. 'iwconfig' shows wlan0, 'ifconfig wlan0 up' shows 'ifconfig: SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory'

But I want you to help me check something else....

There was a Puppy distro (past-tense) that always failed to unzip the broadcom firmware... where would I look to make sure this is not happening here?

-Roy

Tried with both the windows and the linux installer and I can't reproduce it. I wonder what you are doing differently than what I do.

No idea, jemimah. Never had this happen before. I'm actually in front of two machines ATM; one running XP and the other running Mint 9. The Fluppy stick and my external hard disc drive are the only things that are mine... so my troubleshooting is limited.

Okay, I rebooted without my save file, renamed my save file so that it would not be recognized as such, and rebooted again...

Boot error

Back to the XP machine to rebuild the boot record... again.

Back to the netbook and rebooted. Created new save file. Rebooted. Put b43.tar.gz into /lib/modules/all-firmware/ and rebooted. Checked /lib/firmware/ directory to see if the firmware was being extracted.... nope.

Used my bcm43xx-firmware.pet to put the extracted firmware into that directory (maybe an earlier -- too early? -- version) and rebooted again.

Pwireless2 still shows zero access points and I'm still getting the 'ifconfig:SIOCSFIFFLAGS : no such file or directory'

Can you try creating a bootable drive using BootFlash on Puppy and see if you still have the same problem creating files?

Use Bootflash to format a blank drive - say no when it asks if you want to install Puppy. Then copy the Fluppy files to the new drive. But don't copy the ldlinux.sys file - leave the one that Bootflash creates untouched.

Also, can you send me the output of dmesg?