Ongoing disaster

Booting, installing, newbie
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LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

Ongoing disaster

#1 Post by LeithR1 »

My friend and I set out to implement a puppy on his Dell Inspiron 1150 with 256M RAM.

Initially The machine was happy with a copy of Lupu 5.2. We were able to partition the drives with approx 37Gbit main partition and 1G swap partition and loaded Lupu 5.2 onto the HD. My buddy then tried to set up - (in error) - GRUB4Dos (there is no MSW on the machine). Since then he was only getting error messages and BIOS seemed to be ignoring the DVD - so today we got together to explore the situation further. Initially we tried to use a Slacko 5.3.3 liveCD to over-ride all that had gone before. The machine still ignored BIOS and continued to go to the HDD with the same result as before.

We tried to rectify the situation:-
We removed from the inspiron and set up the HD as a USB connected HD on my compaq Presario running Slacko 5.3.3, We were able to re-partition the HD and we then loaded a copy of slacko 5.3.3 onto the primary partition (and then re-inserted the HD back into the the DELL Inspiron.

Puppy universal installer obviously sees the USB connected HD as an external device as it creates a couple of files with names starting ext... We are not sure how much effect this will have when the HD is re-inserted back into the Inspiron
The situation now is that we're getting error messages, I'm guessing from BIOS or Boot menu saying:
"Try (hd0,0): EXT2: No grldr
Try (hd0,1): non-MS: skip
Try (hd0,2): invalid or null
Try (hd0,3): invalid or null
try (fd0): invalid or null
Cannot find grldr
Press space bar to hold screen, any other key to boot previous mbr..."

trying the latter option gives msge
"Loading pbr for descriptor 1...done.
Boot error"

Now we are way in above our heads - help?

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rjbrewer
Posts: 4405
Joined: Tue 22 Jan 2008, 21:41
Location: merriam, kansas

#2 Post by rjbrewer »

Instructions for a full install:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=29653

Instructions are a bit old; drives are now 'sda', not 'hda'.
Grub needs to be found in the menu.


I use 'Wary 5.3' on older Dell laptops, and choose 'i810'
video module during setup.
I don't use Grub4dos.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

#3 Post by LeithR1 »

Hi there rjbrewer,
This is great stuff which I've used successfully in the past. But it doesn't apply in this situation as we are only getting to about image 22 installing the OS to the HD

Because of the error which seems to have come out of setting up GRUB4DOS on the Inspiron we removed the Inspiron's HD and set it up in a cradle on my machine with Slacko on it. The HD is now seen as a USB connected HD by Slacko. The HD partitions ok and loads up with Slacko all ok. The next steps tried was to re-insert the HD back into the Inspiron with the plan to set up GRUB but its coming up with the errors noted above.

Thanks

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rcrsn51
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Joined: Tue 05 Sep 2006, 13:50
Location: Stratford, Ontario

#4 Post by rcrsn51 »

Cannot find grldr
That message is pretty specific. Is grldr anywhere on the drive?

Because your friend started to install Grub4Dos, it has put its initial code on the MBR of the drive. But it also requires the two secondary files - grldr and menu.lst to be somewhere on the drive. Apparently they are not.

Run Grub4Dos again - you need some kind of bootloader.

LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

#5 Post by LeithR1 »

hi there rcrsc51,
Can either GRUB or GRUB4DOS be run when the HD is in the cradle attached to my machine?

It is no possible to run any bootloader on his machine.

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rcrsn51
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Location: Stratford, Ontario

#6 Post by rcrsn51 »

Use Grub4DOS. Make sure that you select the attached hard drive as the target device - not your own hard drive!

bark_bark_bark
Posts: 1885
Joined: Tue 05 Jun 2012, 12:17
Location: Wisconsin USA

#7 Post by bark_bark_bark »

what is the name of the folder where you put slacko in on the hard disk? Could be a culprit
....

LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

#8 Post by LeithR1 »

Hi again rcrsn51,
I ran GRUB4Dos on sdb1(external drive) and it loaded grldr and menu.lst.
It seemed to do everything before quiting.
Thanks

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rcrsn51
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Location: Stratford, Ontario

#9 Post by rcrsn51 »

So did the drive boot when you replaced it in the original machine?

LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

#10 Post by LeithR1 »

My thanks yet again rcrsn51,
That was successful. I now have a new pup for my mate, we're going out for a pint tonite so the drinks are on him me thinks!!

LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

Ongoing disaster (Solved)

#11 Post by LeithR1 »

Solved

Sylvander
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Joined: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 11:06
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#12 Post by Sylvander »

Mark the title [SOLVED]. :D

LeithR1
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun 16 Dec 2012, 20:27

#13 Post by LeithR1 »

I did exactly that in the first instance but the subject line is blank and when I typed in "Ongoing disaster (SOLVED)" and submitted it that didn't work

mini-jaguar
Posts: 597
Joined: Thu 13 Nov 2008, 13:45

#14 Post by mini-jaguar »

edit the first post

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