(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Ok, I got the Fatdog-64 bit puppy to boot the install cd, but after saving to the flash drive it will not boot from my flash drive after I saved everything to it. What should I tweak?

Are you getting error messages or just long lines of .......?

Some BIOSes won't boot Fatdogs's large init.

I will have to try it again to let you know

I got a smiley face in the upper left corner forever then I hit enter and it tried to load like the CD showing similar text the last text was DHCP... and then it goes to windows.

Ok, I tried again. It did the smiley face again forever. I hit enter and then it said "operation system not found" I am thinking it did not save the system to my flash drive. I did a save file, but I am thinking only it did not load the system to the flash drive. Is there another way after using the CD to load it on the flash drive for good. I think that is my problem.

Did you install a bootloader on the flash drive? Or did you just copy the two Fatdog files onto it?

Run Control Panel > Utilities > Grub4Dos Bootloader Config.

Make sure that you pick your flash drive as the target device, not your main hard drive.

Ok your right I didn't do that. I tried your way and it gave me some errors.

#1 error:
Boot Flag not found on sdb.
Some BIOS does not boot from the drive which has no boot flag. But you can proceed installing grub4dos first.

#2 error: then I continued and got this error:

/usr/sbin/grub4dosconfig
version 1.8.0
Wed Mar 6 05:15:34 GMT 2013
mount: warning: /mnt/sda3 seems to be mounted read-only.
Writing... /mnt/sdb/menu.lst
Installing grldr ...
`/usr/lib/grub4dos/grldr' -> `/mnt/sdb/grldr'
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 5.9362e-05 s, 8.6 MB/s
Installing bootloader on /dev/sdb ...

Error: Invalid partition table. Must specify --floppy explicitly for floppy.

BOOTLACE writes GRLDR BOOT RECORD to MBR or to the boot area of a file system.
Usage: bootlace.com [OPTIONS] DEVICE_OR_FILE
Options: --read-only, --floppy[=N], --boot-prevmbr-first, --boot-prevmbr-last,
--no-backup-mbr, --force-backup-mbr, --mbr-enable-floppy, --mbr-disable-floppy,
--mbr-enable-osbr, --mbr-disable-osbr, --duce, --time-out=T, --hot-key=K,
--preferred-drive=D, --preferred-partition=P, --sectors-per-track=S, --heads=H,
--start-sector=B, --total-sectors=C, --install-partition=I, --lba, --chs,
--fat12, --fat16, --fat32, --vfat, --ntfs, --ext2, --serial-number=SN,
--restore-mbr, --mbr-no-bpb, --chs-no-tune
DEVICE_OR_FILE: Filename of the device or image. For DOS, a BIOS drive number
(in hex 0xHH or decimal DDD format)can be used to access the drive.
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 6.6339e-05 s, 7.7 MB/s
Failed to install bootlace.com.

It sounds like you need to run Gparted and re-format your flash drive. Note that this will erase any files that you have on it.

Hi, where is Gparted located? I cannot find it even with pfinder.

superdave wrote:Hi, where is Gparted located? I cannot find it even with pfinder.

It's somewhere in the Control Panel.

I looked in the control panel before and it was not there. I did a search and nothing came up in pfinder.

can i do it in windows instead somewhere?

It's there under one of the tabs in the control panel. (edit: Utilities I think) I'm not in Fatdog right now so I can't tell you exactly, but it's there.

But make sure you select the flash drive and not your internal drive when you reformat, and also when you set the Grub later, or else you will lose everything on your hard drive in the first case and not be able to boot from your hard drive in the second.

Ok, I found it in utilities. If I format it, thru "Partition" and "format to" it has several choices to reformat it. Which type would work best on my Windows 7 64 bit with 8 GB RAM in Fatdog 64.

There are different EXTs, Fat16, Fat32, linuxswap, etc....

Is that the right area?

FAT32 if you want to write files from Windows to the USB stick, otherwise one of the EXTs, pretty much any will do, unless you want to install some really old Puppies on the stick as well and they don't support EXT3 or 4.

Ok, I tried both FAT32 and EXT2 then click on the USB drive and when I click on apply and then apply again it it gives me an error message. Why would it do this? Do I need to do something else?

You might want to rewrite the table (of the USB stick, of course) as well, it's in one of the drop-down menus. Choose MS-DOS.

You are not describing some steps though. How can you click the USB drive after? Especially if you are still in GParted? Did you format another drive?

1. !!!!! choose drive in GParted. Wrong drive and you screw up that drive.
2. At this point you may want to lay down a new partition table. It will erase everything on your drive. It's the menu to the left of the one where you choose to format a partition.
3. Choose a partition, size, type, etc.
4. Click the apply check (tick in U.K.) symbol.

Also, partition MUST be unmounted to be able to be re-formatted.

I did the flash drive for sure. I matched it from the desktop name sdb. I see when I load the gparted again the file system says Fat32 so I think it worked. I added some podcasts today to it also from pmusic, but when I power off, it asks to create save file. When I do so it saves what i did, but does not save the system to the flash drive I am guessing. None of my settings remained. Is there something I need to do to over-ride the system to add it to the flash drive? This seems weird.

It asks where you want to save the savefile when you make it.

However, it does seem to have a problem and does not load it when you do the next boot. I even tried the savefile argument builder under utilities (you have to boot again in this case) in the control panel (you have to add it to the kernel line) and it still did not load it, although it said it was loading it when booting.

I have it installed on the hd as well (works fine), I was just using a USB stick to test, without a savefile. I don't know if there's a conflict since it's on the hd also, but most likely there's a bug and you should ask kirk or jamesbond about this.

If your savefile is on USB and you think everything is correct but your savefile is still not loaded, use the "waitdev=n" parameter. This will makes the boot process to wait for "n" seconds (so that your USB flash drive is detected) before trying to find the savefile. For me, "waitdev=5" usually works. YMMV.

cheers!