Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I've been putting lots of new puppies in the same partition in separate folders.
It is working great except I also want to run an older puppy called Lupu 525.
When I put this puppy in its own folder it boots but fails to find the main sfs after it has loaded the initrd and so fails to do a switch root.
Is there a way I can house this older puppy alongside my other puppies?
I don't feel like I have too many puppies yet... I have the space for them.

The younger puppies are all happy in their new home.

Hope you can help.

You should try Lucid Puppy 5.2.8.
At least that worked for me the way you installed your Puppies.

I tried it:

title Puppy Lupu 528 (sda3/lupu528)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /lupu528/vmlinuz psubdir=/lupu528 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /lupu528/initrd.gz

It bails out.. unable to find the lupu_528.sfs file.

I'm copying the files over directly from the iso instead of all the hastle of creating a usb stick which seems more and more hit and miss these days.

I was looking at the init in the initrd and wondered if it is maybe hard coded to look on a memory stick instead of a hard disk or maybe there is some other path problem but with the fresh puppies I can copy them directly to a sub-directory on the same partition and they work fine.

Thanks for suggesting 528.
It was fast to try and I welcome any suggestions.

Oh, yes.

At the time when I was using 528 I strictly booted all my Puppies from USB flash drive.
I recall the bootloader was something like ISOLINUX (?).

On the internal HD there was still Windows installed.
I wouldn't have missed it these days.

Puppies that old won't boot anymore on my current computers.
So, I deleted them all. The oldest one I still have is Tahr Puppy.

Make sure you tried Lupu 528.005 that was the last release
https://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-5.2.8/

But it could just be this Puppy is not going to work on this computer.

You are going back in time when a lot of stuff had issues working on some computers.

It works okay it's just that with the new puppies I can boot them by copying the files onto a hard disk and pointing grub at them.
I just mount the iso and copy all the files into a subdirectory (might be the problem too) on the hard disk.
That way I can have multiple puppies in the same partition.
I also don't have to mess around trying to create memory sticks which seems to be a lot less reliable than it used to be.

I think it's to do with hard coded paths in the init file or possibly it expects to be booting from a memory stick if you havn't installed in the regular way.
Either way all the new puppies work great this way but the vintage ones... not so much.

Going to have to try a memory stick.

@freya
I'm posting this reply directly from Lupu-528.005, using Mozilla Firefox 45.1.1 ESR browser, just for old times sake!
The computer is the old workhorse, a Dell Optiplex 760 desktop with 4 Megs of RAM.

The Lupu 528.005 was frugally installed in the exact same manner as you described - my usual preference. The only difference being there was no secondary partition's. Screen capture enclosed. Keep trying, it's usually something easily overlooked.
P.S. Please give details of your computer system, this just might be a clue to the problem.

Give it a try without the "psubdir=/lupu528 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck".

Lupu 5.28 was the 1st Puppy I really used. I have it still installed on an old 386 laptop.

dancytron wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 1:04 pm

Lupu 5.28 was the 1st Puppy I really used.......

For me the same.....made huge headway with Lucid Lynx 5.2.8....still have a really old version of ZoneMinder running on a IBM T-42 (old as dirt, no HDD and no battery) with Lupu-5.2.8 as the OS from a USB flash drive. This laptop loves Lupu-5.2.8 and also UPUP Raring 3.9.9.2 and can handle a forcepae parameter on the kernel command line.

I agree, try with the boot stanza simplified

My guess is that it IS to some extent hardware-specific.

On this UEFI-based HP Pavilion desktop from 2019, my oldest "vanilla" Puppy is also 32-bit Tahrpup. There ARE caveats, though. 6.05 refuses point-blank to play ball. 6.06, however, will boot and run; this was the 'update' PhilB published for 6.05, which included 2 additional files:-

• efi.img

• vesamenu.c32

I assume these are related to the on-board UEFI stuff. Whatever the reason, with these in place the Puppy will boot. I've managed to get my old favourite, micko's Slacko 5.6.0, also running on here by the simple expedient of adding these two files alongside the existing Puppy SFS files & stuff. It's been seriously interfered with, however(!!), since at least a 4-series kernel is required for audio to work, so it got one of those.

While I was at it, I did some re-building. I modified the initrd.gz to allow use of 'modular' kernels.....makes kernel-swaps so much easier. I also upgraded the glibc; currently, it's up from the original 2.15 to Xenial's 2.23. And THEN I swapped the 32-bit Xenialpup32 kernel out for Xenialpup64's k4.9.58.....which was needed because I've 'installed' peebee's 64-bit compat stuff into a 32-bit Xenialpup chroot that I use, so as to permit use of up-to-date 64-bit browsers!

I know, I know; it all sounds dreadfully convoluted. But it works remarkably well.....and seems super-stable into the bargain. I can't think of any other Linux distros where you could pull stunts like this.....AND expect 'em to work.

Is it any wonder we love Puppy the way we all do?

Mike.

rockedge wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 1:12 pm

dancytron wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 1:04 pm

Lupu 5.28 was the 1st Puppy I really used.......

For me the same.....made huge headway with Lucid Lynx 5.2.8....still have a really old version of ZoneMinder running on a IBM T-42 (old as dirt, no HDD and no battery) with Lupu-5.2.8 as the OS from a USB flash drive. This laptop loves Lupu-5.2.8 and also UPUP Raring 3.9.9.2 and can handle a forcepae parameter on the kernel command line.

I agree, try with the boot stanza simplified

I had a locked down work laptop, so I just surfed the web with it mostly. Put Chrome on it, as I do.

A lot of work has been done on making it work better and fixing the code, in the boot process.

Lupu versions of Puppy where still using a lot of old original coded files.

If you have the frugal install in a directory inside another directory.
Move it to just on the partition, so it is not inside another directory.
If you do move it.
Rerun the boot loader config making a new boot menu.

The name of the frugal install directory, could also help, if it is the name of the Puppy version, and a simple name like lupu528

What boot loader you are using and the specific version of it, could be an issue.
Those have had a lot of code changes over the years.

However, no one specific Puppy version, has ever worked with all possible computers, and most likely never will.

The computer is the old workhorse, a Dell Optiplex 760 desktop with 4 Megs of RAM.

! :O !

Nice to know I'm not getting too radical with a 1gb netbook!

dancytron wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 1:04 pm

Give it a try without the "psubdir=/lupu528 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck".

Lupu 5.28 was the 1st Puppy I really used. I have it still installed on an old 386 laptop.

Thanks to you both.
Tried this and I think I got slightly better results.
It said something about searching the hard disk partitions!
My mouth fell open as I thought it was about to work but then it once again failed to find the lupu_528.sfs
and dropped out to an init console.

It was a good call tho.
So close...

Fossil wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 11:39 am

@freya
I'm posting this reply directly from Lupu-528.005, using Mozilla Firefox 45.1.1 ESR browser, just for old times sake!
The computer is the old workhorse, a Dell Optiplex 760 desktop with 4 Megs of RAM.

The Lupu 528.005 was frugally installed in the exact same manner as you described - my usual preference. The only difference being there was no secondary partition's. Screen capture enclosed. Keep trying, it's usually something easily overlooked.
P.S. Please give details of your computer system, this just might be a clue to the problem.

No I really am doing something strange.
Remove all thoughts of a usb stick from your mind....

All I'm doing is downloading an iso...
clicking on it in puppy to open it and see all the files inside [Try it!!].
I'm then copying the files out of the iso into a named subdirectory in a partition on my SATA hard disk.
and pointing Grub4Dos that came with BionicPup at it.
The Grub4Dos is presently on the first disk partition.

Saves soooo much time and frustration.

The strange thing isn't that lupu isn't working but that this way of doing things is mostly working great!

bigpup wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2024 4:50 pm

A lot of work has been done on making it work better and fixing the code, in the boot process.

Lupu versions of Puppy where still using a lot of old original coded files.

If you have the frugal install in a directory inside another directory.
Move it to just on the partition, so it is not inside another directory.
If you do move it.
Rerun the boot loader config making a new boot menu.

Also a good call, so I tried this too.
This is what I'm trying to avoid as it makes my partition messy but I want that puppy so I gave it a go..
but it still didn't work.

...which is really interesting and stranger than I expected.

However, no one specific Puppy version, has ever worked with all possible computers, and most likely never will.

I have a LOT of working puppys so I can't complain but I've been using lupu525 on a more recent Dell computer and took a liking to it, so I really wanted to get it working.
I'm going to try making that usb stick.

Thanks to everyone for the help with this!

All these puppies working in their own subdirectories!!

title Puppy dpupbw32 23.12 (sda3/Bookworm)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Bookworm/vmlinuz psubdir=/Bookworm pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Bookworm/initrd.gz

title Puppy upupbb 19.03 (sda3/Bionicupup19.03frugal)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Bionicupup19.03frugal/vmlinuz psubdir=/Bionicupup19.03frugal pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Bionicupup19.03frugal/initrd.gz

title Puppy buster 8.0 (sda3/Buster)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Buster/vmlinuz psubdir=/Buster pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Buster/initrd.gz

title Puppy upupff+d 20.12 (sda3/Focal)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Focal/vmlinuz psubdir=/Focal pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Focal/initrd.gz

title Puppy upupnn+bw 24.04 (sda3/NoblePup)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /NoblePup/vmlinuz psubdir=/NoblePup pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /NoblePup/initrd.gz

title Puppy s15pup32 22.12 (sda3/S15Pup)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /S15Pup/vmlinuz psubdir=/S15Pup pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /S15Pup/initrd.gz

title Puppy slacko 7.0 (sda3/Slacko7)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Slacko7/vmlinuz psubdir=/Slacko7 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Slacko7/initrd.gz

title Puppy stretch 7.5 (sda3/Stretch)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Stretch/vmlinuz psubdir=/Stretch pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Stretch/initrd.gz

title Puppy vpup32 22.02 (sda3/VoidPup)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /VoidPup/vmlinuz psubdir=/VoidPup pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /VoidPup/initrd.gz

No flash drive. Exactly the same stanza utilized to boot Lupu-528-005 on the Dell's sda1. Using Grub-4-DOS. All Puppy's in sub-directories on the first level, not submerged within another directory/folder.
title Lupu-528-005 (sda1/Lupu-528-005)
uuid (Did you add your computer's designated UUID? Might or might not be relevant.)
kernel /Lupu-528-005/vmlinuz psubdir=Lupu-528-005 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /Lupu-528-005/initrd.gz