To Boot or Not To Boot - That Is The Question

[stevie pup]

I've been following the thread started by @sp4nn3rs about getting Puppy running on Lenovo Ideapad, and pleased to see that it's now sorted. A lot of the issues mentioned are very similar to what I have experienced recently, and I've seen the screen with the messages "Waiting for slow storage device" and "Failed to find .sfs" far more often than I would have liked. I resolved my problem simply by using a different USB stick, but there's more to it than that.

For a start, one of my laptops appears to be very fussy about what's plugged into it, and anything less than perfect will cause trouble. My other laptop is far more forgiving, and has a much, much higher success rate. It isn't just USB sticks either, which vary in their performance. I have a spare portable hard drive, that is quite old and I know is less than perfect. At one time I had 3 Puppies frugally installed on it, and when plugged in to one laptop all 3 booted up fine and without any issues. However, when plugged into the other laptop one of the Puppies wouldn't boot at all. The other 2 did boot but took 2 or 3 times as long.

Such behaviour doesn't always happen. I have Fossa 9.5 frugally installed to another portable hard drive, and Bookworm64 on a USB stick created with Unetbootin. I can plug these into either laptop and there are no problems at all, just a 5 second difference in the boot time, which I would expect as one is slightly lower spec than the other.

Not only are results variable depending on which laptop or USB stick I'm using, it also varies for different methods of creating the USB stick. Could be Rufus, Ventoy, Unetbootin, a frugal install, whatever, results are often not the same. Then there's the Puppy itself, again results are not always the same.

So if I happen to read about a Puppy that I fancy giving a try, whether or not it's actually going to boot up in the first place appears to be pot luck, depending on which USB stick I'm using, how I create it, which laptop I'm using, and which Puppy it is. That's an awful lot of variables.

If I have one set up that works fine, and another one that doesn't but was created from the same iso it stands to reason the .sfs must be there. So what gives? Does the laptop think "I don't like x/y/z so I'm going to hide the .sfs"? Yes I know, ridiculous, but that appears to be the case sometimes.

So I was wondering if perhaps @wizard, or any other knowledgeable person had any theories as to what might be behind all this? Or is it just a case of "This is the world of IT, and we're stuck with it". Must admit it drives me mad sometimes.

[bigpup]

Welcome to computer software

It is easy to have an operating system work 100%, that was provided already installed on the computer, by the manufacture of the computer.
Everything in the operating system is setup for that specific computer and it's hardware.

Puppy Linux is not that same operating system.
It has to try and support a large range of hardware, computer functions, etc..........
That is not so easy to do.

No single Puppy version is ever going to work on all possible computers!
Developers try there best to make it work on as many as they can.

You already have given the answers to your topic.

Different computer hardware gives different results.

Different programs used to do the Puppy Linux install give different results.
Really, none of these different install programs, are coded for a 100% perfect install, for how Puppy Linux operates.

The closes way they install, that is as close to perfect, is a Puppy live install to a CD/DVD or USB stick.
The Puppy files and a boot loader are all provided by the Puppy ISO.

However, on a USB stick live install.
The boot loader config is still setup for booting from a CD/DVD.
So an edit of the config file entry, to change it for booting from a USB, may be needed.
In the boot menu entry in the config file.
pmedia=cd change to pmedia=usbflash.

The install programs in a Puppy version are the programs that know specifically, how to do installs of Puppy.

[rcrsn51]

In the boot menu entry in the config file.
pmedia=cd change to pmedia=usbflash.

This should be the first suggestion for users with problem USB boots. Unfortunately, it can be hard for a newcomer from Windows to find this setting.

[wizard]

@stevie pup

Various USB creation tools use very different methods. They set up different boot loaders, etc and configure them in different ways. Lots of variables involved, plus sometimes the USB flash drive itself is a problem.

IMO it's this:

wizard's rule #12 "All computer hardware is not created equal"

For now what we do is systematically try different programs and tweaks to try and find one that works on a particular combination of Puppy and hardware .

Thanks
wizard

[stevie pup]

So an edit of the config file entry, to change it for booting from a USB, may be needed.
In the boot menu entry in the config file.
pmedia=cd change to pmedia=usbflash.

Thanks @bigpup I'll give that a try next time I have something that won't behave.

Various USB creation tools use very different methods. They set up different boot loaders, etc and configure them in different ways. Lots of variables involved, plus sometimes the USB flash drive itself is a problem.

Yes, and don't I know it!

For now what we do is systematically try different programs and tweaks to try and find one that works on a particular combination of Puppy and hardware .

Thanks @wizard That's what I've been doing, and sometimes I get lucky and everything works straight off. But other times it doesn't, and soon becomes a pain.

Just recently I've been having more success with Unetbootin than anything else, and in the past I've had lot of success with YUMI, which is similar to Ventoy in that you can put lots of iso's on same drive. I actually prefer YUMI not only because of the success rate but also creating save files is simple. I found that "fiddly" with Ventoy.

Downside is that YUMI is Windows software. Although it's supposed to run under Wine when I tried it didn't work for me. Not a problem at moment though as I've still got my Win 7 laptop.

[rcrsn51]

Just recently I've been having more success with Unetbootin than anything else, and in the past I've had lot of success with YUMI,

IIRC, one of these has an option specifically for Puppy and makes the "pmedia" switch automatically. This would be useful information.

Personally, I use ISObooter which handles the "pmedia" issue.

[stevie pup]

Since I started this thread I've done more tests and experiments than I can remember, but let's see if anyone can get their head around this.

Let's say I've got a Puppy iso and I put it on a USB stick, with whatever is to hand, Unetbootin, Rufus, etc. I then plug the stick into each of my laptops and the Puppy boots up fine in both, with no issues. This would suggest to me that there's nothing wrong with either the iso, the USB stick, or either laptop.

So then I take the exact same iso, extract the files from it and do a frugal install to the exact same USB stick, then run GRUB4DOS. I plug it into laptop no.1 and again it boots up fine with no issues. Next I plug it into laptop no.2 and oh dear, what's happening here? It boots eventually but the delay in the boot process is so long I've got time to go and make a coffee while I wait for it.

Initially this might suggest that one laptop doesn't like GRUB4DOS. But no, not the case. Because when I do a frugal install (same iso again) to the laptop's own internal hard drive it boots up without any problems. In fact it boots up astonishingly fast.

I did try a few different Puppies just to see if it made any difference, it didn't. So it's only frugal installs that fail, but only on one laptop and only if on an external drive.

I think I'll leave someone else to puzzle over that. Meanwhile I'll try and figure out how the pyramids were built, or if UFO's really exist, because I think either of those two tasks would be simpler.

[rockedge]

It sounds like some difference on how the computer handles translating the boot stanza's when searching for the correct partition to boot from and or load the system files from.

Usually the differences in boot times like those you are seeing involve the system searching for identifying the partition(s) the system files reside on.

My advice is look into the boot stanza being used and what the search time for the partitions are when compared with internal HDD and a USB drive of some type.

[stevie pup]

My advice is look into the boot stanza being used and what the search time for the partitions are when compared with internal HDD and a USB drive of some type.

Thanks, but how do I do that, and what am I looking for? I think I'll be treading into new territory here, where I've never been before.

Also, even if I do find exactly what the problem is will I be able to do anything about it? If it's all due to some integral part of the laptop's behaviour I suspect not.

No rush for any reply. I'm currently using that laptop to play around and try out another Linux distro, so won't be able to do anything else with it just yet.

[fernan]

My solution, in some of my computers (I don't remember when or why I've started doing this), is to copy all the needed SFS files to the hard drive, even if they exist or are duplicated in the USB drive, and puppy finds them faster and easier. The USB drive, or a CD in some installs, just boots the system, but the main SFS is on the HD. It seems that Puppy searches and find those files easily.

[bigpup]

You are never going to figure it out, until you talk about only one specific Puppy Linux version.
One specific version of Grub4dos boot loader.
Really need to replace using it and start using this:
Grub2config
viewtopic.php?t=3360e

Give the exact specs of the computer.

Is secure boot disabled or enabled?

How specifically are you doing the installs to the USB drive and the internal drive?
Using what specific install program to do the install?
What specific version of that program?

What exactly is the partition setup and format of the partition(s) on the drives?

If you are not doing this testing using the latest version of Puppy Linux (BookwormPup64 10.0.8 or one of the other newest versions).
You may just be dealing with a bug, that has been corrected in the newer versions of the boot process, that is in the newest versions of Puppy Linux.