Main sfs not found (solved)

[kippevleugel01]

Hi,

I'm trying to boot puppy Linux from a USB flash drive, 32Gb.
I downloaded the ISO from the official website (fossapup64-9.5.iso)

Got it running directly in a virtual machine (VMWare) with the ISO.
I used that to create a USB to boot on an older netbook.

I tried the following ways:

1) Using the puppy installer → No luck, I get main SFS file not found.

2) Formatting the drive to ext4, copying the files to the drive from the ISO only these 6:
    - adrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
    - fdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
    - initrd.gz
    - puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
    - vmlinuz
    - zdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
    I then used grub4dos to be able to boot.
    Same result.

3) Formatting the drive to an ext4 partition of only 4Gb (for some people this seamed to work) → Same result

4) Formatting to fat32 and using the same methods as 1 and 2 → Same result

I am running out of ideas here --'
I have to mention that there is a SSD with windows installed in the netbook. I would assume this does not matter.
But it's seams that puppy Linux only searches on the drive for the main SFS file.

It searches on the SDA drive but not on the SDB witch is the USB itself...

Any ideas of I can do here?

What I want is a USB with puppy Linux installed and booting on any pc, keeping the state when shutting down.

Kind regards

[rockedge]

I have experienced this before. This netbook is BIOS and does not use UEFI?
One thing to do is boot Windows and turn off any thing to do with hibernation of windows at shutdown and or anything Windows quick boot.

Are you booting directly from the USB with Grub4Dos installed on it?
If you are booting from the USB directly it should mean that it is seen by the system early enough.

Can you please post your boot stanza that launches Fossapup64? The problem could be that it is a faulty entry in the boot stanza code that is pointing to the wrong place to find the SFS files.

Also maybe a wait for the USB drive to be ready might be needed to work.

[kippevleugel01]

Yes it is bios.
I have to select the usb manually(F2 select boot device) because it boots in windows instantly, even though the boot order is usb first.
Grub4Dos is installed on the usb.

Removing the installed SSD from the boot options just gives me "no bootable device found". Even when the boot flag is on for the puppy partition.
So the bios does not want to boot directly in the usb drive. I have the select it manually.

Disabling fast boot did not help.

Boot Stanza:
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs
kernel /vmlinuz
initrd /initrd.gz

How do I add a delay for the usb device?

[Feek]

If I'm not wrong you should specify the type of boot device:
add to the kernel line "pmedia=usbflash" without the quotes like this:

kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash

After that the system should search in usb devices.

[kippevleugel01]

Tried that just now and it gives the same result.

*** fossapup64 9.5 - Linux 5.4.53 [x86_64] ***
Waiting for USB storage..... done
Finding puppy main sfs file. failed
Dumping last lines of /tmp/bootinit.log...
4: ONE_PART=sda1
4: ONE_PART=sda2
4: ONE_PART=sda3
6: ONE_PART=sda3 ONE_TRY_FN=/puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs PDRV=
Dumping last lines of kernel log...
Freeing unused kernel image memory: 2008K
Freeing unused kernel image memory: 460K
Run /init as init process
usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci
*** sda3 puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs not found.
*** Error is to critical, dropping out to console...
*** To save debug info to a partition, type 'debugsave'

I have to mention that in the screen before that, I shortly see 'invalid efi signature'
Don't know if that is a normal thing?

[kippevleugel01]

when i do /init after this in the 'bashconsole'
It is able to load the sfs files. But then I am not able to activate the graphical interface..

[rockedge]

This is one of boot stanza's I am using. Your uuid numbers will be different.

Code: Select all

title Puppy bionicpup64 8.0 (sdb2/BB64)
  find --set-root uuid () 42795152-16d2-4be1-a5ff-289e88c48623
  kernel /BB64/vmlinuz  pdrv=42795152-16d2-4be1-a5ff-289e88c48623  psubdir=/BB64 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck net.ifnames=0
  initrd /BB64/initrd.gz

another variant:

Code: Select all

title Puppy bionicpup64 8.0 (sdb2/BB64)
  uuid 42795152-16d2-4be1-a5ff-289e88c48623
  kernel /BB64/vmlinuz  pdrv=42795152-16d2-4be1-a5ff-289e88c48623  psubdir=/BB64 pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck net.ifnames=0
  initrd /BB64/initrd.gz

Code: Select all

title Puppy bionicpup64 8.0 (sdb2/BB64)
  uuid 42795152-16d2-4be1-a5ff-289e88c48623
  kernel /BB64/vmlinuz  pdrv=42795152-16d2-4be1-a5ff-289e88c48623  psubdir=/BB64 pmedia=usbflash pfix=RAM 
  initrd /BB64/initrd.gz

[kippevleugel01]

Thank you guys/gals for the fast answers and great ideas and things to try to make it work.

Finally I found what my issue was!!

None of the above worked in the end, but they where good diagnostic tests.
So the stanza's of @rockedge showed me that the usb wasn't being loaded by the kernel.
I got uuid partition not found.

Then I looked and thougth maybe the Waiting for USB storage timed out and just stopped looking for more devices....
It turnes out that the script for this is located in the initrd.gz at /sbin/wait4usb
There are 2 TIMEOUT values one set to 5 the other to 4.

I checked this and indeed the init script waits 5 seconds and then moves on.
I changed these values to 20. So it would wait 20 seconds and yess it found the usb drive and was able to boot!

Can the dev's maybe set this value a little higher in the released iso's?
Or can I do a issue/PR for this?

Thank you all for the time

[Phoenix]

You can always open an issue, but I think it would be better to simply add into init an option to adjust wait time, otherwise use the default. (e.g 'wait=10', default is 3 seconds.)

[bigpup]

Here is the place to bring up this timing issue.
Woof-CE
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE
This is where the inner workings of Puppy are worked on.

It requires you to register to make a post.

Post it as an issue.

People here are constantly tweaking how Puppy works.

[rockedge]

Need to add a usbwait=XX kernel command line option to the initrd.gz to be able to increase the default wait time from 5 seconds.

[Rubberwinetap]

Thank you guys/gals for the fast answers and great ideas and things to try to make it work.

Finally I found what my issue was!!

None of the above worked in the end, but they where good diagnostic tests.
So the stanza's of @rockedge showed me that the usb wasn't being loaded by the kernel.
I got uuid partition not found.

Then I looked and thougth maybe the Waiting for USB storage timed out and just stopped looking for more devices....
It turnes out that the script for this is located in the initrd.gz at /sbin/wait4usb
There are 2 TIMEOUT values one set to 5 the other to 4.

I checked this and indeed the init script waits 5 seconds and then moves on.
I changed these values to 20. So it would wait 20 seconds and yess it found the usb drive and was able to boot!

Can the dev's maybe set this value a little higher in the released iso's?
Or can I do a issue/PR for this?

Thank you all for the time

It's been while so I hope your still active, what exactly did you do to fix this? I'm completely new to puppy and understand half of what I'm ment to do with this information

[wizard]

@Rubberwinetap

You should tell us about your hardware and the Puppy version you want to use.

Look here for lots of info:
viewforum.php?f=184

And here for making your first bootable USB
viewtopic.php?t=5192

wizard

[Rubberwinetap]

@Rubberwinetap

You should tell us about your hardware and the Puppy version you want to use.

Look here for lots of info:
viewforum.php?f=184

And here for making your first bootable USB
viewtopic.php?t=5192

wizard

Should I make a new post with this info?

[Rubberwinetap]

@Rubberwinetap

You should tell us about your hardware and the Puppy version you want to use.

Look here for lots of info:
viewforum.php?f=184

And here for making your first bootable USB
viewtopic.php?t=5192

wizard

Should I make a new post with this info?

Don't want to bloat this Solved thread

[Rubberwinetap]

@Rubberwinetap

You should tell us about your hardware and the Puppy version you want to use.

Look here for lots of info:
viewforum.php?f=184

And here for making your first bootable USB
viewtopic.php?t=5192

wizard

Should I make a new post with this info?

Don't want to bloat this Solved thread

Nvm bookworm works perfectly fine now, I used fedora boot manager to make the bootable usb instead of lick, now I just need to get an IDE for python to start learning python and shit with a minimal impact os