Bootloader Error with New Puppy Install

[jm03]

Hi everyone,

I have been working for the past 2 days to try and get Puppy Linux working on 2 of my old laptops.

One is a Lenovo ThinkPad x220i, and the other is a Samsung NC210 Netbook.

Puppy would be the perfect Linux for these systems, if I could get it working.

No matter what I do, I keep running into problems.

I just installed "Xenial" Puppy on the Thinkpad, and I have attached a picture of the result that occurs when I try booting up from the new installation on sda2.



I don't know what to do.

One thing that seems peculiar to me, is that the Puppy installer asks you to find the 4 Puppy files (vmlinuz, initrd.gz, puppy_xenialpup64_7.5.sfs, and zdrv_xenialpup64_7.5.sfs.

But, I cannot find all the files, just the xenial ones - not vmlinuz and initrd.

So, perhaps vmlinuz and initrd are not being included in the installation. I don't know.

Does anyone here have any tips for me?

[thinkpadfreak]

It seems that your case has somthing to do with this:
Grub4DOS Error 13, wee 13> due to 64-bit Ext4
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... ssues/1263

How about re-formatting the partition (for example, in ext3) and trying the installation again?
Puppy Linux can be installed to the same partition as another OS, even to the same partition as Windows. So creating a new partition for Puppy is not always necessary.

If vmlinuz and initrd.gz are missing, Puppy will not boot anyway.
What installer did you use to install Puppy?

[jm03]

Hi Thinkpadfreak,

Thanks for your reply.

I had the partition formatted as ext4.

I will now try again with ext3.

I used the Puppy installer that comes with the live version of Puppy Linux.

i.e I installed Puppy from within a Puppy Linux live environment.

I have tried a number of Puppy Linux variants (Tahr, Xenial, Slacko, etc) with no success.

In regards to the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files, I don't know how to point the installer to these files, because I cannot find them anywhere.

Do you know where I can find them?

Kind Regards,

John

[jm03]

I have managed to get Puppy Tahr running on the ThinkPad with the following method, which required some lateral thinking:

1) I booted up Puppy from USB flash

2) I started the Puppy installer..

3) I realized that since I could not find all of the Puppy files on the USB flash drive, it would make sense to create another USB flash drive and mount that as sdc, and point the Puppy installer to that location.

4) The Puppy installation went smoothly.

5) When I restarted the computer, for some reason, in my Grub listings it had "sdb" and "sdc" as the first two options. Without properly reading them I selected "sdb" and it gave me an "error 15", so I went back to the main screen and found the listing for "sda1" and selected that, and Puppy booted up with no problems.

I hope this experience can help someone else.

Thanks for your help Thinkpadfreak.

[lizardidi]

dpup-stretch is good candidate for these older hardware. u can try it. Running stable and modern. It fixed lots of bug from older puppies. I use this single puppy on my old laptop, and new i7 machines.

[jm03]

Thanks lizardidi for this piece of advice.

I have not come across dpup-stretch in my research.

I think I can be successful in installing "Tahr" with a bit of tinkering.

[jm03]

I am now having trouble with installing Puppy "Tahr" on my Samsung Netbook.

It installs fine, but when it comes to installing the bootloader there is an error.

I have pasted the log file at this location: https://pastebin.com/j2qvKLYG

I have no idea why Grub can't be installed to this hard drive. No idea!

It's so frustrating.

I thought that since I got the ThinkPad working, that getting the Netbook working would be a piece of cake. But it's not.

[jm03]

I found the way to successfully install Puppy "Tahr" on my Samsung Netbook!

I noticed that for some reason my swap partition was /dev/sda1 and my data partition was /dev/sda2.

I deleted both of those partitions using GParted and made it so that my swap partition was /dev/sda2 and the data partition /dev/sda1.

And, that seemed to fix it!

The grub4dos installer was then able to install the bootloader into the MBR of sda.

Now it's working great!

Thanks for your help guys.

[thinkpadfreak]

When I restarted the computer, for some reason, in my Grub listings it had "sdb" and "sdc" as the first two options. Without properly reading them I selected "sdb" and it gave me an "error 15", so I went back to the main screen and found the listing for "sda1" and selected that, and Puppy booted up with no problems.

Good to hear that you managed to install Puppy.

Probably because the grub4dos config detected puppy files in sda, sdb and sdc, it added all of them to the menu.
You can manually edit the file menu.lst and delete unnecessary items, but if you are not sure, it is recommended that you leave menu.lst as it is.

Likewise you can additionally install other puppies by manually creating a directory holding puppy files (vmlinuz, initrd.gz and *.sfs) and editing menu.lst.

[jm03]

Thanks thinkpadfreak.

I will probably just leave the menu.lst as it is, even though it's annoying to have "sdb" and "sdc" as the default options in GRUB.

I'm just happy that it's working.