Flaw in fossapup64_9.5 - When the boot CD can suddenly no longer boot the computer

[Governor]

I discovered a fatal flaw in fossapup64_9.5

IMO, interested parties who can do something about it, should fix it ASAP.
This is what happened:

I had booted successfully a couple of times from the read-only CD I created with the ISO file. Then, when booting from the same CD, I got the error message that a file was missing and Linux was unable to boot(!)

This indicates to me that the software on the CD had changed something on my harddisk. This type of error should not be able to happen: A bootable CD should always be able to boot.

Luckily, I had a Knoppix boot CD and it had no problem booting into Linux. I then ran Gparted and reformatted the harddisk. After that, I could boot from the fosspup64_9.5 CD.

IMHO:
This has to be a programming error, and in my experience, the majority of programming errors are due to the programmer making an assumption. In this case my guess is the bootloader (if that's what it's called) is searching for a particular sfs file (I forgot the actual filename) on a harddrive ASSUMING that is what is desired, and skips the file on the CD. There should be a menu that pops up if more than one of the required file exists so the user may choose which one to use, instead of automatically loading the first file it finds (or doesn't find) that is not on the CD.

[geo_c]

@Governor,

I'm totally confused at this point as to what you are doing. You're booting from a CD, which has the all the files it needs to boot, but if your pupsave file is located on the hard drive of your computer (or usb) and the CD boot can't find it, that doesn't mean that it changed anything on your hard drive, and even if it doesn't find the pupsave, it should still boot with a fresh first-run system. When you boot from CD, a puppy does not even mount the hard drive let alone write to it. Once you're booted, you as the user can of course mount the hard drive and change files on it, but the boot disk won't do that.

I have only ever booted fossapup off a cd a few times, back in 2019-20 when it first came out. There were no issues then, and I've never seen anything like that reported that I know of, and I've been on the forum for a number of years.

So a cd boot is fine to check out the system and install it on a more useful medium. Like I said in a previous post, it is possible to boot from cd, but running from CD and finding a pupsave on a reboot may be an issue. I don't know because I never tried to do that. The normal course of action would be boot from a CD and after deciding where you'd like your personal system to reside, install it there using the puppy installer. That can be USB, internal hard drive partitioned for Linux, or internal hard drive partitioned for windows.

Which one of those installs would you ultimately be looking to do?

[Governor]

IMO, it a fatal flaw in the ISO file that is burned to the CD. The boot attempt generated the error message about not finding an .sfs file. The Knoppix CD booted fine with no changes made between switching CDs. I guess nobody will care about this issue because it seldom happens, but the flaw remains.

Anyway, I managed to make a thumb drive bootloader, but it remains to be seen if it works or not. I haven't time to try it now.
I tried to install a bootloader on my ext4 partition which has 433GB free, but it failed each time I tried to do it when I chose "this". I just chose "ISO" and pointed it to the boot CD for the source and it looks like it may have worked. However, when I try to use the GrubforDos to put the ext4 drive in the bootloader menu, it rejects the attempt. It says, "no supported file systems found".

[mikewalsh]

So far as I'm aware, you can't install Grub4DOS to anything other than the primary partition. And even then, you have to flag it as 'boot'...

Like @geo_c , I too am totally confused. There's no way that a LiveCD - which by its very nature is 'read-only' - can change anything on your internal hard-drive. That's the whole point of a LiveCD.....that it shouldn't be able to touch your system at all.

Can you clarify this a bit further, please? 'Cos it doesn't make much sense to me.

Mike.

[geo_c]

IMO, it a fatal flaw in the ISO file that is burned to the CD. The boot attempt generated the error message about not finding an .sfs file. The Knoppix CD booted fine with no changes made between switching CDs. I guess nobody will care about this issue because it seldom happens, but the flaw remains.

Anyway, I managed to make a thumb drive bootloader, but it remains to be seen if it works or not. I haven't time to try it now.
I tried to install a bootloader on my ext4 partition which has 433GB free, but it failed each time I tried to do it when I chose "this". I just chose "ISO" and pointed it to the boot CD for the source and it looks like it may have worked. However, when I try to use the GrubforDos to put the ext4 drive in the bootloader menu, it rejects the attempt. It says, "no supported file systems found".

Let me sum up what I'm hearing you describe:

1) The puppy installer appears to have copied the puppy system files from the iso to your 433GB ext4 partition. You think they are there, but maybe not sure. Did you mount the 433GB ext4 partition and take a look and see if those files are present?

2) You ran grub4dos to install the grub bootloader on the 433GB ext4 partition (which initially asks which drive you would like to install the grub files to) and in that screen you don't see your 433GB ext4 partition listed as a choice. Do I have that correct?

3) You booted your Knoppix CD, but the puppy CD would not boot until after you reformatted your hard drive. My instincts tell me that these two things were likely not related, a more probable cause might have been something as simple as a bad read from the CD. Especially because it's booting again, and as Mike and I have mentioned, the CD boot doesn't need anything related to the hard drive in order to boot

4) You have a USB thumb drive with puppy installed along with a grub bootloader that has not been booted yet.

If I have all that correct, I can give you my thoughts as to what I might do next.

1) Try and boot from USB

2) If the USB boot is successful, mount your 433GB hard drive and tell me what you see in terms of puppy files or lack thereof. Below is what's in my puppy install directory, yours won't contain the devx.sfs, the hplip.sfs, the tree.sfs, the kdenlive.sfs, or the two pupsave directories:

3) Tell me what you did in the install process both for the USB drive and for the 433GB drive. Did you choose Frugal Install? If you find using the frugal installer confusing I can explain how to do a manual install. It's as easy as simply copying the above files to a directory on the install drive and running grub4dos to install a bootloader.

[mikewalsh]

@Governor :-

A thought. When did you last clean the laser pickup on your optical drive?

They get incredibly crudded-up with dust, fluff and grime over a period of time.....and you'd be surprised at the number of folks who aren't aware that they even NEED occasional cleaning. All that's needed is a cotton-wool bud, dipped in clean warm water, with just the excess squeezed gently out.....just enough to leave it damp. You don't need any special cleaning solutions, but a dirty pick-up lens might be all it's taking to produce sporadic "bad" boots.

Those who still regularly use an optical drive will be aware of the need for this, but of course, the things are not really in regular use any more the way they once were. Many manufacturers gave up supplying them, even as an option, quite a few years back.

Just FYI.

Mike.

[Clarity]

@Governor would you let us know where you save your sessions, please. Is it on the CD or is it on your system's disk?

Thanks.

[Governor]

I booted successfully from the thumb drive (the boot menu looks like a DOS boot menu). Apparently none of my settings were intact in the GUI. It started with the screen wizard for the upteenth time. And again I had to change the keyboard layout from the default. I used Pmount and mounted the first ext4 partition on my SSD disk which is the larger of the two ext4 partitions and which AFAIK contains all the system files. It took me over 10 minutes to figure out how to get a screenshot and upload it after re-sizing. The good news is FirefoxESR-portable64 is intact and works just as I left it! It has disappeared from my menu, so I found it in the directory and ran it.

[Governor]

Ok guys, I'm not buying the dusty optical drive theory. Sure theoretically possible, but I have been working with computers since the early nineties and I have never experienced this problem or even heard about it until now. The CDs I used are all stored in protective covers and the CD/DVD drive is a separate fully closed unit. I don't remember what I did, but I certainly made various changes to the harddisk when Puppy was running from the CD, I tried different things and unfortunately I just don't remember what. After fiddling with the harddisk I tried to boot the Puppy CD and it failed with the missing file message. I also tried to boot with a Windows 7 rescue CD as well as a Macrium rescue CD and neither worked but kept returning me to a BIOS blue screen where there were a few choices, none of which worked. I then got the idea to boot with the Knoppix CD which worked. After formatting my internal SSD disk, the Puppy CD worked as before. Coincidence? A one in a million fluke? I am kicking myself for not filming the event with my camera.

[geo_c]

I booted successfully from the thumb drive (the boot menu looks like a DOS boot menu). Apparently none of my settings were intact in the GUI. It started with the screen wizard for the upteenth time. And again I had to change the keyboard layout from the default. I used Pmount and mounted the first ext4 partition on my SSD disk which is the larger of the two ext4 partitions and which AFAIK contains all the system files. It took me over 10 minutes to figure out how to get a screenshot and upload it after re-sizing. The good news is FirefoxESR-portable64 is intact and works just as I left it! It has disappeared from my menu, so I found it in the directory and ran it.

Well that's a good start. You've been starting from a clean boot screen each time because running from the CD you weren't mounting a save file or folder. What I suggest now, is shutdown and create a save folder on the USB thumb drive, that way your startup settings will be saved. Later when you get an install to another location like your hard drive, you'll be able to simply copy that pupsave to the new drive, and to any other install on any other computer or portable drive.

Shutting down will ask to create the first pupsave file on the drive you booted from, just do that, and when you reboot, for extra ability to experiment, do a pupsave backup first thing, so you'll have a fallback as you change your system around and get to know how to use these tools.

Fossapup has been out for over two years, and there are some utiilities that have been updated which you'll benefit from installing. For now the original applications should be adequate.

Use as many portables as you can. The beauty of portables is they run and store their settings outside the pupsave, and if you stick with puppies and similar OS's you'll find that using portables and linking certain large data outside the pupsave is actually one of it's big strengths.

I believe it was mentioned that to boot from your hard drive, puppy needs to be on a primary partion and not a logical one, or extended. I haven't given that much thought, but that sounds right. So this hard drive partiion you currently have those puppy files, Is it a primary partion/?

[geo_c]

After formatting my internal SSD disk, the Puppy CD worked as before. Coincidence? A one in a million fluke? I am kicking myself for not filming the event with my camera.

Well, none of us knows, we're giving our best educated guess.

I'm scratching my head though, because I can imagine that if you were using gparted and grub4dos and doing all that partition work, I can easily see how the hard drive would be altered. But if you're booting a bios computer and the boot order looks at the CD first, the hard drive would never come into play in terms of booting a CD.

It's possible that if it's UEFI, then the CD would have been booted using a menu written to the hard drive which was somehow changed. But that doesn't explain the Knoppix successful boot.

So at this point that particular issue is above my knowledge base. I would suggest getting real familiar with the install bootloader procedure using this USB stick before trying to apply that to the hard drive again.

[Governor]

The BIOS has a choice to support legacy as well as UEFi boot, and an option to use legacy first. Maybe the legacy failed and it went over to UEFI ?

What option is best for fossapup64?

[geo_c]

The BIOS has a choice to support legacy as well as UEFi boot, and an option to use legacy first. Maybe the legacy failed and it went over to UEFI ?

What option is best for fossapup64?

I personally find UEFI difficult to use, so I use legacy. But others on the forum who are more fluent in UEFI would probably encourage UEFI, as it's a more up to date standard, secure, etc. Puppy does both, but I think for UEFI the bootloader has to be done with grub2config, which may be included the in grub4dos built in fossa, but I'm not certain, because as I say, I always set my machines to legacy boot. It's quick and easy.

If you use UEFI I'm not the guy to give you advice, as I'm not good with it. Windows probably requires it, so if you're trying to dual boot, then you'd want to use it.

What are you trying to construct on your hard drive in terms of the OS's? Since it's ext4 I'm assuming no windows involved.

[Clarity]

@Governor I, TOO, continue to be a long time CD/DVD user.

I think I can help you get to the bottom of this, but I need to know the answer to my question first. This lets me know whether I can help your quest.

[geo_c]

@clarity,

@Governor's got 4 different topics going, so it's getting a bit confusing as the war widens. I just learned in this topic viewtopic.php?p=73390#p73390 that he used nicOSutiliy-suite for something. I don't know what he did with that, but if he made a new adrv or ydrv, it may be why he can't make a save file from USB. Just guessing of course.

It would be nice to hone the focus a little bit on just one thing.

Right now he is able boot from USB, but can't mount a save file on reboot. That's an odd problem, as he says he's using the default home drive location. So I tend think he remastered or something. That doesn't explain the cd issue if he made a cd directly from the iso, but until we get all the facts it's still just a shot in the dark.

@Governor, if we could take this one step a time, maybe even start over, one step at a time, you should be up and running in a matter of an hour or less. I install puppy on formatted hard drives in about 20 minutes from format to my completely customized desktop and files. But it took me some practice to understand exactly what to do and when.

If you have unaltered puppy files from the fossapup iso, then that's actually the easy part. You don't want to alter those. NicOSutilities has the ability to do that, if the options are chosen. So if you think any of those are altered (like the adrv or ydrv) then we want grab the pristine files from the iso again.

Once you have the files for the fossapup system copied, then the bootloader comes next. Just like you did with USB, but since the save is not working, then either something is up with writing to that drive, or it's something else, so at this point process of elimination seems prudent.

[Governor]

"Shutting down will ask to create the first pupsave file on the drive you booted from, just do that, and when you reboot, for extra ability to experiment, do a pupsave backup first thing, so you'll have a fallback as you change your system around and get to know how to use these tools."

I saved the savefile to the usb where the OS is installed several times, but my settings do not return on boot. I tried Pupsave backup several times but it tells me I can't do that.

[geo_c]

"Shutting down will ask to create the first pupsave file on the drive you booted from, just do that, and when you reboot, for extra ability to experiment, do a pupsave backup first thing, so you'll have a fallback as you change your system around and get to know how to use these tools."

I saved the savefile to the usb where the OS is installed several times, but my settings do not return on boot. I tried Pupsave backup several times but it tells me I can't do that.

You've got to start answer some of my questions or I won't be any to use you. See above, in particular about what you did with nicOS-utility-suite. It could be relevant, or not, depending on what you did with it, and if those changes are still present.

[geo_c]

I saved the savefile to the usb where the OS is installed several times, but my settings do not return on boot. I tried Pupsave backup several times but it tells me I can't do that.

Look in /mnt/home and see if there is a directory or file there called fossapup64save-WhateverGovernorNamedIt

[bigpup]

What burn speed did you burn the Fossapup64 CD?

On first shutdown did you choose to make a save and place it on the computer internal drive?

You made no changes to this location for the save?

[Governor]

I got this file: /mnt/home/fossapup64save, and this is the thumb drive I booted from. I tried booting from the ext4 partition where I did a puppy install, but no dice. I have the fossapup64save file on that drive as well.

[TerryH]

I saved the savefile to the usb where the OS is installed several times, but my settings do not return on boot. I tried Pupsave backup several times but it tells me I can't do that.

Is this the USB that is showing as 'read only' ? If it is that would be why your settings aren't being saved.

[bigpup]

What burn speed did you burn the Fossapup64 CD?

On first shutdown did you choose to make a save and place it on the computer internal drive?

You made no changes to this location for the save?

@Governor
You started this topic about A CD issue.

That is what my questions are about.

You answered none of them.

Now you want to talk about a USB install and an install to a internal drive.

All three are completely different installs of Puppy and work differently and need specific different stuff to work correctly.

If you are done talking about the CD issue.

Stop posting in this topic and start a new topic specific to the type device you have Puppy installed on.

It gets real confusing to talk about more than one issue in a topic.

If we ask you a question you have to answer it for us to understand and help you.

This is proven every day:
What they do not tell us is usually the clue to fixing the problem.

[Governor]

I burned the fossapup CD about the same time I burned the Knoppix-9.1 CD. Both on same type of CD media using the same burner. I don't remember which distro I burned first. The burn speed was variable with a maximum of 24.

I am not 100% sure, but I don't think I did any save on first shutdown.

I made many changes trying to get this to work, but i did not write them down. I was hoping Linux had evolved to the point where it would not be this difficult so it took me by surprise.

[williams2]

Do you have a usb drive plugged in when you boot.

I think FossaPup has trouble booting when there are 2 usb drives plugged in.
Maybe it also has trouble booting if a CD and a usb drive are both plugged in when it is booted?

Does the CD drive plug into a usb port?

[Governor]

My laptop has no built-in optical drive, only an internal SSD drive, My DVD/CD is via a USB port. I tried to do an install on my SSD ext4 partition, but it will not boot. The only working boot drive I now have is a thumb drive, but it does not restore my settings. The boot CD no longer works. I am willing to try burning another CD and see if it makes any difference if someone could provide a link to a known reliable ISO file version 9.5 that would be great.

Thanks!

[geo_c]

Here's the iso. https://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-fossa/

There may be issues with the USB CD drive, as the boot parameters for the cd iso are probably looking for an internal optical drive (I think, maybe someone can clarify)

Perhaps a good approach would be to re-download the iso, Boot up puppy using your USB stick, use Rox file manager to find the iso, mount it and copy the files to a new folder on your USB stick called fossapup64-B or something similar, then run grub4dos again on the USB stick. Reboot and choose fossapup64-B. Immediately shut down and try a save folder. Reboot into fossapup64-B and see if the save works.

But first, what format is your USB stick? fat32, ntfs, ext2/3/4? If there are issues with that USB stick, they need to remedied first.

Another approach would be burning a new CD from the fresh iso file.

[Governor]

Odd with this forum. I don't see how I can respond to individuals, I see a reply button at the end of each thread only. I am not responding to people because I don't see how to - I just click the Reply button at the end. I just tried burning a new CD with the ISO file from the posted url. It seemed to work fine until I chose "verify". Now the burn program is stuck and I don't know how to end the program. In windows I could use the task manager or pskill or taskkill, or a few other specialized programs. How does one kill an errant program in Linux? Killing the window doesn't work - it just comes back again.
'

[williams2]

My DVD/CD is via a USB port

You seem to be booting using 2 usb drives (the CD drive is treated by the system as a us drive.

FossaPup has a problem with booting with 2 usb drives plugged in.

An ISO 9660 file system is read only (not writable)
It is possible to burn 2 file systems to a cd/dvd disc.
so that the cd disc can boot in UEHI or legacy mode.
I think that the whole drive will be not writable.
The ISO 9660 partition, (if it has a partition) will not be writable

I do not boot using a save file.
i use an adrv.sfs fille.
I boot pfix=ram.
My save layer is tmpfs in ram,
But that is a bit advanced.

[williams2]

How does one kill an errant program in Linux?

If you are running an application in a text terminal, pressing ctrl+c once or twice might stop it.

There are many other ways, for example, htop.
or xkill if you have it installed.

[williams2]

If you want to know where the save file is,
typing mount in a terminal could tell you.