Xenialpup in thumb drive doesn't see external ssd (solved)

[Black Knight]

First I want thank all here for Puppy. Have been using it for years.
I am a beginner in many ways but kinda know enough to get in trouble at times.
Commands are a weakness but I understand how to use them if helped with finding the right command.
I am sure that terminology (ie the right wording for here) will be a learning curve.

I have Xenialpup 7.5.
lenovo r60
Dual boot with Linux Mint on and Puppy on the hard drive.
Puppy on thumb drive. This I use all the time.

Now I want to have an ssd with multi boot, puppy, mint and some (yuk windows).
Sorry... I said windows. Bad on me.
I still will want Puppy on a thumb drive also.

Now the help I need.

I have a evo 870 500 gb ssd new.
The ssd will show on this same lenovo if I boot up with MInt but will not show with Puppy.
No icon nor on device lists. Not recognized some how. Just not there.

If it is a simple fix that I can learn and do that would be great.
I want to learn.

If it ends up that this version of Puppy needs new drivers or updating I would rather just do an install of an newer Puppy that would work on this computer and with the ssd.

If I do need to upgrade I would want to do this with help from here so I can learn how to do it the right way and learn more of how to do this.
Again.. Time from me to start learning more.

I have done installs before to thumb drive and hard drive and they they work but I have a lot to learn.

I will also read the forum for things I need to learn first.

I finally have the time to learn more about Puppy.

Now to find out if I have what it takes.

So much I would like to learn as Linux is needed more now.

Thanks to all again.

[Flash]

It's not clear to me if the SSD is internal or an external USB drive. Anyway, does it have anything at all on it? If it's brand new and unformatted, Linux can't see it. Can Gparted in Puppy see it?

[bigpup]

If the SSD is partitioned and formatted.

Is the format exfat?

Xenialpup 7.5 probably needs software added to work with exfat format.
exfafprogs

What are you going to do with this new SSD?

[Black Knight]

It's not clear to me if the SSD is internal or an external USB drive. Anyway, does it have anything at all on it? If it's brand new and unformatted, Linux can't see it. Can Gparted in Puppy see it?

Good call. I did forget to say USB.
Sorry.

Good call on formatting. I just did some reading on the forum on this subject. Looks promising as to being the issue. It is not formatted.
So Would it be correct that Puppy can not see it but Mint can?
Perhaps it is not all LInux that can not see the unformatted?
I did try to see it with Puppy's Gparted and it was not there.

As Puppy can't see it I will try to get Mint to do this. I have not used Mint for this before as Puppy is my first choice. Can't be too hard.

I did see some suggestions about what ext format may work best.
What ext do you think will work?

I read do NOT set up swap on the ssd as swap can harm it from too many rewrites.

Thanks much for the info.

BK

[Black Knight]

If the SSD is partitioned and formatted.

Is the format exfat?

Xenialpup 7.5 probably needs software added to work with exfat format.
exfafprogs

What are you going to do with this new SSD?

No, it is not formatted and no I dont have a pgm that can, so I will try my MInt for this.
I will look in to this exfat. I read on this forum that the ext2 and ext4 work. Is this true?
Can the ssd usb be set up the same way I did the internal spin drive?
I also read on the forum that I should not set up a swap on the ssd as it will do a lot of rewrite and harm the ssd. Is this true?

I have two ssd. One for multi distros, Puppy, Mint and windows. Used as a portable multi boot drive.
Then a thumb drive for Puppy.
One for general data like doc files, music, vids normal daily stuff.

I think the best way if I can get Mint to format it, is to set one partition up with Mint then have good old Puppy and G parted do the multi partition as I like Puppy best for this.

Thanks

I am learning.

[Black Knight]

If the SSD is partitioned and formatted.

Is the format exfat on this drive?

Xenialpup 7.5 probably needs software added to work with exfat format.
exfafprogs

What are you going to do with this new SSD?

I did some learning about exfat.
Please let me know if what I have read is true.

Exfat is for external ssd and flash drives for more modern computers.
Fat32 is more flexible and compatible with older computers.

So, with my older computer I should be using fat32???

Next I will look at this ssd with mint and see if it is exfat. If so that would explain why mint can see it and Puppy is not. Mint may have the pgm to see the exfat partition.

Let me know if that is correct and if you can add to this so I can learn more.

I just want to do things right.

Thanks

BK

[bigpup]

Fat32 is more flexible and compatible with older computers.

That is true about any computer, because fat32 is supported by every computer bios and every operating system.

But you can still use other formats that will be fully supported.

For Puppy Linux frugal installs.
Frugal installs work very well on ext 2, 3, or 4 formats.
Ext 3 or 4 are best. Ext2 is a little prone to getting corrupted over time.
With these formats, you can make the save a save folder, plus they are a Linux format.

In Xenialpup run Gparted and look in Gparted -> View -> File System Support

This will show the different file systems (formats) and what support each one has.
Also shows programs needed to provide the support if you want to add more support.

[mikewalsh]

@Black Knight :-

Just a thought. I wonder if you've tried re-plugging the external SSD a few times, or perhaps trying it in more than one USB port? This often works for me......but then, on this HP Pavilion desktop rig I DO have 15+ USB ports I can try, courtesy of a 7-port powered hub, and around 8 on the tower itself!

With regard to formatting the drive, no Linux distro can do anything with it if it can't actually 'see' it. The hardware itself should be detected, even if unformatted. If the hardware is seen, there are command-line utilities that will format it. What do you get from the output of

Code: Select all

lsusb

.....run in the terminal? The Samsung Evo should show up here, if nowhere else, I would have thought...

Mike.

[Black Knight]

Fat32 is more flexible and compatible with older computers.

That is true about any computer, because fat32 is supported by every computer bios and every operating system.

But you can still use other formats that will be fully supported.

For Puppy Linux frugal installs.
Frugal installs work very well on ext 2, 3, or 4 formats.
Ext 3 or 4 are best. Ext2 is a little prone to getting corrupted over time.
With these formats, you can make the save a save folder, plus they are a Linux format.

In Xenialpup run Gparted and look in Gparted -> View -> File System Support

This will show the different file systems (formats) and what support each one has.
Also shows programs needed to provide the support if you want to add more support.

All good info and things to learn.

I did look at the Gparted info. All ext are there. exfat is move and copy only. Swap is there. fat 16 and 32. ntfs is there.

Unless you say otherwise I will stay with fat32 for this older machine???

That was fun to learn.

I will dig into this later today and learn more.

Thanks

BK

[Black Knight]

@Black Knight :-

Just a thought. I wonder if you've tried re-plugging the external SSD a few times, or perhaps trying it in more than one USB port? This often works for me......but then, on this HP Pavilion desktop rig I DO have 15+ USB ports I can try, courtesy of a 7-port powered hub, and around 8 on the tower itself!

With regard to formatting the drive, no Linux distro can do anything with it if it can't actually 'see' it. The hardware itself should be detected, even if unformatted. If the hardware is seen, there are command-line utilities that will format it. What do you get from the output of

Code: Select all

lsusb

.....run in the terminal? The Samsung Evo should show up here, if nowhere else, I would have thought...

Mike.

Yes I have tried all the ports and two machines.
Mint works with this ssd on both machines but not Puppy.
I will use MInt to look at the ssd and what format it is and most likely format it there to get started.
I will try your terminal command on Puppy for the same reason and to learn more about puppy.

Now the learning begins.

Good

Thanks

BK

[mikewalsh]

...Please let me know if what I have read is true...

...Let me know if that is correct and if you can add to this so I can learn more...

...I just want to do things right...

Heh. Y'know, the whole of Linux, as a concept, and scripting in particular, is awfully subjective....and incredibly flexible.

Linux inherited one of its biggest strengths from its older sibling, Unix. The premise here was always to create small apps/utilities/commands/libraries that did just ONE thing...but did them very well indeed. To achieve functionality, you strung a bunch of them together in whatever way achieved the desired outcome.

There IS no "right" or "wrong" way to do anything in Linux. There are "efficient" ways, and there are "lazy" ways of doing most things. For many years in Puppy, the emphasis was always on keeping everything as tiny as possible; in other words, make as few lines of code as possible perform as much work as you could get it to do. This encouraged some very original thinking from Puppy members.

The explosion of cheap, high-powered/high-capacity hardware components - oodles of RAM, tons of reasonably-priced storage, etc, coupled with a plethora of online tutorials in all fields of programming, have "bred" a new generation of extremely "lazy" coders, most of whom have loads of resources available to them, and short-sightedly take the view that everybody else must have them as well. Hence stuff like the Electron platform, which uses a stripped-back Chromium browser as its base, and just adds a little bit of code on top of this for whatever you want to make it do. But the Chromium browser is no lightweight.....so you end up with an app topping 100-120 MB when the same functionality could be achieved with just a few MB, if implemented in a different way.

*Rant over!*

The point is, veteran Linux geeks tend to insist that there is only one 'correct' way to do anything. Which was perhaps true in the very early days, when there was a relatively small number of commands/utilities available to use. A lot of stuff has been created/dreamt-up/built over the last 30 years, however, and the whole field of scripting is vastly more flexible than it used to be....

So; ask yourself this. Are you going to obsess over doing something the technically "correct" way because somebody else says it must be so.....or are you going to be happy with something which, though perhaps untidy and not that efficient, does what you want it to do, and is entirely your own work?

(I've seem some incredibly untidy, 'bloated' scripting from supposedly experienced programmers/developers over the years, believe me!)

Mike.

[Black Knight]

...Please let me know if what I have read is true...

...Let me know if that is correct and if you can add to this so I can learn more...

...I just want to do things right...

Heh. Y'know, the whole of Linux, as a concept, and scripting in particular, is awfully subjective....and incredibly flexible.

Linux inherited one of its biggest strengths from its older sibling, Unix. The premise here was always to create small apps/utilities/commands/libraries that did just ONE thing...but did them very well indeed. To achieve functionality, you strung a bunch of them together in whatever way achieved the desired outcome.

There IS no "right" or "wrong" way to do anything in Linux. There are "efficient" ways, and there are "lazy" ways of doing most things. For many years in Puppy, the emphasis was always on keeping everything as tiny as possible; in other words, make as few lines of code as possible perform as much work as you could get it to do. This encouraged some very original thinking from Puppy members.

The explosion of cheap, high-powered/high-capacity hardware components - oodles of RAM, tons of reasonably-priced storage, etc, coupled with a plethora of online tutorials in all fields of programming, have "bred" a new generation of extremely "lazy" coders, most of whom have loads of resources available to them, and short-sightedly take the view that everybody else must have them as well. Hence stuff like the Electron platform, which uses a stripped-back Chromium browser as its base, and just adds a little bit of code on top of this for whatever you want to make it do. But the Chromium browser is no lightweight.....so you end up with an app topping 100-120 MB when the same functionality could be achieved with just a few MB, if implemented in a different way.

*Rant over!*

The point is, veteran Linux geeks tend to insist that there is only one 'correct' way to do anything. Which was perhaps true in the very early days, when there was a relatively small number of commands/utilities available to use. A lot of stuff has been created/dreamt-up/built over the last 30 years, however, and the whole field of scripting is vastly more flexible than it used to be....

So; ask yourself this. Are you going to obsess over doing something the technically "correct" way because somebody else says it must be so.....or are you going to be happy with something which, though perhaps untidy and not that efficient, does what you want it to do, and is entirely your own work?

(I've seem some incredibly untidy, 'bloated' scripting from supposedly experienced programmers/developers over the years, believe me!)

Mike.

You rant away any time you want.

That was a very refreshing well stated informative posting.

So I would correct my self by saying, the best way to create a system that does what I want and as simply as possible.

I am self taught electronics and automotive ecu design and new tuning approaches.
So I do get the overdone vs the simple clean way of doing things. I got beat up with the over done over showing off and lazy way most things are done in other things in life.

So,,,, show me how to get simple, brilliant, clean Linux Puppy to do what I need.

That is what I found Puppy to be and that is why I use it.
Now to learn more so I can build and or download the right linux components to create the best one for me.

My needs of Puppy will be very basic and I am willing to take the time to find my best right set up.

This is fun.

I am not in a rush
I know I am taking on a journey of learning.
And I know to start with the KISS way and build up more as and when I can.

I know the first and smartest thing is to know that I don't know.
The second best thing to learn is how to ask the right question.

Thanks for your rant.

BK

[mikewalsh]

@Black Knight :-

Actually, I'm not entirely sure I was replying to the post I thought I was last night! Yesterday was one of those days...

Be that as it may, certainly much of my 'rant' is true, so far as it goes. Most of that centres around the fact that 'Puppians' break the mould in many ways; after all, we still like to run hardware that most geeks would have consigned to the dumpster years ago. The majority of said 'geeks' tend to always want the very newest of everything, ALL the time. That said, we'll be more than happy, as a community, to help you find the "best" way of doing stuff that "works" for you.

---------------------------------------------

Just one request, please? Try and keep to one subject per thread, if you would. Multiple subjects in a thread get awfully confusing.....for everybody! (And it makes it harder for folks in the future, if they want to refer somebody else back to a particular thread for a 'fix'.....only to read it through, and find that it goes off in half-a-dozen different directions.)

---------------------------------------------

We have no problem with you opening half-a-dozen different threads, to ask about that number of different subjects. We'd rather you did it that way, instead of asking several questions in one post, because it's easier for everyone to follow......but then, this is a pet 'hate' that's an almost universal 'constant' with most forum staff, right across the 'net. The old Puppy Forum was rather prone to the above failing, unfortunately. We're trying our best to keep this one a bit tidier, for the sake of ALL concerned!

We're always willing to help, if it's within our abilities to do so. Don't be a stranger!

Mike.

[Black Knight]

Now I get to laugh at myself.

Basic beginner mistake.

I set up to type in the command lsusb and decided to take one more look at Puppy Gparted.

Sitting right there was sbd1 on the list of drives to choose from.
Tic the box, use Gparted to set up partitions like normal.

My mistake was not looking close enough. There was no icon on the desk top so I assumed and did not look close enough to see it there on Gparted.

Stupid beginners.

Sorry for using your time on that.
I did learn some good things from this.

Now that is funny.

BK

[Black Knight]

Now the next stage of learning.

Start to put together the distros and add ons I need with Mike's rant advice included.
KISS. (Keep it simple stupid)

Now I will think about what I want the distos to do and ask advice and learn how to make it the way I need.

I know you can't help me build what I want until I know what I want and share that with you.

Thanks for the help and I look forward to the next stage of learning.

I will plan out what I want it to do.

BK

[mikewalsh]

Sitting right there was sbd1 on the list of drives to choose from.
Tic the box, use Gparted to set up partitions like normal.

My mistake was not looking close enough. There was no icon on the desk top so I assumed and did not look close enough to see it there on Gparted.

Stupid beginners.

It's an easy enough mistake to make. I made it myself enough times in my early Linux days.

You're NOT alone, trust me!

Mike.

[Black Knight]

Sitting right there was sbd1 on the list of drives to choose from.
Tic the box, use Gparted to set up partitions like normal.

My mistake was not looking close enough. There was no icon on the desk top so I assumed and did not look close enough to see it there on Gparted.

Stupid beginners.

It's an easy enough mistake to make. I made it myself enough times in my early Linux days.

You're NOT alone, trust me!

Mike.

Thanks for that.

My ego knows I have much to learn.

I am good with that.

That one little mistake lead me to learn other good things I need to know from this forum and thread.

So all good here.

I look at what I gained.

BK

[Black Knight]

@Black Knight :-

Actually, I'm not entirely sure I was replying to the post I thought I was last night! Yesterday was one of those days...

Be that as it may, certainly much of my 'rant' is true, so far as it goes. Most of that centres around the fact that 'Puppians' break the mould in many ways; after all, we still like to run hardware that most geeks would have consigned to the dumpster years ago. The majority of said 'geeks' tend to always want the very newest of everything, ALL the time. That said, we'll be more than happy, as a community, to help you find the "best" way of doing stuff that "works" for you.

---------------------------------------------

Just one request, please? Try and keep to one subject per thread, if you would. Multiple subjects in a thread get awfully confusing.....for everybody! (And it makes it harder for folks in the future, if they want to refer somebody else back to a particular thread for a 'fix'.....only to read it through, and find that it goes off in half-a-dozen different directions.)

---------------------------------------------

We have no problem with you opening half-a-dozen different threads, to ask about that number of different subjects. We'd rather you did it that way, instead of asking several questions in one post, because it's easier for everyone to follow......but then, this is a pet 'hate' that's an almost universal 'constant' with most forum staff, right across the 'net. The old Puppy Forum was rather prone to the above failing, unfortunately. We're trying our best to keep this one a bit tidier, for the sake of ALL concerned!

We're always willing to help, if it's within our abilities to do so. Don't be a stranger!

Mike.

I could not agree more and thanks for making it clear.

SSD USB issue solve.

I will be starting a new thread soon on how Linux Puppy is structured so I understand how it works better.
I will red through the forum first to see if it is already written and done.

I think your request will make finding information on this forum much better.

Just what I need.

Thanks

BK