Can't boot from USB, partition not found

[rcrsn51]

Couldn't that be the driver modules?

Are you talking about the "failure to boot" issue or the "non-functioning touchpad" issue?

[fernan]

I understand the kernel swap suggestion is related to the touch pad not working in any of the 4 or 5 puppies I've tried, but that's another topic. I'll check that later.

By now, it seems not very straightforward to boot from a usb drive in this machine. I'll try Rufus as a last try. If it doesn't work, I'll boot with the sfs files copied to de HDD as I'm doing now, and investigate the touch pad later.

[fernan]

@fernan The BIOSes of some very old machines have trouble with the modern UEFI-compatible Puppy ISOs.

You might try making your USB drive with another tool like Rufus.

Well, Rufus was 100% fail, the computer didn't even boot, just a blinking "_" on the screen.

I'll give up trying to boot from the USB drive (I wanted to learn something new with this experience), I'll copy the puppy files to the hard drive, and use the USB drive just to have a boot loader without installing it to the hard drive.

[rockedge]

It's about the bootloader not being able to find some partitions, either because it is mis-configured or because the BIOS can't find them either, so it can't report them to the bootloader

I believe also this is the problem. The UUID is not correct or the boot stanza is not detailed enough going deep enough in the directory structure if there is one on the partition.

I might of missed it...is this a FAT32 or exFat formatted partition?

[Wiz57]

With older machines, sometimes unetbootin works better for me than Rufus, and in regards to Rufus,
some on the forum have reported failures with newest version if the machine is not UEFI, but that
older version 3.2 (I think it is) seems to work. Myself, I use unetbootin to make my bootable USB
thumb drives. Tried Rufus, new version, and it failed on this old Acer Aspire One AOA150,,,but
unetbootin worked a charm.
Wiz

[fernan]

The USB drive is formatted as FAT32, AFAIK, by StickPup and other install utilities I've tried.

It looks like a straightforward process, but in this machine something is different. The vmlinuz and initrd,gz are found without problems, I don't understand the boot process deep enough to understand what happens after that.

By now, the only way I've found to boot the machine is to copy the sfs files to the hard drive and let the boot process to find them there.

[Wiz57]

The USB drive is formatted as FAT32, AFAIK, by StickPup and other install utilities I've tried.

It looks like a straightforward process, but in this machine something is different. The vmlinuz and initrd,gz are found without problems, I don't understand the boot process deep enough to understand what happens after that.

By now, the only way I've found to boot the machine is to copy the sfs files to the hard drive and let the boot process to find them there.

Try unetbootin...there is an option to "label" your thumb drive, give it a name such as the Puppy you are attempting to install, S15Pup32 would work.
Then, once finished creating your USB drive, check the contents, look for a "menu.lst" ( used by grub4dos ) , open in a text editor such as Notepad if
using Windows, and look at the kernel parameters of the various options. There needs to be a "pdrv=" command in the kernel line, in the example I
gave, this command would be "pdrv=S15Pup32" (without quote marks)...you can insert that same pdrv parameter command into each of the menu
options. This will tell the boot what drive to look for Puppy files on. I've noticed more than one newer Puppy needing the pdrv argument in the
kernel line...older Pups didn't seem bothered as much, and would more likely as not search the drive it finds vmlinuz and initrd on.
Wiz

[fernan]

It seems VENTOY ( https://ventoy.net/en/doc_linux_gui.html) did the trick.

Downloaded ventoy, intalled it to the USB drive, and copied a puppy ISO file to the 1st USB partition as explained, and the computer booted from the USB drive without issues.