The mystery of BionicPup32's missing browser [solved]

[peebee]

I need Puppy to verify the .iso file I just downloaded to try out Puppy?

No!
You need a program that will generate the md5 checksum of a downloaded .iso - on Puppy this is pupmd5sum - on another os it will be a different program - try:

md5sum <iso name>

in a terminal replacing <....> with the iso name

[Kjellinux]

Did I mention that my experience of Linux is limited?

I have installed Linux Mint before. During that process I verified the sha256sum checksum. Now I needed to find out how to verify the pupmd5sum checksum. Or so I thought...

Now I know that I needed to find out how to verify the md5sum checksum, Now I also know that pupmd5sum is not a checksum, but a tool in BionicPup32 that is used to verify the md5sum checksum. Now that i searched for a tool to verify the md5sum checksum, not the pupmd5sum checksum, things got a lot easier.

I soon found out that just about any Linux distribution includes the md5sum tool. It was as simple as:

Code: Select all

md5sum filename.iso

So, now the md5sum checksum has been verified, Next I will try to create a bootable USB using the Startup Disc Creator that is included in the Lubuntu that came with my test rig.

IT'S A LEARNING EXPERIENCE!

To be continued...

[Kjellinux]

@peebee

No!
You need a program that will generate the md5 checksum of a downloaded .iso - on Puppy this is pupmd5sum - on another os it will be a different program - try:

md5sum <iso name>

in a terminal replacing <....> with the iso name

And while I wrote my most recent post, you managed to squeeze this one in. Well, the important thing is now I know. Booth from my own research and from your kind help!

[mikewalsh]

@Kjellinux :-

I have to agree with Oscar, really I do.

I know optical drives are becoming rare beasts these days. I bought this new HP desktop just last year, but I actually have two! I chose the desktop because it came with an optical drive - it's a horrible, cheap, flimsy laptop-style drive, working in the vertical position, but it's functional, and does the job.

The second drive, I "rescued" from the old Compaq Presario desktop just after it died on me. I'd only installed it literally weeks before the box snuffed it, so it's almost brand-new.....and it's a somewhat higher-quality LiteOn 'tray-loader', which I much prefer. I bought a 3-metre USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter cable for it, and now run it at desktop height (the HP sits out of the way underneath the desk).

(Actually, they're not rare on the 'after-market' at all - everybody & his dog sells external optical drives - but they're a rarity as far as OEMs are concerned. The current obsession, with making everything as thin & light as possible, has been with us for a while now.....and I don't see it going away any time soon.)

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

The point of my missive is this; USB installs of Puppy are always fraught with 'quirks' for folks installing to a stick from Windoze. It's 'old-fashioned', perhaps - and Lord knows, it dates right back to Puppy's beginnings - but I've never yet had a Puppy ISO, burnt to CD/DVD, fail to boot for me.....desktop OR laptop, BIOS or UEFI. They just 'work'.

So it's probably the best option for anyone wanting to get that very first Puppy up-and-running. Our Pup's had enough love & attention lavished on her over the years, by plenty of interested, committed, knowledgeable & 'expert' Puppians, that she possesses every tool imaginable for building more Puppy installs, on whatever medium you care to name.

I would thoroughly recommend it, for any 'noob' or first-timer to the Puppy cosmos.

(For an absolutely 'idiot-proof' method of burning a Puppy ISO to an optical disc, I still say you have to go a long way to beat this wee Windows utility; Burn CDCC - from Terabyte Unlimited. Second item down.....it's a direct download. D/l it, unzip it, and run it from anywhere. You can't go wrong with it, because it's designed to do one thing.....and one thing ONLY; to burn an ISO file to an optical disc. That's all you can use it for.....it won't do anything else..!! )

Mike.

[williwaw]

Did I mention that my experience of Linux is limited? :shock:

I soon found out that just about any Linux distribution includes the md5sum tool. It was as simple as:

Code: Select all

md5sum filename.iso

So, now the md5sum checksum has been verified, Next I will try to create a bootable USB using the Startup Disc Creator that is included in the Lubuntu that came with my test rig.

IT'S A LEARNING EXPERIENCE! :)

To be continued...

Startup Disc Creator may work well for Lubuntu. It may not work well for puppy. I do not know all its capibilities, but it may be exclusively for a hybrid image, of which bionic is not.

with a bionic cd, you will have all the tools you need in one place to make a bionic usb.

[amethyst]

I agree. Burn the iso to CD and bootup. Use GParted to prepare the USB stick > manually copy the Puppy files to a folder of your choice on the USB stick > run the Grub4Dos bootloader config utility. Easy as.

[JASpup]

@JASpup

It appears you're fixed (or stuck) trying to work exclusively in Linux.

Not at all, but since my first attempt, using a Windows machine, failed, I thought I would try a Linux machine for my second attempt.

(And by the way, I'm writing this forum entry on a Windows machine. )

Well, if it doesn't feel too awkward using Windows to boot Puppy, someone made it easy for us.

This site advises dd or Win32 Disk Imager (Windows) for a USB install optimistically when dd is far from foolproof and Disk Imager is not in league. The task is easy for a programmer but newbies need hand holding.

I think if there were a Linux gui tool as good as UUI it would be obvious. Mention porting it & people with no stake or experience using it get contentious... human nature I guess.

* luck *

[bigpup]

Next I will try to create a bootable USB using the Startup Disc Creator that is included in the Lubuntu

May work, may not.
This may be a program just to work for Lubuntu.

[Kjellinux]

@mikewalsh @williwaw @amethyst @bigpup

The point of my missive is this; USB installs of Puppy are always fraught with 'quirks' for folks installing to a stick from Windoze. It's 'old-fashioned', perhaps - and Lord knows, it dates right back to Puppy's beginnings - but I've never yet had a Puppy ISO, burnt to CD/DVD, fail to boot for me.....desktop OR laptop, BIOS or UEFI. They just 'work'.

I have now tried the CD path. Some progress, but not yet success.

Startup Disc Creator may work well for Lubuntu. It may not work well for puppy. I do not know all its capibilities, but it may be exclusively for a hybrid image, of which bionic is not.
with a bionic cd, you will have all the tools you need in one place to make a bionic usb.

May work, may not.
This may be a program just to work for Ubuntu.

From what i have seen thus far, Setup Disc Creator works as well as any other utility for creating bootable USBs as long as you use the workaroudn of renaming .iso files to .img.

Use GParted to prepare the USB stick > manually copy the Puppy files to a folder of your choice on the USB stick > run the Grub4Dos bootloader config utility. Easy as.

I expect I will look into this method at some time during this project.

I have written a progress report in the thread Best 32 bit version with support beyond 2023? viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3245&start=40. I felt it was more relevant to put it there since it also deals with other distributions.

[one]

May work, may not.
This may be a program just to work for Ubuntu.

From what i have seen thus far, Setup Disc Creator works as well as any other utility for creating bootable USBs as long as you use the workaroudn of renaming .iso files to .img.

@Kjellinux

What version of Lubuntu is installed on the hd of the ACER Aspire 3100? Yes - it matters, because the code of "StartupDiskCreator" changed several times ...

And please - try to create a booting puppy_usb with this and report back!

peace

[Kjellinux]

@one

What version of Lubuntu is installed on the hd of the ACER Aspire 3100?

Lubuntu 16.04

And please - try to create a booting puppy_usb with this and report back!

Reporting back:

I have now created a bootable USB with BionicPup32 8.0+27 using the Setup Disc Creator utility of the Acer Aspire 3100 (using the workaround). It booted and ran without problems on my Dell Latitude D610, but the problems from before were still there with the Acer Aspire 3100.

[bigpup]

Not all Puppy versions work on all possible computers.

Try using Fossapup64 9.5 on the ACER Aspire 3100.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pu ... 64-9.5.iso

[Kjellinux]

@bigpup

Not all Puppy versions work on all possible computers.

I have noticed...

Try using Fossapup64 9.5 on the ACER Aspire 3100.

"Minimum System Requirements: 64bit core2duo cpu & 2gb ram". Will it even begin to load?

[one]

@one

What version of Lubuntu is installed on the hd of the ACER Aspire 3100?

Lubuntu 16.04

And please - try to create a booting puppy_usb with this and report back!

Reporting back:

I have now created a bootable USB with BionicPup32 8.0+27 using the Setup Disc Creator utility of the Acer Aspire 3100 (using the workaround). It booted and ran without problems on my Dell Latitude D610, but the problems from before were still there with the Acer Aspire 3100.

Thank you for testing,

the Startup Disk Creator in versions before Ubuntu 16.04 LTS was affected by several bugs. It was an extracting tool. But in 16.04 LTS, the Startup Disk Creator was converted to a cloning tool ...

The old (before 16.04) Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator was extracting the content of the iso file and trying to create a boot structure. It was notoriously buggy for years, because it was affected by modifications of the boot system between different versions of Ubuntu.

So a new version of the Startup Disk Creator was developed and introduced with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. This version is a cloning tool. The resulting USB boot drive will have an iso9660 file partition table and file system, which is read-only. Therefore it is not possible to make a persistent live drive ...

With Ubuntu 19.10 it is possible to clone a [slightly modified} iso file and add a partition for persistence behind it, because of a new feature alias squashed bug.

peace

[bigpup]

@bigpup

Not all Puppy versions work on all possible computers.

I have noticed...

Try using Fossapup64 9.5 on the ACER Aspire 3100.

"Minimum System Requirements: 64bit core2duo cpu & 2gb ram". Will it even begin to load?

OK do not try it, but you may be surprised if you do.
I was more curious if it would work and be able to use it.

There are ways to cut down on how much RAM Puppy uses, just to boot to a working desktop.
But that is another topic and dependent on type of install and what is going to be done with it.

[Kjellinux]

The old (before 16.04) Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator was extracting the content of the iso file and trying to create a boot structure. It was notoriously buggy for years, because it was affected by modifications of the boot system between different versions of Ubuntu.

So a new version of the Startup Disk Creator was developed and introduced with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. This version is a cloning tool. The resulting USB boot drive will have an iso9660 file partition table and file system, which is read-only. Therefore it is not possible to make a persistent live drive ...

I'm not sure if I fully understand the difference between extraction tool and clooning tool, but since my version is not before 16.04, i guess I don't really need to.

The resulting USB boot drive will have an iso9660 file partition table and file system

Added iso9660 file partition table and file system to my list of things to Google.

With Ubuntu 19.10 it is possible to clone a [slightly modified} iso file and add a partition for persistence behind it, because of a new feature alias squashed bug.

What type of tool is balenaEtcher, extraction or clooning? Will it allow the creation of a persistent live drive?

[Kjellinux]

@bigpup

OK do not try it, but you may be surprised if you do.
I was more curious if it would work and be able to use it.

Okay, you realise now I have to try it!

There are ways to cut down on how much RAM Puppy uses, just to boot to a working desktop.
But that is another topic and dependent on type of install and what is going to be done with it.

That sounds interesting, but the first step would have to be to get ANY version of puppy up and running properly...

[stevie pup]

I really don't understand what's going on here, there seems to be an awful lot of fuss about creating bootable USB's and I'm not sure why. Please accept my apologies in advance if I've somehow missed the point, or become confused in some other way. Bearing in mind that I am also a Linux beginner here are my experiences.

Since I first took an interest in Linux, just over 18 months ago, I have created around 20 bootable USB sticks, maybe more. Four different Puppies (including BionicPup32) and numerous other Linux distros, some Ubuntu based, some Debian based, and a couple of "oddballs". To do this I have used both Balena Etcher and Rufus on a Windows 7 laptop, and also the Disc Image Writer that comes with Linux Mint. Irrespective of which one I've used I've never bothered to "fiddle" with anything, and always left all the default settings.

I have NEVER had any problem with any distro not booting, or having things missing. Ok, I admit they've not all turned out the way I had hoped, and some were abandoned immediately. Some people have some strange ideas regarding what is considered "suitable for beginners", but that's another story. But never mind, they've all booted up initially.

My suggestion would be to try a different distro on the "troublesome" Acer Aspire, and assuming it boots up ok see if the browser in that will run. If it doesn't the issue may be nothing to do with Puppy at all.

I recently had a right headache with an Acer netbook, which I posted on a couple of other forums. A number of people commented on how strange the problem was but nobody could come up with an answer. I got to the bottom of it in the end, it turned out to be a peculiar quirk in the Acer firmware. No connection with the problems in this thread, but thought I would mention it.

Hope you make some progress.

[Kjellinux]

@stevie pup

To do this I have used both Balena Etcher and Rufus on a Windows 7 laptop, and also the Disc Image Writer that comes with Linux Mint. Irrespective of which one I've used I've never bothered to "fiddle" with anything, and always left all the default settings.

My previous experience has been similar. Download, flash. boot, install. Follow the instructions and answer the questions. Start using. End of story...

Some people have some strange ideas regarding what is considered "suitable for beginners", but that's another story.

Indeed!!

My suggestion would be to try a different distro on the "troublesome" Acer Aspire, and assuming it boots up ok see if the browser in that will run.

I'm in the process.

I recently had a right headache with an Acer netbook, which I posted on a couple of other forums. A number of people commented on how strange the problem was but nobody could come up with an answer. I got to the bottom of it in the end, it turned out to be a peculiar quirk in the Acer firmware. No connection with the problems in this thread, but thought I would mention it.

That quirk i'm VERY interested to learn more about!

[OscarTalks]

Reading this thread and the other, it would appear that you have created a USB stick install of BionicPup32 which boots on another computer and the Light browser starts and runs on that computer.

But when you boot the same USB stick on the test rig computer, it boots and most of the programs run but Light browser does not. Is this correct?
If so, that would suggest some sort of peculiar hardware quirk with the test rig.

It is worth remembering that in BionicPup32, the Light browser is only there as a "lighter than most of the heavy browsers" which works in most cases, but it is sort of only intended to be there to get people off the ground. The intention really is that you should use one of the fully-featured browsers provided if you want something which will work more reliably. The Light browser is quite an old version and it is in the adrive so it can easily be discarded. Really if it does not work, but everything else does, I would say it is not something to be too concerned about.

As an alternative, in the test rig (testing older hardware and low RAM), It might be an idea to try installing for example the latest available 32bit Palemoon browser, which is also lighter than most but works in most situations. See if that starts and runs.

[Kjellinux]

@OscarTalks

Reading this thread and the other, it would appear that you have created a USB stick install of BionicPup32 which boots on another computer and the Light browser starts and runs on that computer.

But when you boot the same USB stick on the test rig computer, it boots and most of the programs run but Light browser does not. Is this correct?

That is correct. There 's also the problem with the screen resolution.

If so, that would suggest some sort of peculiar hardware quirk with the test rig.

I'm beginning to suspect that too.

[one]

[...]

What type of tool is balenaEtcher, extraction or clooning? Will it allow the creation of a persistent live drive?

from the balena home page:

"Etcher copies images to drives byte by byte" ...

which means "cloning"

and:

"Some programs, usually oriented at making GNU/Linux live USB drives, include an option to set persistent storage. This is currently not supported by Etcher" ...

peace

[Adam Li]

Hi Kjellinux

1. Firmware or drivers?
I have no idea where the term "firmware" came from in the Linux distribution world, which is otherwise very misleading. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary "firmware is a set of instructions that form part of an electronic device and allow it to communicate with a computer or with other electronic devices." Firmware is stored in the device's Read Only Memory. If you look at Linux Kernel and it's Linux Kernel Map you will see many places with "drivers", but no one with "firmware". Embedded Linux based systems is another story. Remeber: Linux kernel is monolithic, drivers are compiled in and here is nothing like Windows drivers, that you can find for WXP or W7. Some propietary drivers work with different kernels, but most drivers are dedicated to specific kernel version.

2. A little note about "Light" browser from Bionicpup32 8.0.
I checked on YouTube a while ago. After a few accepted warnings, browsing and playing on YT did not cause any problems. BTW: did you hear about LYNX?

3. After many tries, I became discouraged with most bootladers. For experimenting with various systems, not only Linux, Ventoy remained. To be compatible with Windows, format the main partition in NTFS. The ease of use is captivating and the reliability of use is very high. From practical observations: if the system does not boot properly, it means that the system kernel does not support the hardware in question.

4. For dual-boot installations with Windows 7 or W10, I recommend LICK with one important caveat: you need to create a rescue disk or save a disk image before using LICK. The system may stop booting for no apparent reason.

5. For a dual-boot installation from Windows XP, simply modify boot.ini and add grldr and menu.lst. Simple and reliable.

6. As for the puppies, Precise 5.7.1 and Bionicpup32 8.0 are the most polished and reliable. The former is a Swiss knife in case of trouble, the latter for everyday use. If you have <2 GB RAM, add pupswap, Bionic will find the file itself, Precise needs to be directed, but the Swiss knife can do work it even with 128 MB RAM.

7. Sorry, but I have the impression that 64-bit puppies still have a long way to go. On the one hand, it is hardly surprising for a few or a dozen volunteers that they did not make a miracle, because the work is enormous, but on the other hand, there is no point in pretending that everything is fine. Well, this world is not perfect ...

Best wishes
Adam

[Kjellinux]

@one

from the balena home page:

"Etcher copies images to drives byte by byte" ...

which means "cloning"

and:

"Some programs, usually oriented at making GNU/Linux live USB drives, include an option to set persistent storage. This is currently not supported by Etcher" ...

peace

Thank you, that was easy to understand and very useful information. So, if I'm looking for persistent storage already att the stage of flashing, I need to shop around for a more capable tool than balenaEtcher.

[Kjellinux]

Light Web Browser is now up and running on BionicPup32 8.0+27.

I used GParted to create a USB with an msdos partition table, a 10GB main partition and a 2GB swap partition. Next, I manually copied all the files from the downloaded .iso file to the 10GB main partition. I booted from the new USB, finished off some basic settings, and created a savefile on exit. All of this was done on my trusted old Dell Latitude D610 (equipped with 2GB RAM), running BionicPup32 8.0+27 from a CD.

After saving on exit, I moved the new USB to my Acer Aspire 3100 test rig and booted. This time, at first attempt, the Light Web Browser appeared!

Having done a number of changes since my last attempt, I can't know for certain what solved the problem, but my prime suspect as the source of the original problem would be the limited RAM of my test rig. I welcome your explanations and/or theories on what was the original problem, and what change or changes solved it. As i stated already, one of the main purposes of my project is to learn.

I am aware that many feel that the Light Web Browser is not the best option, but for the time being, it is good enough for my purposes.