having trouble booting all forum distros from SD card

[wiak]

I'm trying to boot these four distros from a small SD card on an old HP 2530p 2GB Ram Intel Core2Duo CPU laptop I have... Like a blast from the past trying to boot a DD and Puppy for me.

Unfortunately, I'm not having much success.

Well, I manage to boot KLU_jammy since I made that one and am familiar with booting FirstRib-based distros from SD card or anywhere else.
But I can't get fossadog64, fossapup64 (the F96_CE version) or bionicpup64 to boot.
Many years ago I used to boot Fossadog64 on same machine (as far as I remember); indeed it was myself who originally back then sometime added the code to DebianDogs initrd and some DD scripts to allow SD booting to work, but maybe don't have the boot arguments for Dogs and Puppy in menu.lst correct?

Anyone see anything I need to change below and is anyone else ever booted from SD card?

title fossadog64 in folder fossadog64, save on exit (sda1) # this gives error: (hd0.0) ... Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /fossadog64/casper/vmlinuz noauto from=/fossadog64 changes=EXIT:/fossadog64/casper/
initrd /fossadog64/casper/initrd1.xz

title Start bionicpup64 8.0 # this gives error: (hd0,0) ... Error 2: Bad file or directory type
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /bionicpup64/vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash psubdir=bionicpup64 pfix=copy pdev=mmcblk0p1
initrd /bionicpup64/initrd.gz

title "fossapup64 9.6" # this gives error: (hd0,0) ... Error 2: Bad file or directory type
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /fossapup64/vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash psubdir=fossapup64 pfix=copy pdev=mmcblk0p1
initrd /fossapup64/initrd.gz

title KLU_jammy # this one boots okay from the SD card
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /KLU_jammy/vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4=/KLU_jammy w_changes=RAM2
initrd /KLU_jammy/initrd.gz

EDIT: after trying re-installations now KLU_jammy won't boot from the SD card either... so I've modified the title. At least I know KLU_jammy 'can' boot, but SD cards are just plain weird, even weirder than usb sticks. I discovered years ago that sometimes I had to copy vmlinuz first and sync and then initrd.gz and sync and so on till everything was copied; that was for usb sticks too on my older laptop. Even worse with SD cards - sometimes I had to completely re-partition and mkfs and then do that weird copy procedure. Nothing about that found on google searches, but definitely my old laptop needs procedures like that. Unfortunately, I simply can't now boot from the SD card at all, but don't want to re-partition it and so on because I have grub4dos already on it (the wee version per DebianDogs) and don't want the hassle of having to reinstall that too (the SD card is old and I installed that grub on it mega years ago).

[rockedge]

Grub2 or Grub4Dos?

[wiak]

Grub2 or Grub4Dos?

grub4dos the wee mbr one.

Actually now things getting worse. On last boot grldr couldn't find menu.lst despite it existing. I had to delete it and recreate it and then menu.lst was found on next boot. However, KLU_jammy not booting. Forget the error message.

I have to stop working on this. I know SD cards are flaky as hell. In the past it usually works to use gparted to start all over and then boot up a UbuntuDog and just copy over the grub4dos bootloader and then copy the iso files in the bit by bit fashion I described. i.e. it is all black magic and only at the end of the time-consuming process do you sometimes get surprised with a success... I give up for now though.

And yes, I've been doing lots of fscking to see if that helped. Can't say it did.

EDIT: Well, I have KLU_jammy booting from the SD card again, now from directory /KLU1. No rhyme nor reason for the failure and now success though. I'm pretty sure neither Puppy nor DD will boot on top of this since I believe I have to at least copy the vmlinux first followed by a sync (i.e. early on in the SD filesystem before other big files added - no idea 'why' ...). Time for bed. I may just stick with jammy, though I'd actually like FossaDog64 since a bit faster and apt still working without any fudges.

[Tahrbaby]

Grub2 or Grub4Dos?

grub4Dos the wee mbr one.

You might find that its easier to run and use 'grub2config' which features in the menu of some of the recent Pupps.
I can boot from an SD card ok using that.

Grub4dos kind of went downhill for one reason or another and wont boot some OS's nowadays.

[wiak]

DebianDogs wee mbr based grub4dog works fine for me - always has and I'm familiar with it.

Good news is, after successfully getting KLU_Jammy to boot from own folder on SDcard, I now have FossaDog64 booting from its own folder on same card and posting from its old included Firefox right now.

FossaDog64 is the one I am mainly interested in for this old computer with 2MB RAM since, currently at least, apt works fine with it and I can install the fossa-compatible packages I want, without further thinking, including LibreOffer and the multi-dependencies needing KDE Okular.

I will however also now have a stab at getting Fossapup64 to also boot, for comparison purposes. The problem I was having might have been due to how easy it is to corrupt SD cards if something goes wrong with umounting. I certainly managed to get above successful after careful use of fsck during and at the end of the work. There is also a possibility that this particular old laptop SD drivers are very limited and perhaps they need contiguous file saves, but I don't really know if that is why my black magic tricks sometimes appear to work - I'm happy as long as I can get them all booting - I have run SD cards like this for years thereafter so reliable enough for my purposes once successfully installed. The getting successfully instanced part of the procedure is the finicky bit I find with SD cards though the DebianDog grub4dos itself works perfectly well itself.

So now I'll try adding fossapup64 (F96_CE variant) to the mix in its own folder. I'm not sure if I have the boot arguments in above stanzas correct though so if anyone sees anything wrong or needing added please let me know.

[bigpup]

Change the boot loader to Grub2config
viewtopic.php?t=3360
It is an updated Grub4dos version.

I suggest you setup the SD card with two partitions.

Use msdos for partition table type.

Fist one as the boot partition, 150 to 300 MB size, formatted fat32, flagged boot, esp
Put the boot loader on it.
Only the boot loader files.

2nd partition rest of drive, format ext 3 or 4
Frugal installs of Puppy versions on it.

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

That is known error you get with Grub4dos, if using a ext4 format that is 64bit, for the Puppy frugal install partition.
Puppy only makes 32bit ext4 format.
Other Linux OS's can and do make ext4 format 64bit.
https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... c3#p965277

[wiak]

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

That is known error you get with Grub4dos, if using a ext4 format that is 64bit, for the Puppy frugal install partition.
Puppy only makes 32bit ext4 format.
Other Linux OS's can and do make ext4 format 64bit.
https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... c3#p965277

Thanks for these ideas. I've heard of that 64bit ext4 format issue, but doesn't apply in this case. The SD card was formatted ext2 (which has its own problems I suppose) long time ago.

I've run out of time for now, but may get round to trying the Puppy grub utility on a different SD card some other time, but since both KLU_Jammy and FossaDog64 are working fine from their own subdirectories in my single ext2 partitioned SD card I will run with that for now since I have an urgent office business purpose needing this old machine and fossadog64 is ideal for my office apps installation needs.

I would be interested to know if Puppy is fine booting from SD card when placed in its own subdirectory, which I expect it is but would like confirmed. But yes, booting from fat32 partition might work better with some versions of Grub4dos, but as I said, the one installed via DebianDog utility is working fine for me anyway - just error with Puppy though I do suspect the SD card rather than Puppy itself - some corruption may have occurred to the main puppy boot files (even though the KLU and fossadog installations are working fine prior to that). If situation ever changes or I try again per bigpup's suggestion sometime I will report back here later. I'm presuming the grub4dos boot stanza I'm using to try and boot Fossapup64 is fine (though the error message isn't likely to do with stanza in this case I feel - Puppy's vmlinuz is simply not being found, which is an SD issue of some sort or bad file).

[wiak]

the error message isn't likely to do with stanza in this case I feel - Puppy's vmlinuz is simply not being found, which is an SD issue of some sort or bad file.

Since my last comment suggested to myself that I had made the correct determination of what the problem actually was, which meant I had almost determined the solution, I decided on one last try.

So based on my above comment, I simply deleted my existing fossapup64 installation and did an fsck on the carefully unmounted SD card, remounted it, made a new fossapup directory (though I named it fpup64), and only copied the fossapup64 vmlinuz into it since if that was detected (at boot time - that one file) that would indicate all would be well on copying in the rest of the fossapup files and then doing a full reboot.

Thus after again carefully unmounting the SD card, I again run fsck on it to make sure was still 'clean', which it now was. Tried it in my boot machine and sure enough Puppy vmlinuz was now found ok. So took the SD card over to my other computer, copied the remaining fossapup64 files to the SDcard fpup64 folder, carefully unmounted it after that and did another fsck just to be sure - all good.

Back on the old laptop and it did indeed now boot fine (using single ext2 partition and DebianDog's FossaDog64 grub4dos utility wee grub4dos installed on the SD card). So now have that single ext2 partition with all of KLU_Jammy, FossaDog64, and F96_CE all booting successfully from their own subdirectories. Great.

I did also make a change to the grub4dos boot stanza cos noticed an error and also wanted to try without that pdev= argument, which did indeed prove to be unnecessary. Now using:

title KLU1
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /KLU1/vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4=/KLU1 w_changes=RAM2
initrd /KLU1/initrd.gz

title fossadog64 in folder fossadog64, save on exit (sda1)
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /fossadog64/casper/vmlinuz noauto from=/fossadog64 changes=EXIT:/fossadog64/casper/
initrd /fossadog64/casper/initrd1.xz

title fpup64 9.6
find --set-root uuid () ea608036-f846-4c02-99ac-e6c83c9f17f4
kernel /fpup64/vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash psubdir=fpup64 pfix=copy
initrd /fpup64/initrd.gz

All booting fine! Posting from SD card booted F96_CE using its default firefox 102.9.0 esr right now!

Overall moral of the story is to be careful of SD cards not being unmounted cleanly cos of possible file system corruption (so frequent fsck use proved useful in this case).

[dimkr]

This is exactly why 99% of users should have pfix=fsck,fsckp. IMO this should be the default in installers, I don't see why somebody wouldn't want this.

[bigpup]

If you are using ext2 format.

You need to have the pfix=fsck, fsckp in the boot menu entries.

Using ext2 format, was the original reason to have fsck run at every boot, to detect and fix, the corruption that was and will get into ext2 format file system.

After putting fsck into boot menu entries.

All the corrupted save file issues got fixed.

Yes booting from an SD card is no different from using a USB connected drive.
That is if the computer can boot from a SD card.
Not all can.

I have a HP ChromeBook that boots better from Puppy on a micro SD card, than it does from the internal drive.
It was easier getting it to boot from SD card. (128GB)
I use the internal 16GB drive for storage.