Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

When booting I hit enter in the countdown stage. Booting failed at the
Recognising media devices ....................................... optical input
stage.
I have made a new save file.
How can I get the old savefile to boot?

Details
i3 laptop using a 64 bit quirky7 puppy april64-7.0.1F-uefi. on live dvd; savefile on hdd
laptop is 2.1Mhz and 4Gb with dvd

Probably trying to use a Quirky version that is not designed for that new and good a hardware setup.
The hardware support is not in it.
Quirky7 is designed for much older hardware.

Try using a much newer version of Quirky.
https://bkhome.org/news/tag_quirky.html

Suggest trying to use one of the newer or newest official Puppy versions found here:
http://puppylinux.com/

Im using jrb's version
Quirky7-light 32&64 bit - April 2020

http://oldforum.puppylinux.com/puppy/vi ... 46aea33ca3

It has been working fine for a month!
The new savefile works ok

Ok, you messed up the old save file, but made a new one that will work.
The old save has stuff in it you want.

This is a guess but you can try it.
I am thinking the xorg.conf file in the broken save needs replaced with a good one.

Boot using the new save file.
Using the file manager.
Navigate to /etc/X11
Should have xorg.conf file located there.
Make a copy of xorg.conf file.

Now find the bad old save file.
Left click on it to open showing the contents.
Navigate to /etc/X11/
Delete the xorg.conf file and replace it with the good copy you made.
Close the file manager.

Now reboot using the old save file.

Any help?

Tried swopping xorg.conf new for old but no change
Used
diff file1 file2
to check, but both the same!

OK.

Do a normal boot using the old broken save.
What exactly happens?
Step by step what happens when the old save loads?
Anything it does or does not do is a clue!

However fixing a broken save is a trip down a rabbit hole, unless some very obvious clue shows up.

bigpup wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 3:17 pm

However fixing a broken save is a trip down a rabbit hole, unless some very obvious clue shows up.

Bigpup is quite right! But Puppy is amazingly adaptable. Here's what I would do:

Make a backup copy of you new working savefile. I usually add a 0 to the beginning of the savefile name to make sure I never boot into it by mistake.
Boot from your new savefile
Make a backup copy of the old savefile and then rename it to 0aprilsave + whatever else you've called it.
Is it a file or folder? If a file click on the unrenamed file to mount and open it.
Go into the unrenamed copy and delete out the whole /etc directory. Try booting.
If it boots then start look in /root/.packages and check the installed package .files to see what they have placed in /etc. Copy the package .files to a drive
First check to see if the package still works - if so don't mess with it.
Reboot into your new safe savefile and one package at a time copy the files from your old savefile backup into the working copy of your old savefile.
After each copy boot into the working copy of your old savefile and if successful then repeat the process until it breaks.
Pull out the last files you put in and you'll know what broke.

If all this doesn't work, I'd start reinstalling packages into your new working savefile, but make a backup copy after each package.

Just the kind of thing to do on a cold winter's eve. Good Luck, J