Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Greetings, I am a new member.
I could not find an answer to my problem in previous posts, so I am hoping someone here can help me solve it.
I am having trouble getting Slacko Pup 7 (32-bit) to boot after installing it to the HD. I had wanted to install it as multi-booting with other distros and Win98 on an old "Alpha" computer running a Soltek MoBo with a 1.7ghz Celeron processor (approximately equivalent to a slightly stupefied Pentium 4). It booted fine from the Live-CD and ran great, and the install seemed to go OK, including setting up Grub2.
But on rebooting, Slacko Pup would not complete the boot, stopping when it could not find things it wanted, giving a big red error message that I could not understand.
Usually I can coax a distro to work by playing with the Grub commands, but nothing I tried worked.
I disconnected all my hard drives, stuck in a beater drive and tried reinstalling to a blank HD with no other OS on board. Same result.
I tried setting it up to boot with Grub4DOS instead - same result.
I tried a lot of things, and the only two that worked were: (1)installing it in the root of the drive (but not a subdir!) as a "full" installation, and (2)placing the squash files OUTSIDE the Puppy Subdir when installed as a frugal setup. This was even though the Psubdir was correctly specified.
I also tried installing it to a dedicated solo USB stik, and got the same failure.
USB-Multiboot test setups using both "Easy2Boot" and "Multiboot-USB" failed the same way. Another try using AIOboot produced a successful boot, so I cut and pasted the code from that into the Grub menu on my HD, thinking it would work. Nope.
Finally, I tested the 3 multi-sticks on another computer, a 2012 64-bit Toshiba laptop, and got the same fails and successes, SO I don't think its anything weird about the Alpha.
Does anyone have any suggestions what might be wrong here?
This machine boots & runs Xenial 7.5 and a bunch of other Puppies and Distros just fine, so I don't really understand what is going on.

The two things I would like help with are:
a) getting a proper frugal installation to work on the partition I've dedicated as my Frugal Bin.
b) Understanding what the deal is here. Its not just about getting things to work, I really like to know why - if that's not too much trouble for other forum members.

the only two that worked were: (1)installing it in the root of the drive (but not a subdir!) as a "full" installation
(2)placing the squash files OUTSIDE the Puppy Subdir when installed as a frugal setup.
This was even though the Psubdir was correctly specified

.

Could be dealing with the Frugal Slacko install is too many layers deep into the drives partition file system.

So, need to know exactly where the frugal install is placed in the partition file system?
In a directory on the top layer, not inside any other directory?
Slacko frugal install directory, inside a different directory, inside a different directory, etc.....?

Most of the newer versions of Puppy boot processes will only look 2 layers deep for the Puppy files.

What specific boot loader is booting the HD with the other OS's installed on it?
When you did the Slacko frugal install on it,
How did you update the boot loader menu, to have a menu entry for Slacko?

Post the contents of the boot loader menu config file.
Need to see exactly what the entries look like? Especially the Puppy ones that do work.

BigPup: Thanks for your response.
You wrote "Most of the newer versions of Puppy boot processes will only look 2 layers deep for the Puppy files."
I don't think the problem is that its too many folders deep. I moved the frugal installation up out of sda1/Puppies/SlackoPup7 to sda1/SlackoPup7 and the problem persists even tho it is now only one folder deep.

The original install from the Puppy Installer included Grub Legacy or Two, I didn't bother to find out which it was. When that didn't work I used the Grub4DOS Installer provided with Slacko 7. I am now sticking with G4D. I prefer Grub4DOS anyway because I know how it works and can confidently edit the *.lst files. Neither Grub for Linux nor Grub4DOS were able to boot Slacko 7 properly, but I now am uncertain whether the fault is Grub's.
Just to make sure it was not a problem with my system, I frugal-installed Puppies 2.14, 3.01, 4.31, Wary 5.5, Xenial 7.5, and Slacko 6.3.2. All of these installed successfully and work fine.
I had expected Slacko 6.3.2 to produce grub config files that could be tweaked to also boot version 7.0, but that did not work - even with the Dir names changed to reflect the different Subdirs correctly, the same parameters would not work for 7.0.

Slacko 7 appears to run perfectly from LIVE-CD, except for a few annoying bugs that are common to most current puppies, such as inability to access floppy drives in certain situations, and glitchy GPartEd (plus one fault that 7.0 shares with 6.3.2, in that it occasionally will only display filenames in DOS 8.3 name format). From SlackoPup running LIVE, I tried all three installer options offered in the SETUP menu, and though they each produced slightly different command lines for GrubX, none of them worked.

I have deleted the installations that "worked" since they were all either malformed or not what I wanted - ie, one was a "full" and the other had to have SFSs placed outside the puppy SubDir before it would work. But I am pretty sure the Grub parameters for those were the same as what I am using now, since they were created by the several installers or GrubX-configgers provided with Slackos 7 and 6.3.2. I also tried the Grub4DOS-configgers on the Wary5.5 and Xenial7.5 LIVE-CDs, and they both produced parameters that would boot 6.3.2 successfully, but not 7.0 - even with a LOT of tweaking.

Slacko 7 starts booting and apparently loads some of the SFS files, but then appears to be unable to either switch root, or to mount something on a loop file. I have saved a debug report to disk if that is any help to you - its total gibberish to me. I tried photographing the screen error messages, but did not get readable pix from my phone camera. If those messages may be important I can manually type them into another 'puter to make them available.

There may still be something I have not told you, that may be the clue to fixing the problem, but lets save that quest/question for a later message. Succinctness is conflicting with completeness, but this message is already embarrassingly huge.

Pasted below is my current menu.lst file contents, in case that is helpful...

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.9.2
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
#splashimage=/splash.xpm
timeout 10
default 0

# Just a page title
title ******* Maxtor 82561D3 HDD - 2 Partitions ********
root

# Frugal installed Puppy

title Puppy Linux 3.01 frugal (sda2/Pup431) \n This one boots OK!
root (hd0,1) # I should replace this with the uuid
kernel /Pup301/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=Pup301
initrd /Pup301/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 4.31 frugal (sda2/Pup301) \n This one boots OK!
root (hd0,1) # I should replace this with the uuid
kernel /Pup431/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=Pup431
initrd /Pup431/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 5.5 frugal (sda1/WaryPup55) \n This one boots OK!
uuid 0F0A-AF95
kernel /WaryPup55/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=WaryPup55
initrd /WaryPup55/initrd.gz

title XenialPup 7.5 frugal in sda2/Xenialpup75 \n Boots with one halt-and-wait issue. But it boots. The error message is similar to the Slacko error, but Xenial recovers and completes the boot.
root (hd0,1) # I should replace this with the uuid
kernel /Xenialpup75/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=Xenialpup75
initrd /Xenialpup75/initrd.gz

title SlackoPup 6.3.2 (sda1/SlackPup632) \n This one boots OK!
uuid 0F0A-AF95 # replacing the uuid with "root (hd0,1)" also works.
kernel /Slacko632/vmlinuz psubdir=Slacko632 pmedia=ATAHD pfix=fsck
initrd /Slacko632/initrd.gz

title SlackoPup 7.0 (sda1/SlackPup7)
uuid 0F0A-AF95 # replacing the uuid with "root (hd0,1)" does not fix the boot problems.
kernel /SlackPup7/vmlinuz psubdir=SlackPup7 pmedia=ATAHD pfix=fsck
initrd /SlackPup7/initrd.gz

# Full installed Linux

None

# Windows
# this entry searches Windows on the HDD and boot it up
# title Windows \nBoot up Windows if installed - but its not installed on this machine.
errorcheck off
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
errorcheck on

# Advanced Menu
title Advanced menu
configfile /menu-advanced.lst
commandline

is /SlackPup7/ correct?
or is /SlackoPup7/ correct?

is /SlackPup7/ correct?
or is /SlackoPup7/ correct?

Thanks for asking, williams2.

That's certainly a kind of error that I have made before, but in this case...
...The correct PATH to the frugal files is /SlackPup7/, and
"SlackoPup7" is just the label (title) I used in the menu. I just double-checked the disk to be absolutely sure I haven't confused the LabelName with the DirName in any of the entries. Nope.

Does anybody here know how to interpret the debug output that I have saved?

This may have nothing to do with the problem. But it is an anomaly.

The pmedia= argument is frequently not necessary. AFAIK, it's a 'helper' when Puppy has some difficulty locating the folder in which the frugal system files are located. Linux, however, is case-sensitive. When used, I've always seen it as pmedia=ataflash.
I've never seen the argument as pmedia=ATAFLASH. Could be the capitalization creates confusion? 'though why it would for Slacko 7 and not for Slacko 6.3 is beyond me.
By the way, the term 'two layers deep' is misleading. The root of a drive/partition is the 1st layer.

I boot multiple Puppies using grub4dos, as well as Windows XP, on this old netbook. All Puppies are
frugal installs into a directory on the C: drive, WinXP resides there as well, primary bootup is controlled
by boot.ini (from Windows XP). The main difference between my menu.lst and the one you listed is in
the hard drive specifications. I managed to not use it, but used the "find --set-root" grub command.
Also, if you do specify the hard drive, some Puppies may be looking for "sda1" etc. so instead of hd0
you might try that. For your perusal, here is my menu.lst.

timeout=10
default=0
gfxmenu=/Grub_GUI.gz

title ScPupLXQt
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /ScPupLXQt/initrd.gz
kernel /ScPupLXQt/vmlinuz psubdir="ScPupLXQt" pfix=fsck
initrd /ScPupLXQt/initrd.gz
boot

title ScPupLXQt - Do not load save file
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /ScPupLXQt/initrd.gz
kernel /ScPupLXQt/vmlinuz psubdir="ScPupLXQt" pfix=ram
initrd /ScPupLXQt/initrd.gz
boot

title LxPupSc
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /LxPupSc/initrd.gz
kernel /LxPupSc/vmlinuz psubdir="LxPupSc" pfix=fsck
initrd /LxPupSc/initrd.gz
boot

title LxPupSc - Do not load save file
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /LxPupSc/initrd.gz
kernel /LxPupSc/vmlinuz psubdir="LxPupSc" pfix=ram
initrd /LxPupSc/initrd.gz
boot

title ScPup
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /ScPup/initrd.gz
kernel /ScPup/vmlinuz psubdir="ScPup" pfix=fsck
initrd /ScPup/initrd.gz
boot

title ScPup - Do not load save file
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /ScPup/initrd.gz
kernel /ScPup/vmlinuz psubdir="ScPup" pfix=ram
initrd /ScPup/initrd.gz
boot

title ArchPup 32
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /ArchPup/initrd.gz
kernel /ArchPup/vmlinuz psubdir="ArchPup" pfix=fsck
initrd /ArchPup/initrd.gz
boot

title ArchPup 32 - Do not load save file
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /ArchPup/initrd.gz
kernel /ArchPup/vmlinuz psubdir="ArchPup" pfix=ram
initrd /ArchPup/initrd.gz
boot

title Slacko Puppy 7
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /Slacko-Puppy-7/initrd.gz
kernel /Slacko-Puppy-7/vmlinuz psubdir="Slacko-Puppy-7" pfix=fsck
initrd /Slacko-Puppy-7/initrd.gz
boot

title Slacko Puppy 7 - Do not load save file
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /Slacko-Puppy-7/initrd.gz
kernel /Slacko-Puppy-7/vmlinuz psubdir="Slacko-Puppy-7" pfix=ram
initrd /Slacko-Puppy-7/initrd.gz
boot

title Slacko Puppy 6.3.2
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /Slacko-Puppy-6.3/initrd.gz
kernel /Slacko-Puppy-6.3/vmlinuz psubdir="Slacko-Puppy-6.3" pfix=fsck
initrd /Slacko-Puppy-6.3/initrd.gz
boot

title Slacko Puppy 6.3.2 - Do not load save file
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /Slacko-Puppy-6.3/initrd.gz
kernel /Slacko-Puppy-6.3/vmlinuz psubdir="Slacko-Puppy-6.3" pfix=ram
initrd /Slacko-Puppy-6.3/initrd.gz
boot

Now, here is my boot.ini file after installing grub4dos (many years ago)
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

c:\grldr="Pick A Puppy Linux"

Maybe this will give you more to try!
Wiz

mikeslr wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:16 am

Greetings mikeslr. Thanks for your input.

You wrote:

The pmedia= argument is frequently not necessary. AFAIK, it's a 'helper' when Puppy has some difficulty locating the folder in which the frugal system files are located. Linux, however, is case-sensitive. When used, I've always seen it as pmedia=ataflash.
I've never seen the argument as pmedia=ATAFLASH. Could be the capitalization creates confusion? 'though why it would for Slacko 7 and not for Slacko 6.3 is beyond me.

The anomaly of the capitalized atahd/ATAHD parameter is an example of the aforementioned bug(?) in both Slackos that (1)occasionally truncates filenames to DOS 8.3 name format and simultaneously (2) writes the names to disk in ALL-CAPS. To get case-sensitive Linux to work with these tag files, I simply changed the menu spelling to reflect the actual spelling of the tag file. I did not think this parameter was used for anything except the initial finding of the correct location/disk, so I took the easy way (I was already editing the menu.lst file a lot, so that was easier than renaming the disk file (which has to be done in two stages, since there is another bug in most Puppies (perhaps in ROX?) that when renaming a file, is case-INsensitive, regarding ATAHD as the same spelling as atahd, and disallowing any direct one-step change. SO renaming simply to change case requires first renaming ATAHD to (eg) ATAHDx, then again renaming ATAHDx to atahd. JWM/Rox won't let me do it in one go. Try it! I will be shocked and amazed if this is a peculiarity of my own system only - it affects many Puppies I have tried with the exception (I think) of 214X(Classic) that uses LXDE instead of JWM/ROX.

Slacko also wrote all the other filenames in upper-case (eg: MENU.LST, VMLINUZ, INITRD.GZ) and I was pretty sure they had to be corrected. Because of the renaming bug, I made the corrections by just deleting them all and then dragging new copies of the files off the CD.

But I digress - your suggestion is interesting, and I will change the case of the tag files too, to see if that helps Slacko. I will report back here!

By the way, the term 'two layers deep' is misleading. The root of a drive/partition is the 1st layer.

Technicaly, it is also incorrect to say that the SUN goes DOWN at night - really, the HORIZON comes UP. But I will continue to use the terms that people understand, in the cases of both the sunsets and the subdirs.

Stauro

Wiz57 wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:06 am

Hello Wiz57. Thanks for this.
You wrote:

I boot multiple Puppies using grub4dos, as well as Windows XP, on this old netbook. All Puppies are
frugal installs into a directory on the C: drive, WinXP resides there as well, primary bootup is controlled
by boot.ini (from Windows XP). The main difference between my menu.lst and the one you listed is in
the hard drive specifications. I managed to not use it, but used the "find --set-root" grub command.

I came to dislike the search method because I have multiple versions of DOS and Windows on one of my machines, and the search function is capricious about which one it finds and sets as root. I also sometimes swap drives around in different machines and combinations, shifting the drive numbers, so the (hd*,*) method isn't 100% reliable either. The uuid method will ALWAYS set the desired drive as root and saves me editing the menu.lsts a lot. Only problem is, GPartEd is kinda flaky(?) in Puppies, and not all versions will properly report the uuid. I am not good with the command line in Linux, so I cannot get the uuid that way.
Honestly, I don't understand why the Grub setups will sometimes write the menu using uuids, and sometimes using the search function. They're very inconsistent that way.

Also, if you do specify the hard drive, some Puppies may be looking for "sda1" etc. so instead of hd0
you might try that.

On my systems, Grub does not recognise a disk spec such as sda*, It replies that it can't parse the string, or something geeky like that.

Earlier Pups identified and labelled drives differently than the newer Pups, I think this is because of the kernels. Earlier Pups need most internal drives called as "hda1, hda2" etc, and only call external (USB) drives as "sda1, sda2" etc. - whereas all the newer Pups/kernels call everything sd**. But I think this only pertains to parameters passed to the kernel, not to drive-Id parameters that Grub reads quite differently than Linux does.
I think that for setting the root, Grub only understands the formats (hd#,#), and the uuid spec. Internally, I don't know how the search command represents what it finds - maybe the uuid.

Stauro

But on rebooting, Slacko Pup would not complete the boot, stopping when it could not find things it wanted, giving a big red error message that I could not understand.

At the bottom of the screen showing this error.
Is there a statement something like:
waiting 60 seconds to proceed
If yes.
Give it the time to do this.

I saw this trying to boot Slacko 7 (32bit).
After the 60 seconds, it seemed to find what it needed and continued to boot to working desktop.

pmedia=ATAHD

Did you try using the lower case version as was suggested?

pmedia=atahd

Your discussion about renaming files between upper/lower case does not apply here. Boot off one of your working Puppies, load the menu.lst file into a text editor and make the change.

This is my entry for menu.lst

title Slacko-7 (sda2)
 find --set-root uuid () A000B2F200B2CF12
 kernel /slacko-7/vmlinuz  pdrv=A000B2F200B2CF12  psubdir=/slacko-7 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
 initrd /slacko-7/initrd.gz

Fleshing out what rcrsn51 succinctly wrote.
I was typing the below before he posted.
I'm a little confused. Is the purpose of this thread to obtain a boot-able Slacko 7 32-bit, or to bug-fix problems with the installer included in Slacko 7 32-bit?
[If the latter, his is not the first reported problem booting Slacko 7. Albeit Concerned with Slacko64-7, patrick had one which AFAICT went unresolved. viewtopic.php?p=39593#p39593 Perhaps 01micko should look into this.

I'm also not sure the Stauro is properly trying to accomplish edits.

"I frugal-installed Puppies 2.14, 3.01, 4.31, Wary 5.5, Xenial 7.5, and Slacko 6.3.2. All of these installed successfully and work fine." However, "I have deleted the installations that "worked..."

When NOT involved with an UEFI computer, the easy way to install any Puppy is from a functioning Puppy, ANY functioning Puppy*. From the functioning Puppy:
1. Create a folder on the drive where you want the Puppy to be located: Right-Click an Empty Space, select New>Folder, and give it a name, such as SlackPup7. Left-Click to 'enter' that folder and leave it open.
2. Download the ISO of the desired Puppy. Left-Click the ISO, to mount it. From the Window which opens, Left-PRESS, HOLD, then drag each of the following files into the "SlackPup7" folder: initrd.gz, vmlinuz, puppy_slacko_7.sfs, and ALL other ???_slacko_7.sfses.
[In Slacko7, substitute fdrv and zdrv for ???. These contain, respectively, firmware and drivers. Some Puppys will have other 'alphabet' sfses, which may or may not be necessary. The other files contained in the ISO are only required to create a boot-loader on the medium from which you intend to install a Puppy. As --in this example-- you have already booted a Puppy, they are not needed].
3.a. Run Menu>Setup>Grub4dos from the functioning Puppy. Or install and run, grub2config. viewtopic.php?p=29703#p29703. When either completes creating a boot-loader and associated menu.lst or grub.cfg file it asks something to the effect "Do you want to edit?" Selecting "yes/ok" opens the menu.lst or grub.cfg in a text-editor (usually geany).
3.b. (Alternative). If you already have a boot-loader with associated menu.lst or grub.cfg, you can open it in the text editor (usually geany) of your functioning Puppy and perform edits, such as adding a new Stanza for your new Puppy.
[Geany and other text-editors running under Puppys do not have problems editing text, such as changing from upper case to lower case. If yours does, double check to make certain that you don't have a corrupted download].

FYI: Rox does not have a problem editing the names of files or folders. But it makes extensive use of Right-Clicks, such as in Step 1 above. As another example, the following screenshot shows that I have Right-Clicked the folder named 'temp1' and from the pop-up menu selected Rename:

You'll have to get used to that. Suggest as you're working you Right-Click anything and see what choices the Pop-Up menu offers. The choices change with the file-type you've clicked; and you can create your own using the 'Customize' and 'Open with' and 'Send to' options on the popup menu. Once you've grown used to it, you'll wonder why other File-Managers make things difficult.
-=-=-=-=---

* Puppys are designed to run as Frugal Installs. Most boot-loader applications --such as "Easy2Boot" and "Multiboot-USB"-- don't know how to properly handle that. Bigpup somewhere has a post identifying which can and any tweaks required; such as editing pmedia=cd to pmedia=flash. But I can't find that post.

bigpup wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 11:17 am

But on rebooting, Slacko Pup would not complete the boot, stopping when it could not find things it wanted, giving a big red error message that I could not understand.

At the bottom of the screen showing this error. The last line of info.
Is there a statement something like:
waiting 60 seconds to proceed
If yes.
Give it the time to do this.

I saw this trying to boot Slacko 7 (32bit).
After the 60 seconds, it seemed to find what it needed and continued to boot to working desktop.

Any info on this suggestion???

Thanks for staying on this, BigPup.
YES, the Slacko 7 boot pauses at the 60-second wait prompt because it cannot mount something or cannot find something. If I wait the 60 seconds, it has either (1)hung and cannot proceed or accept CLI commands, OR (2) it tries to continue and fails, with a message that the problem is too serious to continue. However, after an explicit fail, it does give a functioning command prompt, so I think Linux is running, just not the GUI and probably not all the operating files it wants. At this point I can type "debugsave" and it will write a DIR full of reports that I can't understand. I can also do an "ls" to see where I am, and some other common Linux commands also work.

If the on-screen error messages from this failpoint are at all helpful I can manually type them out on a different machine. I tried photographing the screen and the pix were too grotty to read.

Stauro

rcrsn51 and mikeslr:
As suggested, I made all the case changes to the menu.lst file, and to all the atahd marker files on disk.
Somewhat surprisingly, it made no difference whatsoever.

Stauro

rcrsn51 wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:17 pm

Your discussion about renaming files between upper/lower case does not apply here.

rcrsn51: Thanks for trying to set me straight, but the case of the names of the marker files on disk also had to be changed, not just the menu.lst entries.

Stauro

The only thing I can think of is to double-check the validity of the ISO you downloaded.

I've just done the following. Downloaded the ISO. Then followed the recipe I provided above to place its system files in a folder on a USB-Stick, and run grub2config from the Puppy I was using to create the Puppy-on-a-Stick.

I'm posting form it now after creating a SaveFolder (I had placed slacko32-7 on a partition formatted as Linux Ext3) and rebooting.
The Screenshot following reveals grub2 on the 1st partition of the USB-Stick, the grub2config text files it created, the Puppy System files located in a folder on the 3rd partition of that Stick, and that Rox's Right-Click Rename file is working.

No, I have not tried to use Slacko7-32's built-in installer files. Nor am I going to. This exploration reveals that with the possible exception of Slacko7's built-in application for creating a boot-loader, Slacko7 functions as it should. I would not know how to diagnose any flaw in its installer files, nor be of any help to anyone trying to.

Besides which, I generally do not run Slackos. [Despite that they often provide superior visuals and/or sound, these frequently require libraries not required by 'Ubuntus; consequently a lot of the menagerie of applications I have won't work OOTB]. And of the Slackos I do occasionally try-out I dislike those which use JWM-Window Manager but not radky's JWMDesk. I find the alternative too confusing. Add that this is a 32-bit OS, and finding web-browsers for that architecture is increasingly difficult.

mikeslr:
Thanks for your two long posts, full of suggestions and information.
I cannot answer at length right now, but I have already re-checked the MD5 of the ISO file I burned from. Its good.
Perhaps it did not burn cleanly to the CD-RW? However, I also tried installing from a USB stick, with the same issues.

Nevertheless, I'm going to burn another CD from a freshly downloaded ISO tonight, and try again.
I hope to get back here with a reply + results tomorrow, and will respond to your helpful post more thoroughly then.

p.s. All, for future reference: I have been working with computers since the days of C64's and floppy-only PCs. I do believe you can trust me to do the edits right

Stauro

I had wanted to install it as multi-booting with other distros and Win98 on an old "Alpha" computer running a Soltek MoBo with a 1.7ghz Celeron processor (approximately equivalent to a slightly stupefied Pentium 4).

Stauro wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:22 pm

If I wait the 60 seconds, it has either (1)hung and cannot proceed or accept CLI commands, OR (2) it tries to continue and fails, with a message that the problem is too serious to continue. However, after an explicit fail, it does give a functioning command prompt, so I think Linux is running, just not the GUI and probably not all the operating files it wants.

Stauro

could there be a time out or loop in the boot process that does not allow the older hardware to work well?

I once had a puppy that finally booted after hours of waiting, though it was so long ago I cannot remember the particulars. It was so long ago, it most likely was at least a 20 year old laptop. It did boot other puppies as fast as could be expected at the time.

Hi @Stauro . I don't know if any of the following might help, but sometimes a fool asks a question that leads others to something. With respect to the debug info, I am not advanced enough to be able to interpret such things.
a) Which filesystem is being used for the Frugal Bin partition?
b) You indicated that booting from CD was successful. Did you just boot the CD with the default boot option, or did you need to use any of the special boot menu options?
Although others are already well ahead of this, I imagine that the successful CD boot suggests it is not a Spectre/Meltdown mitigation issue, nor a PAE related one.
c) I suspect that you might have used the FrugalPup installer at some stage (if not initially, then later).
i) Would you recall setting up a specific Fat32 partition for it?
ii) If so, is that partition, and the files it would contain, still present?
iii) If not, are there any residual files on the Frugal Bin partition (or on whatever partition that you specified that FrugalPup should use)?
I realise that Grub4DOS is working for booting the other pups, but I thought I should ask in case there might be some strange conflict.
d) I can't recall if you have already tried this. Could you boot the CD again, (or use another Puppy, and mount the CD), to check for any differences in the sizes of any of the .sfs files, vmlinuz and initrd files, using "Count" from the right-click menu? These should be the only files you would need for the frugal install. Are there any strange files in the sub-directory being used for Slacko32-7.0?
e) Have you tried using the "pdrv" Puppy boot parameter, as suggested by Trapster? I realise that you might be tiring of boot parameter questions, but it could provide for faster detection of the required files.

You are also probably tiring of us posting sample Grub entries but I don't know if a modification of the following might be worth a try?:

menuentry "Pup-Slacko32-7.0" {
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
linux /slacko32-7.0/vmlinuz pdrv=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 psubdir=slacko32-7.0 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
initrd /slacko32-7.0/initrd.gz
}

It is a Grub2 entry, so you might have to adjust for Grub4DOS. The 0000...... entries are meant to represent a partition UUID. I realise that you are not keen on using the "search" parameter but, if I understand things correctly, the above line would search all the available drives for a partition with a matching partition UUID, and would then go on from there. That is, it would not be relying on detecting the OS, but rather the specified partition.

Although I tend to prefer labels, I understand that UUIDs are the recommended way. It is also rare that I would need to swap drives between machines (where conflicts could be more likely).

Should I have to obtain a partition UUID, I cheat and use GParted, by selecting a partition, right-clicking, selecting "Information" and then copying the partition UUID from there. I have a vague recollection that you might have to be careful of not leaving leading or trailing spaces from such a copy (I am not the most accurate with selections ). I don't know how one would obtain a drive UUID via GParted, if you needed something like that (maybe for a chainload?).
Apologies for a great load of waffle that will probably be of little help. Thanks.

Stauro wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:22 pm

YES, the Slacko 7 boot pauses at the 60-second wait prompt because it cannot mount something or cannot find something. If I wait the 60 seconds, it has either (1)hung and cannot proceed or accept CLI commands, OR (2) it tries to continue and fails, with a message that the problem is too serious to continue. However, after an explicit fail, it does give a functioning command prompt.
Stauro

At this prompt try entering one of these:

xorgwizard

or

xwin

Get anything?