Grafpup-2.xx fourth (and final) alpha

[Nathan F]

Well if the frugal install is on sda6 you will need to specify hd0,5 rather than hd0,0. In grub terms hd0,0 would be the first partition on the first hard drive, or in your case /dev/sda1. Not entirely sure if there's anything else we're going to need to tweak here, but that definately accounts for why it can't find graf_005.sfs from what I can tell. You're probably getting somewhere because the kernel you specified is present from your full install (/boot/vmlinuz on sda8).

I'd start with this setup, assuming you're on sda6 with the frugal install. Place the four files "vmlinuz" "graf_005.sfs" "zdrv_005.sfs" and "initrd.gz" from the iso right in the root of the partition sda6, then edit menu.1st to read like this.

Code: Select all

# Other bootable partition frugal config begins
title Grafpupfrugal (on /dev/sda6)
hide (hd0,7)
unhide (hd0,5)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 loglevel=3 splash vga=0x312 PMEDIA=satahd
initrd /initrd.gz
# frugal ends
#
# Linux bootable partition config begins
title grafpupfullHDD (on /dev/sda8)
hide (hd0,0)
unhide (hd0,7)
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8 ro vga=normal
# Linux bootable partition config ends 

I really don't know whether or not you will need "rootnoverify" or not, so you can try it with either "root (hd0,5)" or "rootnoverify (hd0,5)". The splash and vga options just set up the graphical boot, so you can dispense with them if you like, and the loglevel you have set is actually more verbose messages. That variable is normally set to 1 now.

I'll be waiting to hear from you to see if you get it working. In the meantime I went ahead and made this beta, and have uploaded both the Opera and Seamonkey builds as well. Since you have a working full hd install I think it's safe to say the kernel is seeing your drive properly now, which was the main stumbling block to going beta. This gives me a couple more weeks to get the rest of the issues you guys are dealing with straightened out before the final, and then we'll of course make things even better for 2.01.

Nathan

[SimonW]

OK I am back with you. I managed to write another bootable CF card after having some problems with the first one I tried.

The 'working' one is a Sandisk 512Mb that's never been reformatted - ie. it has always been FAT16. I was using it in my camera.

The one I 'wanted to use' started life as a camera card, then has been formatted with ext3, had partitions erased & rewritten, ext3/FAT16, the lot. I tried to create a FAT filesystem after correctly partitioning the card by using 'mkdosfs' ... it returned quickly and silently - I could not prove that it had worked.
The Puppy Installer couldn't seem to handle this card - it gave the following messages (in the orange window):
/mnt/data is /dev/root
Cannot open device /dev/root
:
umount: /mnt/data : Invalid argument

I kind of hoped the Puppy Installer would handle a card either (a) with a blank partition table, (b) an ext3 partition already. It looks like I fell outside the comfort zone of the Installer! Thus the only hint I can give others is to use a FAT16-formatted card, and ensure that it really *is* formatted. The grafpup mkdosfs may not work for you. Like, use it in your camera first.

There were also problems with the sdxxx descriptors as I noted in previous posts. That was with the new iso, booted from CD, on the machine I used to write the CF card. There I was using a multi-port USB card reader, and I also have a no-name plug-in reader. They may well differ in how they appear to Linux.

Like I said, success was eventually obtained with a FAT16 virgin card, I told the installer to add the Mbr from Syslinux. It booted in my VIA machine... I can move forward again

So, how well does the new 20070426 iso work in a via eden mobo with Sata? Pretty good! The Pmounter shows the Sata drives, one click to mount, write/read a small test file ok.

I'm concerned about trying the Puppy Installer to Sata again - I don't want to get Grub written over my 2nd CF card just yet.
Nathan - perhaps this is something that needs attention. Perhaps the PMEDIA variable is being used to find the destination for Grub. Would it be better to put Grub on the 'real destination' drive??

I've attached the dmesg output - I noted it now says 'attached sata drive' or somesuch, which is new. (Oh, I had to lie - it is a plain text file not a .gz)

Also here's the probedisk and probepart output (the ones included in the new iso - Jason's updated ones). This is running on the VIA machine, with the CF moved into the IDE bus adapter.

probedisk:
/dev/hda|disk|SanDisk SDCFB-512
/dev/sda|Direct-Access|ATA SAMSUNG SP1614C SW10

probepart:
/dev/hda1|vfat|1000880
/dev/sda1|ext3|155653722
/dev/sda2|swap|1012094
/dev/sda3|ext3|155910824

Looking good. Perhaps it's just multi-slot usb readers there is a problem with. I will soon try other probedisk/probeparts on the machine with the problematic multi-slot reader.

Great job so far I guess next I should test preservation of Static IP setup over a reboot when using a savefile, since that was a problem earlier on.

Cheers,
Simon.

[msumner]

Hi Nathan, tried the new menu.lst but it didn't work. I forget what happened now, and I seem to have lost grub altogether, so I am going to download the opera iso and try that as a frugal first, then do a type 2.
I will probably stick with the type 2 for now as it boots so fast, and I think it will run plenty fast enough with the 7,200 rpm hdd, 1667 mhz processor and 1gb ram. Maybe go back to frugal when everything is stable.
Mike

[Dougal]

Jason: thanks for the info. I actually borrowed a USB pendrive from a friend last night and have been trying it and realized my mistake...a shame.

This device is a 32MB drive with two buttons on it that seems to have one "partition" with a boot floopy image and one with XP bootloader or something.

The old probepart completely got it wrong: listed sda1, sda2, sda3 and sdb1 -- all with "none" for fs!

In fact it's detected as sda and sdb, both with no partition tables... wierd.

The April-25th probepart just had "/dev/" twice.

Anyway, I fixed probepart.


Nathan: the debug comment would be easy: the main place is the loop that runs through the output of lspci.
I might get a chance to download your iso over the weekend and then I'll do one as an example and send it to you.

Now that I have that pendrive, I'll write a hw-test script and run it. Also test the hotplug daemon with it and try and fix everything.

[Nathan F]

Simon - Mostly good news all around, and I'm really glad to hear it. The dmesg output looks good, and now I know a little more what it should look like.

I wonder, when you ran the installer the first time (when it wrote grub to the cf card) what option did you choose for the grub install? Was it just MBR (usually the right choice)?

In looking at the dmesg output I see the cf card is showing up as hda, with all your other parts showing up as sd* since they are sata. I imagine that is what confused grubconfig. The way it is written it gives preference to the first hard drive on the system, which is considered to be hda. So sata hardware and a cf card showing as hda really mess with this.

Until it is fixed I have a suggested workaround. Boot it up from the cd, without your cf card inserted. Make sure you leave it out the whole time as a matter of fact. Then install grub by running grubconfig. You can run the installer and elect not to install grub at all, actually (unless this has changed without my knowledge).

Out of curiosity, I'm wondering why a cf card is showing up as hda rather than sd*, because that doesn't sound right to me. Is it in one of those ide to cf adaptors?

Mike - not a bad plan for now. You've already done a lot of testing and I appreciate that.

Thanks to all.

Nathan

[msumner]

Nathan, I guess the ipw3945 wireless driver was one of the ones that got missed in the beta iso. Is there any way I can install it?
Well done on sorting out the sata bugs.
Mike

[Nathan F]

I'll have to get back to you on that driver. I want to give it a fresh start since it's given you so many problems.

Nathan

[msumner]

OK, fine. Are you still aiming to release the final next week? I will need to get on with the manual!

[Nathan F]

I don't want to push it too hard. Since beta was delayed I'll knock back the final a bit too, give it two weeks.

Nathan

[SimonW]

Out of curiosity, I'm wondering why a cf card is showing up as hda rather than sd*, because that doesn't sound right to me. Is it in one of those ide to cf adaptors?

Yes it is. The concept is to have the OS on flashcard and all data on (removable) Sata drives.

I can see that it isn't a typical scenario, and I blundered in and wrote Grub 'on autopilot'. The right way, as you say, would be to skip Grub install and do it later - manually, with care.

[Nathan F]

Thanks, that answers that question and clears up a little different sccenario in my mind. I know Barry is working on fixing some bugs in grubconfig, but this is one of those special cases we are going to have to take into account sometime. I'll start looking at grubconfig and see if there's anything I can do about it, even if it's just a little warning in there somewhere.

Nathan

[msumner]

Hi Nathan, Been playing with opera-beta. I tried installing kino. It all seemed to go well, but kino won't load from the menu. I found it in the file system and clicked it to run it, but still no go, nothing. A search revealed lots of kino files so it all seems to be there.
Also, gparted is not in the start menu. Don't know if that was intended?
Mike

[Nathan F]

Kino more than likely missed some library dependency. I may not have gotten that information all up to date, or it might possibly be related to the updated ffmpeg. Can you run it in a terminal and let me know what it says?

Gparted is more than likely a case of a .desktop file gone missing. It should definately be in the iso.

Nathan

[msumner]

gparted runs ok from the terminal.
Kino gets:
sh-3.00# kino
kino: error while loading shared libraries: libdts.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
EDIT: Hardware Probe doesn't run from the menu.

[Nathan F]

Kino has a dependency on libdts, which is in the repo as well. It was the only one I didn't get lited in the database file, so with beta you will have to install libds manually using one of the package managers.

Gparted was a missing .desktop file, or rather an incorrect one that needed a quick edit. I just fixed both issues in the current tree.

I'm checking on the hardware probe now.

Nathan

[plinej]

I booted up the beta and messed around for a few minutes. I'll try and do some more testing later tonight but have got some things to do first. Besides the missing libdts which ffmpeg depends on, I'm not sure if you wanted to remove tkConvert and replace it with rarsa's re-write called pConvert (smaller and nicer looking). I'm pretty sure I uploaded pConvert to you. What are the /usr/local/bin/play & play_cell for? Just curious if they're really necessary. I know sox's play is in /usr/bin/.

[Nathan F]

yeah, pConvert got missed. I just edited the packages.txt file to do the replacement when I build the next iso.

Not sure where the /usr/local/bin/play and /usr/local/bin/play_cell files are coming from, I'll have to do a search around all the audio packages to figure out where they are coming from.

Nathan

[Lobster]

My main reason for trying was kino in the Beta . . .

I shuddered when having to put in user details to get a console BUT this is a design feature and the whole multi-user aspect and the interface are excellent.

The overall user experience and elegance of the beta illustrate what I consider the most beautiful Puppy. For those interested in working graphically, this is important. Apple is the most aesthetic and most used by graphic types for a reason . . .

I hope Nathan gets loads of feedback because this is doing so many things, exactly right for its intended audience.

woof woof

[Nathan F]

Thanks Lobster, I'm all warm and fuzzy now.

Nathan

[SimonW]

I have run the probedisk and probepart commands on the machine with the (troublesome) multi-slot usb card reader. The results are:

Dougal's probedisk2:
/dev/hda|cdrom|PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110
/dev/hdc|disk|Maxtor 6Y080L0
/dev/|Direct-Access|OEI-USB MMC/SD
/dev/|Direct-Access|OEI-USB Smartmedia
/dev/|Direct-Access|OEI-USB CompactFlash
/dev/|Direct-Access|OEI-USB Memory Stick

Dougal's probepart2:
/dev/hdc1|vfat|28675962
/dev/hdc2|ntfs|131395634
/dev/hda|iso9660|0

It's already been pointed out by plinej (Jason?) that there is an improvement possible.

Nathan's updated probedisk/probepart give the following (now, with a 512Mb CF card in slot):

probedisk:
/dev/hdc|disk|Maxtor 6Y080L0
/dev/hda|cdrom|PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110
/dev/sda|Direct-Access|OEI-USB MMC/SD
/dev/sdb|Direct-Access|OEI-USB Smartmedia
/dev/sdc|Direct-Access|OEI-USB CompactFlash
/dev/sdd|Direct-Access|OEI-USB Memory Stick

probepart:
libcfdisk: unable to open /dev/sda
libcfdisk: unable to open /dev/sdb
libcfdisk: unable to open /dev/sdd
/dev/hdc1|vfat|28675962|Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdc2|ntfs|131395635|OS/2 HPFS or NTFS
/dev/hda|iso9660|PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110
/dev/sdc1|msdos|10233001|DOS 16-bit FAT >=32M


Excellent!
I copied probedisk & probepart into /sbin and /initrd/bin then on running the Puppy Installer it offered me four choices sda...sdd for the memory card reader slots.
I think this has been fully solved now, thanks guys.

I still have a slight problem with making bootable Grafpup CF cards, ie. some cards work and some don't, I mentioned in a previous post I was getting mount errors etc. I am trying to nail down a process to get it right.

Dougal:
On the sata machine (with cf card for hd0 for boot), I ran the following:

# find /proc -name 'sda'
<returned nothing>

# find /sys -name 'sda'
/sys/block/sda
# ls /sys/block/sda
device block range removable <snip rest>

# find /sys -name '1:0:0:0'
/sys/class/scsi_disk/1:0:0:0
/sys/class/scsi_device/1:0:0:0
/sys/bus/scsi/drivers/sd/1:0:0:0
/sys/bus/scsi/devices/1:0:0:0
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/host1/target1:0:0/1:0:0:0

Phew. I didn't dive into the directories through lack of time.
This info might be redundant with the most recent probedisk/probepart from Nathan, but perhaps a useful reference. When I download an Opera build, I can copy and paste rather than retyping...

Cheers guys
Simon.