wakepup2 and 166mhz laptop with 48 MB RAM

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snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

wakepup2 and 166mhz laptop with 48 MB RAM

#1 Post by snow-ice »

I am trying to install puppy on an IBM 166mhz, 48 mb ram. I am using wakepup and tried versions puppy versions 2.14 and 2.16. Everything with wakepup works good until I come to this error. (Linld v 0.97 cant't open kernel file) then the A prompt. This is my first linux attempt and if I can get this to work, I'll dump the MS evil empires software on all 5 computers in the house. I will try ubuntu on the newer boxes but I hope pup can save this old laptop. Thanks All.

snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

#2 Post by snow-ice »

I could not get md5sum to work to check my download. I found another md5 program and did get them checked. All were good. Hope this helps.

Bruce B

#3 Post by Bruce B »

What kind of install have you made?

Why are you using wakepup?

Your answers will help me to help you.

snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

#4 Post by snow-ice »

I downloaded 2.16.1 and 2.14 and burned iso's of both with the program burnCCCD. I checked with md5sum. My laptop will not boot puppy from cd. It will boot unbutu from cd. The HDD and ram will not allow Unbutu to complete loading. Do you know it the error I am getting is from wakepup or puppy? Let me know if I didn't give you the info you need.
Thanks

John Doe
Posts: 1681
Joined: Mon 01 Aug 2005, 04:46
Location: Michigan, US

#5 Post by John Doe »

snow-ice wrote:My aptop will not boot puppy from cd. It will boot unbutu from cd.
Good info.

Check you puppy CD burn.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17102

If that's not it, it's something with the torro boot sector.

Perhaps unbutu's is better?

snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

#6 Post by snow-ice »

The laptop I want to use is quite old. With limited ram and hdd space, puppy will fit good. I am trying to figure out this readcd 2cscan thing, can't find the program yet.

snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

#7 Post by snow-ice »

I can't seem to copy pup_216.sfs to the laptop. I looked for this file to be sure it was on the laptop hdd. I didn't find it so I tried to copy it to the hdd again. It is 70mb in size and I get a device error. I have a hard time with the hdd when the puppy disk in in the drive. I tried another disk, this one with ver 2.14, both did the same thing. I did a fresh windows98 install thinking I had a software problem. Same thing happens. Help !!!

Bruce B

#8 Post by Bruce B »

snow-ice wrote:I did a fresh windows98 install thinking I had a software problem. Same thing happens. Help !!!
What do you mean? That it still won't boot from Puppy CD

Did it boot from the Windows 98 CD?

Did you actually install Windows 98 - seems so - is it working right?

Bruce B

#9 Post by Bruce B »

snow-ice wrote:The laptop I want to use is quite old. With limited ram and hdd space, puppy will fit good. I am trying to figure out this readcd 2cscan thing, can't find the program yet.
I check my Puppy cd disc md5sums from Linux using this command:

md5sum /dev/hdb


(where /dev/hdb is the cdrom and the disk is inserted)

Probably different than the readcd 2cdscan, but if the md5sum is off, you've nailed a problem.

I don't know how to get an md5sum from the CD in Windows although I'm sure it can be done.

Bruce B

#10 Post by Bruce B »

Also if you are using read-write medium for booting discs - expect more booting problems than normal, even if the medium was written properly.

Major reason: it doesn't have the reflective qualities as write once medium.

Minor reason: If you computer is old as you say it is the laser could have household film on it (and all throughout the computer).

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#11 Post by GuestToo »

you can check a cd disc for errors by typing something like:

readcd -c2scan -ts=8k speed=30 dev=/dev/hdc

assuming your cd drive is /dev/hdc

for the 2.4 kernel, you would need to use scsi emulation or this:

dev=ATAPI:/dev/hdc

this program for Windows can check the md5sum of a cd disc: http://www.dubaron.com/cd2iso/

cdrecord and readcd are available for Windows too

Bruce B

#12 Post by Bruce B »

g2,

I just tried it and it works great.

I included the "$@" from the original post, but can't imagine what to put in for an argument??

thanks again - love those cool utilities

Bruce

Bruce B

#13 Post by Bruce B »

GuestToo,

I noticed your original post had -ts=32k

Your current example has -ts=8k plus a speed argument

Anything worth explaining about these differences?

Bruce

snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

#14 Post by snow-ice »

I downloaded and ran cd2iso. I got a checksum number but what do I compare it to? Let me backup and tell how I got where I am, maybe I am on the wrong course. I downloaded puppy from the links on the puppy site. I went to 2 different sites and have 2 downloads. I checked the iso files with a program MD5 GUI, they were good. I burned ver 2.14 and 2.16.1 with burncdcc. I have 1 question which may be important. The program I used gave me 8 files on the cdrom. Is this correct or do I need only the ISO file on cdrom? I tried to boot to the cd in my old laptop. I got a bios message wanting a floppy disk. The bios was set to boot the cd first but I don't think it saw anything in the drive. I got wake2pup and put it on a floppy. I dropped the marker file on the hdd and rebooted. I got a "Linld v 0.97 cant't open kernel file" error. I realised that I needed other files on the hdd per the failmsg file. I tried to drop the files to the hdd and got all on except pup216.sfs. I tried to copt pup216.sfs to a my 2 year old Dell laptop and it couldn't complete the copy either. I got different error messages but neither would complete the copy. Do I understand it right that I need idehd, initrd.gz,pup_216.sfs, and vmlinuz on the hdd to boot?
I did a install of win98 on the old laptop and it went fine. If I put a copy of unbutu in the drive, it tries to load. The computer is nowhere close to being able to run unbutu, but I wanted to help identify my problem. If I format the drive, is their a way to install puppy on a formatted hard drive? This laptop seems to need some kind of CD support to read the CD, either wake2pup or windows boot disk. Sorry for being so long winded but this is my first linux attempt. Thanks again.
Greg

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#15 Post by muggins »

i think you'll find that your 48M ram is the main problem. what's size of hdisk & what's currently on it? is there room to create a swap partition on hard disk?

sometimes smart boot manger can helpin booting cdroms:

http://linux.simple.be/tools/sbm

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManagerHowto

but i'm dubious that it would work with your 48M ram. there was a post where somebody detailed their method in getting puppy to work with 48M ram, but i've been unable to find it.
Last edited by muggins on Sun 17 Jun 2007, 01:28, edited 1 time in total.

snow-ice
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu 14 Jun 2007, 06:40

#16 Post by snow-ice »

It's a 3gb with 2 gigs free. I don't care if I wipe out all of windows. This will be a Linux only computer. I just need a way to get it in.

I did try the 2.16 version of puppy on my 2 year old Dell laptop and it went fine so I think the disk is good.

I will try the boot manager.

Thanks again,
Greg

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#17 Post by GuestToo »

I downloaded and ran cd2iso. I got a checksum number but what do I compare it to?
the md5sum should be identical to the md5sum of the iso ... if it is, it burned ok, not one byte is bad

if it is a different number, it still may be ok ... there may be one bad byte that is unimportant, or more likely, padding bytes were added to the end of the cd

my experience with Burncdcc is that is works well and the md5sum of the cd should be the same as the iso's md5sum

if the cd will work on another machine (probably machine with more ram) then the cd disc is probably good
The program I used gave me 8 files on the cdrom. Is this correct or do I need only the ISO file on cdrom?
the 8 files are good ... they are the files in the file system in the iso ... if you just copy the iso file to the cd, it will not work at all
Do I understand it right that I need idehd, initrd.gz,pup_216.sfs, and vmlinuz on the hdd to boot?
you need them somewhere to boot ... if you have them on the hard drive, you would not need them on the cd ... in fact, you would not need a cd disc at all, assuming you have a boot loader installed and configured

if you do a full normal install to a partition you would not need those files either (the hundreds and thousands of files that are inside those 2 files would be decompressed and copied to the hard drive

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#18 Post by GuestToo »

I included the "$@" from the original post, but can't imagine what to put in for an argument??
well, type readcd --help ... i think you can also over ride the options, for example, speed=30 something something speed=8 would set the speed to 8x
Your current example has -ts=8k plus a speed argument

Anything worth explaining about these differences?
i like to use a moderate speed ... too fast and it will be more likely to display errors that wouldn't happen at a more reasonable speed ... too slow, and it really is not testing it thoroughly ... it's up to you to choose the parameters that you think is best for the purpose of testing the quality of the cd

on my machine, if i do not use the -ts parameter, it locks up the cd driver ... it sets the size of the buffer used when reading the sectors of the cd disc ... the default value (something like 256 i think) is too big and locks up the system

it takes 2k of buffer space per disc sector, plus a little more for the error correction bytes ... so -ts=6k will read about 2 sectors into the buffer at a time ... it's a question of trying different values until you find a value that you like ... i was using 6k, which reads 2 sectors at a time ... i'm now using -ts=12k, which reads 4 sectors at a time, i don't think there is an "ideal" number

you can see how many sectors are being read into the buffer at once ... readcd will be printing information like this as it runs:

addr: 12484 cnt: 4

cnt: 4 means that 4 disc sectors are being read into the buffer at a time ... changing the -ts value will change the cnt: number (i don't know why the ou were omitted, or the ess)

John Doe
Posts: 1681
Joined: Mon 01 Aug 2005, 04:46
Location: Michigan, US

#19 Post by John Doe »

muggins wrote:there was a post where somebody detailed their method in getting puppy to work with 48M ram, but i've been unable to find it.
That was me, "goin' crazy":

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=15946

I think the OP's problem with linld is the commandline limit I ran into when I first got here. I may have moded wakepup to do that test and forgot. In fact now that I look at it, I think I did.

I'll post a .img in a bit. I'm all over this for the next 20 minutes.

John Doe
Posts: 1681
Joined: Mon 01 Aug 2005, 04:46
Location: Michigan, US

#20 Post by John Doe »

ok, so it took 2 hours.

Here is wakepup2 tuned up. I fixed up the command line limit by writting all the boot options to a file at linld/puppy.lin dynamically. Also added a second menu for pfix ram and nox options (all possibilites).

*edit-no longer true ->All changes where in autoexec.bat

Do not be concerned with the contents of linld/puppy.lin. It is only there so it doesn't error when deleted.

I also changed the messaged displayed at runtime to say version 0.3, so people would know. I kept the 2 on the file name so the scripts that call it won't need changed.

Md5 of img:

Code: Select all

370f75b8241f8696a75d7813e8a0e6b4  wakepup2.img
Directions:

Code: Select all

tar -zxf wakepup2.img.tar.gz
md5sum wakepup2.img
dd if=wakepup2.img of=/dev/fd0
*edit-final rc1 (probably final [for now])
Last edited by John Doe on Sun 16 Sep 2007, 07:18, edited 13 times in total.

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