No Go with USB pen drive

Booting, installing, newbie
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Sage
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Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
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No Go with USB pen drive

#1 Post by Sage »

Baptism of fire! Hadn't tried this before - no need. Bought a clone device, dirt cheap. Tried all the options offered including SuperFloppy, FAT16, FAT32, ext2, ext3, all the mbr methods and dozens of undocumented experiments. Zippo - won't boot, despite correct BIOS setup. Now GPartEd won't even recognise it, although all the files seem to be present and correct. Fat12 was mentioned once?

Any more suggestions? Gather this situation is not uncommon? The original files provided said something curious about not deleting something, but it was written in sino-english so ignored it!

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rcrsn51
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Location: Stratford, Ontario

#2 Post by rcrsn51 »

Like you, I've had very inconsistent results with bootable flash drives. I've seen BIOS's that claimed to have USB boot support, but didn't work. I even saw a recent one that would boot to GRUB's Stage 2, but then wouldn't let GRUB find its own menu.lst file. I've decided that the only reliable method is a combination of GRUB boot CD and Puppy on the flash drive. Since many machines are already set with the CD as first boot device, you don't need to change the BIOS to launch Puppy off the USB drive.

cthisbear
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Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#3 Post by cthisbear »

Sage:

Maybe something here.

" There have been plenty of discussions on the CD Forums..
to do with booting Ultimate Boot CD for Windows from a USB drive.
I have mentioned this somewhere before.
Some success has been achieved by setting the hard drives to LBA. "


http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17166

I find that many on the 911 CD forums are a pretty smart bunch.

I assume that you tried other USB ports.

If you PM me I will send you my favourite HP USB formatter,
V2.0.6.........which is hard to get...but small...just an exe file.
Gparted always shows after formatting that it is LBA and can boot.

Interesting page here:

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffit ... stick.html

from this similar post.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=20956

Hope that you find a cure somewhere...have always enjoyed your
comments....you're a shocker.

Chris

Sage
Posts: 5536
Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#4 Post by Sage »

Thanks for your comments, guys - most appreciated. I shall PM ctb and try these additional suggestions. I propose we transfer further discussion to orbis' thread:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 643#138643
as this is already running well and likely to assist most?

And thanks for your kind words, chris. Most folk aim to please - I aim to shock. As any academic will tell, it's the only way to drag folks out of torpor and get the grey matter functioning. One of my colleagues used to slip in a holiday slide of his late-teen daughter sunbathing during his lecture. Attendance, attention and discussion was always so much better than the rest of the morass...

cthisbear
Posts: 4422
Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#5 Post by cthisbear »

Sage:

It's in your inbox I hope..now 8.10PM Sydney time.

Chris

Bruce B

#6 Post by Bruce B »

Sage,

I guess, if other attempts have failed, the thing to try is formatting it as it was from the factory. Then make it bootable per that format.

For example; if it was FAT16 or FAT32, which it probably was, you'd want to format it accordingly, make the boot partition active and have your MS-DOS boot tiles on it.

-----------------------

The Theory

The idea here is find out what (if anything) does work, then proceed tweaking and pushing the envelope 'til you find out what doesn't work, knowing you can revert to what does work.

----------------------

Also, I think I played with my USB stick to the point that disk utilities wouldn't cooperate. Resolved this by:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=100
----------------------

My 2GB stick seems to want to be FAT16, its purpose is carrying files from one computer to the other. FAT is not a good filesystem for Linux files, so I package them before the copy, to keep the attributes intact.

Bruce

Sage
Posts: 5536
Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#7 Post by Sage »

Tried the native format, first Bruce. Otherwise, my philosophy is much the same as your - envelope pushing. Now I can't get FAT formatting back (it crashes 'doze machines when plugged in and the HP utility doesn't work out of DOS). PUI just fills up the memory till it overflows unless I select Superfloppy. I've seen more error messages with this project than in the last thirty years. Will try the dd command. You'd be amazed at what I've tried, but we are only a whisker away from the lump hammer....

Bruce B

#8 Post by Bruce B »

the dd command
then the REAL cfdisk, not the one what comes with 2.17, if you have it, then cdfisk -z /dev/sda

Sage
Posts: 5536
Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#9 Post by Sage »

Yes, indeed! The 2.17 "cfdisk" was a BBIIIGGG mistake. Not entirely BK's fault, esp. as I don't believe he's a regular user? The alternative is mis-promoted; their blurb clearly indicates that their fdisk includes cfdisk - it doesn't. Only rarely does the real cfdisk fail me - it is a 'best friend' for processing the humongous throughput of old kit passing these portals.

Bruce B

#10 Post by Bruce B »

Well, we're sitting on the edge of our chairs, waiting to see if you get the pen drive working. And if so, how you did it!

Sage
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Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#11 Post by Sage »

Here's what got me back to where I started! Formatted as SuperFloppy with 2.17. Then this was visible with a friend's XP and enabled me to format to Fat16, which turned out to have the boot flag set (GPartEd now sees it, too!), even though I didn't ask for it!
Then I used 2.20alpha to copy the four 'frugal' files and create the /boot/grub stuff.
Of course, it still doesn't boot on anything......

2.20 looks interesting so far and saves wearing out my fingers typing en_GB. The VESA option refused to reset to 800x600 from 640x480, although the XOrg works.

Bruce B

#12 Post by Bruce B »

As far as what you did on the XP machine.

* did you fdisk it then format it?

If not please explain.

-----------------------

Also, if you can make it MS-DOS bootable, booting Linux would be easy with GRUB for DOS or your preferred bootmanager.

Sage
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Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#13 Post by Sage »

Just format. The XP version is inferior to W3.x/W9y, though. Hardly surprising since the DWIntel cartel wants to phase out the FDD. I only used XP because W9y crashed when the stick was inserted and DOS can't see USB devices.

Bruce B

#14 Post by Bruce B »

It's all Gospel as you say. Where do we put this stuff, after Revelations or before Genesis?

-----------------

A flash stick inserted in my W98SE experience will cause boot failures, lockups and general failure!

MS-DOS won't see it and that's too bad, because it would be a good way to use DOS based tools to work with it.

I wonder if PQMagic (DOS version 8) would be able to see a USB?

There are supposedly USB storage device drivers for DOS. Worth looking at.

------------

As for your stick...

I don't however think formatting it changes it from superfloppy to a partitioned storage device. How could it?

Presuming it's a superfloppy, you would want to install GRUB on the superblock. The duplicative use a 'super' here is just coincidence.

Also like to look into DOS drivers.

Here's one link, but doesn't say it supports Flash, (not our beloved moderator), USB Flash. The link is important, because its reminiscent of the color themes used in the days of warez sites.

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

nuther link here

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10215

-----------------

I'm off to test pqmagic. And as MY California Governor (AKA The Governator) says, "I'll be back."

Sage
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Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#15 Post by Sage »

Nary a whisker between us on this one, Bruce!
Get the distinct impression that I can do better things with my time!

Bruce B

#16 Post by Bruce B »

I'm back, pqmagic crashed

I think the Linux tools will work just fine, see screen shot below. I made this filesystem after it got all screwed up, mostly with the genuine cfdisk, note the version number in the picture.

It is FAT16, but GParted sees it as FAT32

BUT on further digging ...

I copied the bootsector to file for manual reading. Ouch, it's NOT an MS-DOS boot sector. What to do?

I'm ready to put in on the back burner as far as making it a bootable USB flash stick.

It might be an NT series of Windows is the best bet, which I don't have it (installed that is). But then maybe not.

It does work for me, as a viable rewritable and portable storage device, which is actually why I got it.

Wanna quit on this one?
Attachments
cfdisk-sda.png
(11.08 KiB) Downloaded 935 times

Bruce B

#17 Post by Bruce B »

What bothers me is:

I can no longer find the documentation on the cfdisk 2.12

I can't find documentation on the cfdisk GNU 1.0

Intuit it :)

PS I think 2.12r not 2.12q is the last of the legacy version. When I find it, I'll save it off so I won't lose it, ever, ever.

Bruce B

#18 Post by Bruce B »

I guess I didn't give up. In my ongoing quest to make the USB Flash Stick DOS bootable, I have more information to report.

-----------------

The Linux mkfs tools do not make a MS-DOS bootable boot sector. I could tell this simply by looking at it. But for further verification that it is not bootable, here is strings output from the boot sector:
This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy and
press any key to try again ...
--------------------

I also discovered how to access the USB with MS-DOS. I did this by installing DOSEMU and then installing MS-DOS in the emulator.

Unfortunately, the disk utilities portion of MS-DOS such as Sys, Format, and Fdisk won't work. The purported reason being, that the Stick is a network device.

----------------------

Now, having learned a number of things that don't work. I'm prepared to say: I think it's very feasible to install an MS-DOS boot sector in the USB Flash Drive, if one knows what they do.

From experience, here's a brief summary theory of difficulty levels.

a FAT32 boot sector would need be done with precision
a FAT16 boot sector > 120MB would require careful work
a FAT16 > 32 < about 120MB could be done with relative ease

-------------------------

What I've not yet tried is mformat, which may indeed write an MS-DOS compatible 'bootable' boot record. The reason why I've not tried it, is because I'd need to read up on how to use it, in this scenario.

If I ever do figure out how to make a (most any) USB Flash stick MS-DOS bootable with Linux tools, or any tools for that matter, it would certainly qualify as a worthwhile how to.

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Crash
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#19 Post by Crash »

A lot of what I say here is redundant, but I am stating it to have it all in one place:

Some observations:

I've had success with booting Puppy Linux on four different USB flash drives over the last year on about ten different computers. The type of computer and its BIOS are the discriminators - cockpit problems with the Puppy Universal Installer, etc. are usually not the problem.

By far the hardest part is getting your first computer to boot up - until that point you will not have yourself convinced that the USB stick is configured properly.

In general, computers of Athlon XP vintage or before don't do well booting direct from USB sticks. They require a floppy or CD to do the first level boot up, then go to the USB stick for the remainder of the boot. Wakepup2, either on floppy or as a bootable image on CD/DVD, works fine. This is the first step that I would recommend.

I have yet to find a computer that won't boot Puppy Linux on a USB flash drive using some variant of Wakepup2. The oldest computer I have tried is a Baby-AT K6-2 motherboard with a VIA MVP4 chipset. The newest ones I have tried are single-core Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon 64 CPUs.

If your USB stick came with U3 software pre-installed, it will boot using Wakepup2, but you may have to uninstall the U3 software to be able to boot stand-alone. Simply reformatting the USB stick may not be enough. The U3 web site has an uninstall utility available which works fine.

There is another HP utility that I have good luck with. It can be found by simply searching for "HP boot utility" on Google - it is version 7.41.3790 and called cp006049.exe. It is big, 46 MB, and runs under XP. It is useful to convince yourself that you computer will boot up a USB stick. If you so much as get the message "loading vmlinuz", the USB device, computer, and BIOS are capable of being booted.

Other observations:

FAT16, FAT32, EXT2, or EXT3 all work on a USB stick. Some older sub-1GB sticks may not work with all computers using EXT2 or EXT3. I prefer the FAT partitions since they can be read by non-Linux operating systems and can be booted by Wakepup2 if the computer can't directly boot the USB stick.

Some computers require the USB stick to be inserted PRIOR to power-up.

Some computers require the internal hard drives to be DISABLED, either through the BIOS (Integrated devices -> IDE controller 0 -> disable) or by physically unplugging them.

"USB ZIP" seems to work OK as a BIOS first boot choice on some computers. Others have an explicit "USB boot" first choice. Some don't have any USB boot choice, but will still hunt for the USB stick if the internal hard drives are disabled.

If there is a USB Legacy Support option in the BIOS, it may need to be changed from off to on, although different computers require that setting to be the opposite way. It's a 50-50 chance. On one computer, it had to be "off" to boot to the USB stick through Wakepup2, but "on" to boot directly from power-up. Go figure.

Universal Installer has worked for USB sticks on every standard version of Puppy Linux for at least the last year.

The whole process of putting Puppy Linux on a USB stick can be done from a Live CD with or without a hard drive.

In order to be bootable from power-up, the BOOT FLAG of the USB flash device must be set "ON". If you turn off the boot flag using GParted and format it under Windows XP, the boot flag will still be turned off. You will have to set it back "on" with GParted or another program. If you delete the partition under GParted and re-create it, you will then have to set the boot flag "on" again.

Formatting a USB stick with Windows XP works OK. Formatting/Partitioning a USB stick using GParted works OK.

I recommend that if you can't get the USB drive to boot easily, try it out on other computers until you get success. The most important thing is to convince yourself that the issues have more to do with the particular computer and its BIOS, not the Puppy implementation.

Bruce B

#20 Post by Bruce B »

Crash,

Even if:

* motherboard would boot the usb stick

* it is partitioned

* formatted

* marked active

All the requirements for making the stick MS-DOS bootable are not necessarily met. It would also need an MS-DOS boot sector and the MS-DOS boot files.

The DOS files are easy to obtain and copy. Leaving the boot sector as the snag.

My quest is about how to make the USB stick MS-DOS bootable. Meaning it want it to be self-booting. Worded differently, I want to boot from the USB stick as the boot source, as opposed to booting to it from elsewhere. As in a fully self-contained multiple operating system.

I could try again running GRUB, but before it installed on /dev/hda1 MBR even though it was told to install on /dev/sda1 - this time I could install it on the superblock and put a DOS partition at the end of the stick.

Otherwise your XP suggestions might be the answer, but I've never considered installing it before. There may be some advantages in having an XP OS on the system. Just don't know what they are off hand.

XP might format it with the MS-DOS boot-sector, if not the HP utility you referenced might work.

Thanks for the tips and interest.

Bruce

PS - I'm pretty sure with GRUB you could bypass the booting requirements of an unbootable boot record by chainloader /io.sys as opposed to the more common chainloader +1

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