Puppy 4 frugal install not saving session.

[kagashe]

Hi,

Although, I am not a beginner Puppy 4 is making me feel like one. I have done frugal install of Puppy 4 by copying vmlinuz initrd.gz pup_400.sfs and zdrv_400.sfs to one of the partitions on hard disc.

When I shutdown/reboot Puppy is not asking where to create save file and exciting by giving a message session not saved.

This never happened in earlier versions. I don't have any save file from previous versions.

Please help.

kagashe

[dm6257]

I posted a similiar topic a few days ago with the same issue. I tried a new installation technique where I used Vista to format my 2 GB USB flash drive to FAT32 and used Win32 Syslinux to add a MBR. The Puppy installation worked great but when I shutdown Puppy 4 it immediately goes to Session Not Saved. I have tried the ComboFormat method with the identical results.

Any ideas?

dm6257

[dm6257]

After reading the comment of the thread initiator I downloaded Puppy 3.01 and installed on my 2 GB USB flash drive. It worked perfectly and after the first shutdown it walked through a procedure to create a save file.

Puppy 4 did not do this. Is there a glitch in the new release?

Thanks,
dm6257

[ken_cat]

Nothing wrong with Puppy 4.00. I just did a frugal install onto the hard drive. On first reboot it asked to create the pup_save.2fs file and it put it into the /pup400 folder.

I had to follow the instructions in the 4.0 manual found on the website. Getting Grub set-up was a little rough, but the iinstructions are good.

Dig out the manual and try er agin

[kagashe]

Nothing wrong with Puppy 4.00. I just did a frugal install onto the hard drive. On first reboot it asked to create the pup_save.2fs file and it put it into the /pup400 folder.

I had to follow the instructions in the 4.0 manual found on the website. Getting Grub set-up was a little rough, but the iinstructions are good.

Dig out the manual and try er agin

Thanks. The manual suggests to create a directory /puppy400 and put the 4 files in it and write the grub/menu.lst line as follows:
title Puppy Linux 4.00 frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,X)
kernel /puppy400/vmlinuz pmedia=idehd psubdir=puppy400
initrd /puppy400/initrd.gz

It works.

When I shutdown/reboot for the first time Puppy asks to save to the file or use entire partition. Initially, I selected the entire partition since it is a dedicated partition to Puppy. Although, Puppy added some folders to the partition (etc initrd lib root usr) it failed to create pup_save.2fs file and the configurations were not saved.

Second time I selected the option save to the file and it saved in /puppy400 folder.

The option to use the entire partition seems to be new but it is not working to save configurations. Why?

kagashe

[dm6257]

Thanks for the suggestion regarding the manual. The installer for a USB flashdrive uses Syslinux as the bootloader and creates a virtual ext2 file within the FAT32 partition. I don't see any mention of this in the manual and was never asked by the installer whether I wanted to save to a file or a partition.

So for now it looks like for Puppy 3.01 for USB flash drive users.

Thanks again,
dm6257

[Py]

Even with the above advice I have managed to get into a pickle with this type of frugal install of Puppy4.

With my current Puppy 2.16 I installed it by following exactly the post quoted below from GuestToo.

Would anyone care to modify this so that it is now applicable to Puppy4?

if you have copied the files from the cd to hda1 ... Puppy is installed on the hard drive

now you need to install a boot loader to start Puppy, if you don't have one installed

make a directory (folder) on hda1 called boot

make a directory in /boot called grub

make a file in /boot/grub called menu.lst (that's LST,not one-st)

put something like this in menu.lst:

title Puppy
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /initrd.gz

your Grub boot loader is now configured

if you boot Windows too, you also would want to put this in the menu.lst file:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

you can install Grub by copying the files in /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc to the /boot/grub directory ... /boot/grub will probably be in /mnt/home ... you actually only need the stage1 and stage2 files, and the stage1_5 file for the file system that /boot/grub is on ... but you might as well copy them all ... though stage2_eltorito is definitely not needed

now, to actually install the Grub boot loader to the mbr (first sector of the hard drive) you would type this in an rxvt console window:

grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

Grub (Grand Unified Boot loader) should now be installed and configured

so basically, to install Puppy to the hard drive, you copy 4 files from the cd to the hard drive

to install Grub, you copy a few files from the cd to the hard drive and make a text file telling Grub how to boot Puppy ... to install the Grub program, you run grub and type setup

and that's about it

From: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16954

[ICPUG]

Py,

May I suggest replacing this secton:

make a file in /boot/grub called menu.lst (that's LST,not one-st)

put something like this in menu.lst:

title Puppy
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /initrd.gz

with the following:

make a directory (folder) on hda1 called puppy400

Copy the following files from the CD to the folder puppy400:

vmlinuz
initrd.gz
pup_400.sfs
zdrv_400.sfs

make a file in /boot/grub called menu.lst (that's LST,not one-st)

put this in menu.lst:

title Puppy Linux 4.00 frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /puppy400/vmlinuz pmedia=idehd psubdir=puppy400
initrd /puppy400/initrd.gz
boot

The rest of the instructions remain the same.

Please note that I am not knowledgable of installing grub on a linux partition but I assume you have got that right from your 2.16 install anyway.

ICPUG

[Bruce B]

ICPUG,

In one example you have this:

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd

In the other sample you have this:

kernel /puppy400/vmlinuz pmedia=idehd psubdir=puppy400

I wonder if there was a change in versions where arguments like
pmedia went from UPPERCASE to lowercase?

I've seen so many examples of both text cases.

Does case matter?

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

Can you shed any light on this for us (me)?

TIA

Bruce

[Py]

Thanks ICPUG. I'll give it a go.

[davidA]

I need to research this some more, after doing a frugal install (today) I am saving to a file in a dedicated puppy partition (which is not what I expected) I was expecting to be able to use the whole partition for puppy (not to just be able to save to a 1.25 GB file)

Note: I used the universal installer (and started from scratch) on a newly partitioned hard drive (with nothing else on it) but was never offered the option to save to a whole partition (just a file of max size 1.25 GB)

Should I have selected the 'don't save' option (when I exited and rebooted) ?

[ICPUG]

Bruce,

Actually, Puppy likes to have its parameters PMEDIA, PDEV1 and PSUBDIR in upper case.

However, after a certain version of Puppy (which I cannot now remember) the startup script for Puppy added these lines:

[ $pmedia ] && PMEDIA=$pmedia
[ $pdev1 ] && PDEV1=$pdev1
[ &psubdir ] && PSUBDIR=$psubdir

In natural language the first line means:
If pmedia exists then set PMEDIA equal to the contents of pmedia
Similarly for the other 2 lines.


This has the effect that if it finds any parameter name in lower case it passes its contents into the parameter with upper case name.

The result is that in recent Puppies you can provide these three parameter names in upper OR lower case.

In my post above I just copied bits from previous posts without thinking of the confusion I might cause!

Sorry,

ICPUG

[erikson]

Edit: Arghhh, I wrote below post before reading the full thread (and ICPUGs answer). I'm pleased that his and my answers are compatible.

---

I wonder if there was a change in versions where arguments like pmedia went from UPPERCASE to lowercase?

I've seen so many examples of both text cases.

Does case matter?

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

Can you shed any light on this for us (me)?

This question pops up regularly on the forum, so let's address it once and for all

PMEDIA, PDEV1, PSUBDIR, LAYERFS and LOGLEVEL are environment variables for the root-level shell, that are read from the kernel line in grub's menu.lst, and that are used in the init script in initrd.gz to steer its behavior.

Now this init script (from Puppy 3.01 vanilla) contains following lines:

Code: Select all

[ $layerfs ] && LAYERFS=$layerfs
(...)
[ $loglevel ] && LOGLEVEL=$loglevel #v2.22
(...)
[ $pmedia ] && PMEDIA=$pmedia #boot parameter, broad category of boot media. ex: cd.
[ $pdev1 ] && PDEV1=$pdev1    #boot parameter, partition have booted off. ex: hda3
[ $psubdir ] && PSUBDIR=$psubdir #boot parameter, directory for puppy files. ex: puppy220

So, if the variable names on the kernel line are in lower case, the corresponding uppercase variables are set to the same value. The comment appears to suggest that this lowercase/uppercase translation was introduced in version 2.22 (at least for LOGLEVEL, I don't know for the other ones).

Anyway, the variables used in init are the uppercase ones. You're always safe, irrespective of exact Puppy version, when using the UPPERCASE names in the grub menu.

The init script does not translate case for the given values. The values for PMEDIA, PDEV1, and LAYERFS must always be given in lowercase. The value for PSUBDIR must always correspond in case to the name of the subdirectory.

[moritzes]

I didn't have any luck with the suggestions in this thread, but did find another way to make my frugal Puppy 4 save.

I edited the /etc/rc.d/PUPSTATE to add an entry for PUPSAVE (no arrows or hyphens in actual file...):

Code: Select all

PUPMODE=12
PDEV1='hda5'
DEV1FS='ext3'
PUPSFS='hda5,ext3,/puppy400/pup_400.sfs'

--->>> PUPSAVE='hda5,ext3,/puppy400/pup_save.2fs'  <<<---

PMEDIA='idehd'
SATADRIVES=''
#these directories are unionfs layers in /initrd...
SAVE_LAYER='/pup_rw'
PUP_LAYER='/pup_ro2'
#The partition that has the pup_save file is mounted here...
PUP_HOME='/mnt/dev_save'
#(in /initrd) ...note, /mnt/home is a link to it.
#this file has extra kernel drivers and firmware...
ZDRV='hda5,ext3,/puppy400/zdrv_400.sfs'
PSWAPFILE=''
PSAVEMARK=''

After that, Puppy saved at my next shutdown. Not sure why Puppy is not picking this up, but for those of you who are hunting it down, the other package on this Dell Latitude laptop is Ubuntu 8.04 (which is a fine distro, but it's a slow pig on this thing). As you see from above, I'm on the hda5 partition, which is the same partition as the Ubuntu. Hope this helps someone.

[carolus]

Instead of the usual query about saving the session, on shutdown I just get the message "session not saved".

This is when booting Puppy 4.1.2 on my desktop computer using Windows XP bootloader with grub4dos, a configuration that works fine on my laptop.
(With vmlinuz and initrd on the system hard drive, pup*.sfs on USB flash). On the desktop computer, Puppy 4.1.2 works normally when booting from a multisession CD; only when using grub4dos is there a problem. On the desktop, but not the laptop, I have a USB hard drive as well as the USB flash, but Puppy seemed to correctly find and mount the flash drive.

Any explanation or suggestions?

This is not exactly a "frugal install" as I understand it, but it is close enough to perhaps fit into this thread.

[rcrsn51]

What GRUB menu.lst entry are you using for Puppy?

[carolus]

What GRUB menu.lst entry are you using for Puppy?

title Puppy 412 - load pupsave
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmpup412 root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=usbflash #(PMEDIA is necess
ary)
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/inpup412.gz
boot

title Puppy 412 - don't load pupsave
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmpup412 root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=usbflash pfix=ram #(PMEDIA
is necessary)
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/inpup412.gz
boot

[rcrsn51]

The menu.lst looks OK, except that you no longer need the "root=/dev/ram0".

You mention that you have both a USB hard drive and a flash drive connected. I would disconnect one of them and see what happens.

Try shutting down by choosing "Exit to Prompt". Then type "reboot". This may give Puppy a chance to run the pupsave dialog.

Another possibility is to get a pupsave file from another install and put it on the USB device. If Puppy detects it at bootup, it may also use it a shutdown.

[carolus]

Another possibility is to get a pupsave file from another install and put it on the USB device. If Puppy detects it at bootup, it may also use it a shutdown.

That was successful. I haven't tried the other suggestions.

[sfeeley]

Maybe this will help?

http://208.109.22.214/puppy/viewtopic.p ... 072e9ee01b

It contains instructions on how to create a pup_save file manually.