Booting a Puppy 4.31 CD with a 4.12 save file

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gerry
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Booting a Puppy 4.31 CD with a 4.12 save file

#1 Post by gerry »

I run Puppy live cd. As an experiment, I booted Puppy 431 with a Puppy 412 save file. It works!

The advantages are:
No set-up required.
Seamonkey has my favourites list.
The drivers and libraries for my printer are there.
The printer is connected to a Windows computer, and cups/smb configuration still works.
Abiword still has the links to recent documents.
And the seagull is still flying.

I've saved a lot of time and effort, as well as the headscratching.

Except for one thing: desktop ikons. They are all a sort of generic "link-to-a-script" ikon. Help! what do I do to get some pretty ikons?

EDIT: found where the icons live, and restored them. (Actually, I deleted the ones that I never/rarely use- I like a clean desktop.)

Notes: you need to make a copy of your 412 save file, and rename it without the underscore. And the applications are the 4.3.1 apps.

I'll update this if I find any real snags.

Gerry
Using Puppy 412431

gerry
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#2 Post by gerry »

gparted won't work. I expect there will be other things... oh for a rolling-upgrade Puppy......

Gerry

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mikeb
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#3 Post by mikeb »

gparted won't work
hmm....each puppy tends to be on its own cosy planet which although there are upgrade options the recommended way is to start from scratch.

Try running gparted from a terminal for more debug info

mike

gerry
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#4 Post by gerry »

Found the problem, I think, but no fix.

Puppy 412 has gparted 0.3.3, and looks for hda.

Puppy 431 has gparted 0.4.5 and looks for sda.

I've created a hybrid- gparted 0.4.5 that looks for hda. Or at least, won't recognise sda when it sees it.

I re-installed gparted 0.4.5 from the repo, but still the same.

I'll put this experiment down as a failure. But interesting...

Gerry

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mikeb
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#5 Post by mikeb »

Hmmm the retro 4.12 uses hda...anything with a newer kernel is sda.

launching from the terminal would be say
gparted /dev/sda

I'm not sure how gparted versions relate to the 128/256 inode difference on ext3 either which can affect booting with certain grub versions...don't yer just love linux :D

mike

gerry
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#6 Post by gerry »

@Mikeb- I tried launching from terminal and got:

could not stat /dev/sda - no such file or directory

Gerry

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mikeb
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#7 Post by mikeb »

I assume that device exists....eg run
fdisk -l
or
fdisk /dev/sda

mike

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rjbrewer
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#8 Post by rjbrewer »

mikeb

Not sure if it applies in this case; but here is one of a couple
posts I made regarding gparted problems in the new puppy.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 549#352549

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
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mikeb
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#9 Post by mikeb »

Gparted is a mixed blessing.
Today the version on puppy 2 showed my hard drive as one large vfat partition ....it has 4...1 vfat, 2x ext2 and 1 swap.
It does not see the second partition on a flash stick. So in other words an older version is not to be relied on .
fdisk and cfdisk on the other hand...they do not lie :D

mike

oh and the windows 2000 installer says the mbr is corrupted after gparted set it up...its fun all the way

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rjbrewer
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#10 Post by rjbrewer »

mikeb wrote: fdisk and cfdisk on the other hand...they do not lie
Oh ? Tried cfdisk and had exact same problem.

BUT!! and it's a really big butt; :)

Ran tune2fs and the damn partition setup is making 256 inodes.

This is really a mess.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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mikeb
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#11 Post by mikeb »

This is really a mess.
erm...not just me that thinks this may be so then

I have totally lost track of what to use

mike

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rjbrewer
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#12 Post by rjbrewer »

This is how weird the situation is:

1. I have 411 on sda 3 and used its gparted to make a partition,
sda4, for 431. Installed 431 full from cd and it works fine.

2. Used gparted or cfdisk on the 431 cd to partition sdb1; tried
ext 2 and 3, four times. Always got "error 2 bad file or directory"
after installing and trying to boot.

3. Looking at sdb1 with gparted in 411, it only shows a red
warning triangle and info says invalid block.......no partition.

4. If I look at it from the good 431 install or 431 live cd, the
partition is there.

5. Not only is the partition there, it shows almost 1.3gb used.
That's the accumulated size of the four attempted installs,
even though those partitions had been deleted after each
failed attempt.

6. It is still possible to repartition that drive with 411 and
make it work; but the only way to have the drive show no
partitions or errors using 411 and 431 gparted is to nuke it
with "Dariks".

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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rjbrewer
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#13 Post by rjbrewer »

Solution for the 4.3 gparted 256 inode problem.

Example:

I use 4.3.1 live cd gparted (or cfdisk) and create an ext 2
partition on sdb1.

Open console >type:

mke2fs -j -I 128 /dev/sdb1......( -I is capital i )

Converts ext 2 partition to ext 3 with 128 inode count.

Thanks to these fine folks:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gpar ... ocId857236

Edit:

rcrsn51 had posted the solution months ago....I forgot where it was.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 324#262324
Last edited by rjbrewer on Sun 25 Oct 2009, 15:40, edited 1 time in total.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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mikeb
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#14 Post by mikeb »

Open console >type:

mke2fs -j -I 128 /dev/sdb1......( -I is capital i )
handy....
I do feel that using (c)fdisk and manual formatting would be a more reliable approach....could even have a simple gui to support that.
gparted is large and quirky but looks like its the business from its smart interface

mike

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rjbrewer
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#15 Post by rjbrewer »

mikeb wrote:
Open console >type:

mke2fs -j -I 128 /dev/sdb1......( -I is capital i )
handy....
I do feel that using (c)fdisk and manual formatting would be a more reliable approach....could even have a simple gui to support that.
gparted is large and quirky but looks like its the business from its smart interface

mike
What are you saying?

Using fdisk or cfdisk has nothing to do with solving the 256-128
inode confusion.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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mikeb
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#16 Post by mikeb »

well you solved your problem by running mke2fs manually rather than gparted handling it to get the desired result. So the suggestions that partitioning/formatting and resizing be handled by command line binaries such as fdisk and mke2fs is not that bizarre really...at least one has a better idea of what is going on and the best options/versions.

mike

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vtpup
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#17 Post by vtpup »

I also had problems with trying to upgrade from 4.1.2 to 4.3.1 final. Not the same as you guys.

Boot error messages. Early on in a test 0f 4.3.0 they just appeard before x started, but it did start -- but other problems. Then later moving to 4.3.1 final I got the same error messages and X wouldn't start at all -- not xorg or xvesa.

Code: Select all

setenv command not found
/etc/profile.d/libglib2.csh: line 28 syntax error: unexpected end of file
/etc/profile.d/qt.csh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token '('
/etc/profile.d/qt.csh: line 10:      foreach q+d ( /usr/libqt-*)'
Looks kind of like file corruption after the upgrade runs.

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mikeb
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#18 Post by mikeb »

For any operating system upgrade installs are always prone to many more problems than a fresh one just by the nature of the beastie......the latest release is tested as created...any upgrade stuff is lobbed together for convenience but will not be subject to the same scrutiny plus the upgrade would usually be applied to an installation that is not pristine...too many variables to get it 100% right..

mike

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vtpup
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#19 Post by vtpup »

Yes I've given up on it. The reason I tried at all was that there were instructions on Barry's blog to upgrade. I spent a lot of time thinking the problem was something I'd done or could correct, and looking for a solution. If I'd know it wouldn't work I wouldn't have tried it.

I did successfully upgrade from 3.10 to 4.10 to 4.11 to 4.12, so past experience also suggested I'd done something wrong here. I even once successfully changed kernel versions by using the upgrade pfix flag. But no go this time. Oh well...

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rjbrewer
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#20 Post by rjbrewer »

mikeb wrote:well you solved your problem by running mke2fs manually rather than gparted handling it to get the desired result. So the suggestions that partitioning/formatting and resizing be handled by command line binaries such as fdisk and mke2fs is not that bizarre really...at least one has a better idea of what is going on and the best options/versions.

mike
Well mike,

turns out that grub in 431 was part of the problem also

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 739#354739

Guess if you can't beat ubuntu; you join it :)

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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