Puppy wont' reboot. after hard shut down

[wheelhorse2347]

Hello,

I am new to puppy, but not new to linux (I've run Ubuntu for a few years). I'm having a recurring problem with Puppy, and perhaps some of you could shed some light on my problem.

I have noticed that with every install of Puppy, if the computer is shut down via being unplugged, or battery dying I am not able to reboot. This has happened on both my Dell Inspiron 3800 and my Compaq Presario. My previous solution has been to simply reinstall puppy, but there HAS to be a fix to this. I havn't been able to find any information on this subject, but perhaps you can help me? Here is what my screen says:

Starting up ...
Making the filesystem usable... done
Updating... done
Loading kernel modules... done
Loading swap partition /dev/sda5... done
Waiting for modules to complete loading...pcmcia1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10done
Setting up services (network, printing, etc.)... [backgrounded]
Recognising media devices...optical done

#_

It stops at a terminal prompt line, but I have no idea what command I'm supposed to enter. Please help me.

Thank you!

[wheelhorse2347]

I read around, and found the #xwin post. It's working now

[wheelhorse2347]

There's a new problem now. I typed (xwin) and it went into the prompt to choose between xorg and xvesa. I chose xvesa, and it seems to have exited out of x. Here's what it's reading now after trying to boot.

This script will run X windows for you...
Starting X with video mode 0x0111 and mouse input/mice...
Exited from X. Type "xwin [fvwm95|jwm]" to restart x ([] mean optional).
(To shutdown PC type "poweroff", to reboot PC type "reboot")

#

any ideas?

[rjbrewer]

When you start up and you see modules loading and it counts to
10 or more and drops to command prompt:

Type....reboot.

Be careful about hard shutdowns.
Good luck.

[wheelhorse2347]

No luck with the reboot. I'm wondering if there may be something strange in xorg.conf. When I test my screen with the xorgwizard it gives my resolution as x pixels.

[rjbrewer]

When it ges to the point of red letters that tell you to type
xorgwizard, do that. Then click xorg. Then xwin when the red
letters show up again. If it won't load x and you have a command
prompt type poweroff. Or try ctrl/alt/delete.
Sometimes poweroff works better on my inspiron 4000.
If all else fails reboot the install cd with puppy pfix=ram.
Use the installer to reinstall over the top of the present one.
Use the upgrade options this time. Sometimes it works.

[kevin-dell1100]

My problem is similar to Wheelhorse2347, but it just started occurring yesterday after the battery nearly died on me.

I turned off my Dell Inspiron 1100 to sit and charge for a few hours. When I came back to it, I turned it on, everything seemed to be loading fine until the time when my Puppy usually appears on screen. All I got was a black screen with a 2x2cm white square in the middle of my screen.

I tried ctrl+alt+backspace. Nothing. I tried ctrl+alt+del, nothing. So I did a hard shutdown, and it brought me to the prompt.

I had problems in the past with configuring Xorg, so I knew what to do to get it working again, but I don't know why I had to reconfigure it again. After choosing the right options I know worked before and testing it successfully, I exited Xorgwizard, typed "xwin" and my Puppy booted again just fine, except the sound was muted and I had to change the sound card configuration and reboot.

The reboot was fine and everything loaded normally.

This whole situation happened to me again today after I shut-down my laptop overnight. So it would seem as if shutting down my computer is doing something to my Xorg.conf or changing other config files.

Can someone suggest what I can do to test what the problem is? Or, if you immediately know what the problem is, what can I do to fix it?

[racepres]

Kevin: that dell 1100 require you to into bios and allocate some "max" video ram, and some other stuff I don't recall. But, you have to allocate whatever the maximum is, of video memory.
HTH
RP
Edit: if you cannot allocate video memory you need to update the bios.

[kevin-dell1100]

Racepres,
thanks for your quick reply! My UMA Memory (I think that's what video ram is) was changed way back when I was trying out various versions of Ubuntu. It's set at 8 MB (default was 1 MB before I even attempted to try Ubuntu or any other Linux distro).

And the Bios is A32, so that's all updated too.

I should also mention that doing a reboot doesn't replicate this problem I'm having. It just seemed to happen when I shut down Puppy and rebooted hours later.

Any further ideas?

[rjbrewer]

The only thing I can think of; if you're using 4.3.1, try an earlier version,
like 4.2.1 or 4.1.2.

Adding "pfix=fsck" (no quotes) to end of kernel line in /boot/grub/
menu.lst may help.

[kevin-dell1100]

Yeah, I'm using 4.3.1. but I don't see why I should have to downgrade a version or two just because a problem recently developed. So I'd rather not do that. Besides, I usually just leave my computer on, so maybe I'll just not shut it down very often, leaving me to only have to deal with this issue once in a blue moon, when I actually shut it all down.

But, I'm curious about your suggestion about editing my menu.lst file, RJbrewer. Could you tell me what pfix=fsck is supposed to do? I like to understand what I'm doing instead of just adding stuff into system files with the hope that it works.

[rjbrewer]

Pfix=fsck is supposed to do a file system check when you boot up.
Not sure it works with the newest puppies, but is recommended,
especially if using ext2 file system.

I'm not suggesting replacing your 4.3.1, just trying a temporary
frugal or usb install of an earlier puppy to see if that helps.

I use 4.1.2 as my main install with a few .pets from 4.3.1 series
and find it more reliable.
I also use xvesa on my 700m as the intel graphics chip doesn't
do correct color with xorg when playing video files or dvd.

[kevin-dell1100]

Hm, maybe I'll look into using a slightly older Puppy, so long as I can still use 4.3.1 .pets. I like the fact that you're speaking from Inspiron experience, and your machine is probably pretty similar to mine.

Yeah, it could all have to do with Xorg. The only reason I switched from Xvesa to Xorg (and I realise this might sound dumb) is because I wanted two-finger touchpad scrolling, which wasn't possible with Xvesa, unless I'm missing something.

I have no other problems with Xorg though after I installed certain packages. Is there any issue with Xvesa and Pwidgets? Could you also tell me how Puppy 4.1.2 works with wireless?

[rjbrewer]

Hm, maybe I'll look into using a slightly older Puppy, so long as I can still use 4.3.1 .pets. I like the fact that you're speaking from Inspiron experience, and your machine is probably pretty similar to mine.

Yeah, it could all have to do with Xorg. The only reason I switched from Xvesa to Xorg (and I realise this might sound dumb) is because I wanted two-finger touchpad scrolling, which wasn't possible with Xvesa, unless I'm missing something.

I have no other problems with Xorg though after I installed certain packages. Is there any issue with Xvesa and Pwidgets? Could you also tell me how Puppy 4.1.2 works with wireless?

Yes, I lost the touch pad scrolling, but I prefer a little usb mouse
most of the time anyway or use left-right up-down arrows for
scrolling.

I have 2 atheros cards (pci and pcmcia), a usb zydas1211rw,
and a intel ipw2200bg in my 700m.
All except the usb have problems connecting with 4.3.1, unless
I use a version of it with retro kernel. Even then they have
problems remembering connection after reboot or shutdown.
No problems at all with 4.1.2 or 4.2.1.

Edit:
Bad shutdown recovery for full installs;

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=47668

[shariebeth]

[solved for me] (see end of post)]

I am getting the exact same issues that wheelhorse is having. I had previously been entering the reboot command when I would accidentally run out of battery power on my laptop, but being me, couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to try the fix here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 316#397316
Now I can't even reboot and I get all of the same messages and prompts wheelhorse listed above in wheelhorse's posts.

I can reboot from a live CD, but once I do that, I am not sure what the exact proceedure is. I see I am supposed to "run fsck" (what does that mean, what does it do, how do I do it?) and even see I am not supposed to mount the drive, but I really have no idea what I do step by step in newbie beginner terms.

Puppy 4.3.1 full install

Edit: after rebooting with live cd, I typed in console e2fsck /dev/sda1 and I have no idea what it did or what the output means). sda1 was not mounted.

# e2fsck /dev/dev1
e2fsck 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
/dev/sda1/: clean, 29298/4825088 files, 683223/19182008 blocks

Edit: after doing that, I saw the tmp file was empty on sda1, so I rebooted to see if it worked. I did not save (no idea if that is right, i did see mention of pupsave if I did save, which i had seen mentioned in other threads), and nothing changed. I still get X immediately exiting after starting.

(I had posted in the thread I linked to, but also said there I am taking it here since it is off topic there so don't yell at me for cross posting )

Edit2: So far have tried:
1.Emptying tmp files using live cd and going manually into the folder
2. e2fsck /dev/sda1
3. Replacing vmlinuz
4. purge
5. Reinstalling as an upgrade
6. checked my menu.lst, it seems fine compared to all I have managed to find here
7. copying /etc/rcd from the live cd to sda1

The only thing I have not done is anything to do with the pup_save since I do not understand that at all and don't want to make anything worse than it is.
Nothing has worked, I still end up with X starting, X exiting.

Edit infinity: ultimately it seems that after clearing out my tmp folder in sda1, replacing it with the tmp folder from the live cd was the key that I had not done before. I can't say if this step is the only thing that fixed it or one of the other steps I tried helped as well. Thank you rjbrewer yet again! (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 515#397515

[caleb72]

Edit infinity: ultimately it seems that after clearing out my tmp folder in sda1, replacing it with the tmp folder from the live cd was the key that I had not done before. I can't say if this step is the only thing that fixed it or one of the other steps I tried helped as well. Thank you rjbrewer yet again! (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 515#397515

Thanks for this. Was having boot problems on one of my installs and then just deleted everything in /tmp from another install and rebooted.

All worked well.

Must remember that for the future.

Regards
Caleb