[SOLVED] Can't figure out how to do a savefile on Fatdog64

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jjramsey
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[SOLVED] Can't figure out how to do a savefile on Fatdog64

#1 Post by jjramsey »

[ETA: See this post: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 945#708945]

Ok, one big complication from the get-go: I'm playing with Fatdog on an Intel Mac Mini (mid 2010).

Anyway, I used "dd" to create a Live USB stick from the Fatdog64-621 ISO file, and then successfully booted Fatdog64 from the USB stick. When I went to reboot the computer, Fatdog64, of course, asked me if I wanted to create a savefile. When I got to the part where I was supposed to pick a partition for the savefile, I picked the partition for the USB stick itself, rather than the hard drive -- which seemed like a good idea at the time. However, Fatdog wouldn't let me put the save file there.

Where is the savefile supposed to go? Is the USB stick formatted wrong? I also burned the ISO to a CD, booted from that, and then attempted to install Fatdog64 to the USB stick, but then I couldn't boot from the USB stick after that. In the install to the USB stick, the boot loader was (I think) saved to the MBR on the USB.

I is confused. :?
Last edited by jjramsey on Tue 18 Jun 2013, 22:36, edited 2 times in total.

nooby
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#2 Post by nooby »

I trust they have described it in their FAQ

and several times in the threads. Use the link in my signature
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

jjramsey
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Joined: Sun 16 Jun 2013, 03:51

#3 Post by jjramsey »

nooby wrote:I trust they have described it in their FAQ

and several times in the threads.
I looked already. From the FAQ:
if you boot from a USB stick, you will only be able to create the save-file on the USB-stick.
Yet I apparently can't do this with Fatdog, or there's some wrinkle I'm missing.

I did take a closer look at the bit about putting the savefile on the hard drive, and it looks like it has to be in a format that Fatdog can write to. AFAIK, there are catches to Linux writing to HFS+ files, so writing to the hard drive is not such a great option. So I'm still stuck.

But thank you for your helpful reply.

nooby
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#4 Post by nooby »

Hope my response was not too tearse or what the proper word is.

It is the wrong user day. People are having family days away
from computer. FatDog has two devs and them usually answer
rather quick. Knowing them want us to read FAQ first I suggested
to start there. i've alway done frugal on NTFS HD the internal one
and never on USB and never on HFS+ formatted such so I had hoped
if you put in such key search words as FatDog USB savefile
that would find many such posts them describe how to do it.

what I do remember is that first time one should tell the OS
that one don't have a savefile that seems important.

so let us first try to find that text so we do it like them want you to set it up.

I try to google and you can confirm if you already have read it and tried it.

Monday I am sure of that some people knowing more than what I do
hopefully give you better advices so don't give up I would be surprised
if this is difficult at all. Searching together we should find it within some minutes or hours :) So let us see whom find it first. I maybe can try on
one usb flash memory too to see what happens. I usually format them
Fat32 so hope that is okay for you too that is how them are sold here.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

nooby
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#5 Post by nooby »

Here is how it looks on internal HD sda1 before the save file are created
and how it should look after the save file get created.

Code: Select all


 
title FatDog64 No save file 
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /fd64/vmlinuz savefile=none
initrd /fd64/initrd 

Code: Select all


title FatDog64 
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /fd64/vmlinuz savefile=direct:device:sda1:/fd64save.ext3
initrd /fd64/initrd 
so as I get it the important boot code is this

savefile=none then follow the FAQ how you decide on
how big save file and where it is placed. Tell us what did happen.

Obviously you have to change sda1 to what your system name the USB
or maybe the FAQ give advice on what to try there. sdb1 maybe
and the (hd0,0) should be changed to what the boot expect or something that allow it to find it on its own.

Hope my advice is not too confusing. I have promised to only give
advice when I do know but knowing how few that care on Saturday and Sunday I gave it a try.

I still advice you to use the search link in my sgn and
read what advices others have been given for to how set up USB frugal boot of FD. [/code]
Last edited by nooby on Sun 16 Jun 2013, 14:15, edited 1 time in total.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

nooby
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#6 Post by nooby »

Here is the proper link AFAIK
http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/fa ... tions.html

Search for the word savefile A lot to read most if it way above
my noob level. so the easier thing to do is to find practical example
and look for what you need to change to suite your gear.
Some examples:

savefile=direct:device:sda1 --- use savefile named fd64save.ext4 located in root directory of /dev/sda1, save directly to it

savefile=ram:usb --- use savefile named fd64save.ext4 located in root directory of the first found usb device, use RAM layer
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

nooby
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#7 Post by nooby »

My hunch is that maybe the solution is here?
I used "dd" to create a Live USB stick from the Fatdog64-621 ISO file,
and then successfully booted Fatdog64 from the USB stick.
You have to find the txt where they describe how to proceed from there?
I do remember vaguely they mention it somewhere.

Seems this is the latest thread to look in for help?
Fatdog64-620 Final (17 April 2013) and 621 (9 May 2013)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=85684

I asked them to help you with the savefile. sorry me confusing things.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

jjramsey
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Joined: Sun 16 Jun 2013, 03:51

#8 Post by jjramsey »

jjramsey wrote:Anyway, I used "dd" to create a Live USB stick from the Fatdog64-621 ISO file, and then successfully booted Fatdog64 from the USB stick. When I went to reboot the computer, Fatdog64, of course, asked me if I wanted to create a savefile. When I got to the part where I was supposed to pick a partition for the savefile, I picked the partition for the USB stick itself, rather than the hard drive -- which seemed like a good idea at the time. However, Fatdog wouldn't let me put the save file there.
Ok, I've made a little progress, but not enough to actually get the savefile to be useful. It looks like I was on the right track when I made the USB stick the way I did, but to get writable space on the USB drive, I had to run fix-usb.sh (discussed here). After that, I had a FAT32 partition to which I could store the savefile.

Unfortunately, that didn't do much good, because that savefile isn't accessible during boot. The "savefile argument utility" isn't too helpful, either. It tells me to modify the menu.lst or syslinux.cfg files to add the argument savefile=ram:uuid:B909-8777:fd64save.ext4", but those files don't exist, and the files similar to them that do exist, grub.cfg and isolinux.cfg, respectively, are on iso9660 partitions and thus not writable. I did manage to get Fatdog64 to at least appear to load the savefile by pressing "e" at the GRUB boot menu and appending "savefile=direct:device:sdb3" to the "linux/vmlinuz" entry, but it isn't clear that any settings actually were stored in the savefile.

In an earlier session, I had enabled Bluetooth and set it to run at boot, using Fatdog's services tool in the Control Panel, and created the savefile as mentioned before. However, upon reboot, even after the savefile appeared to be loaded, Bluetooth was not enabled. Huh? :?

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rcrsn51
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#9 Post by rcrsn51 »

I don't understand this. Did the dd operation create a partition on the flash drive of type ISO9660?

1. Boot off the CD.

2. Run Gparted and reformat the flash drive to FAT32. Flag it as bootable.

3. Copy the core Fatdog files from the CD to the flash drive - vmlinuz and initrd.

4. Run Grub4Dos Bootloader Config. Select the flash drive as the target, not your hard drive.

5. Boot off the flash drive and make a savefile.

jjramsey
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#10 Post by jjramsey »

rcrsn51 wrote: Did the dd operation create a partition on the flash drive of type ISO9660?
Yes, that's exactly what happened.
rcrsn51 wrote: 1. Boot off the CD.

2. Run Gparted and reformat the flash drive to FAT32. Flag it as bootable.

...
Ok, here I have a problem. If I use the default partition table format that GParted uses, Grub4Dos works without complaint, but the Mac won't boot from it. If I use the GPT format for the partition table -- which is what had been on the Live USB stick before I reformatted it -- then Grub4Dos complains of there not being a boot flag (even though the partition is set to be bootable), and if I press on ahead and let Grub4Dos try to install a bootloader, then fails with the error message "ERROR: Too few sectors to hold GRLDR.MBR."

Remember, as I said before, this is a Mac. There is no BIOS, only EFI, so some things that work just fine on normal PCs don't work here.

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rcrsn51
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#11 Post by rcrsn51 »

At some point, you had a second partition on the flash drive formatted as FAT? Try putting your savefile there. When Fatdog reboots it may search for the savefile and find it on the second partition.

Or have you already tried this?

jjramsey
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#12 Post by jjramsey »

rcrsn51 wrote:At some point, you had a second partition on the flash drive formatted as FAT? Try putting your savefile there. When Fatdog reboots it may search for the savefile and find it on the second partition.

Or have you already tried this?
Yes, I have: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 9d4#708727

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Ted Dog
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#13 Post by Ted Dog »

There is a shell script in the root of iso. that is used to regain the 'extra' space after the iso part, worked for me on smaller flashdrives, but very roomy flashdrives gave me problems.

jjramsey
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#14 Post by jjramsey »

Ted Dog wrote:There is a shell script in the root of iso. that is used to regain the 'extra' space after the iso part
I know. I already mentioned fix-usb.sh above. As far as I can tell, it functioned adequately enough.

nooby
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#15 Post by nooby »

jjramsey , I am happy that you are in the hands of people
that know what they talk about. But as you see it is not easy
combinations of hardware and software surprise us sometimes.

Here is a suggestion from the FatDog thread.
Gasem has put a lot of energy in a detailed walk through
how to address the USB using it's UUID name and maybe
that would work for you?

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 904#708904
how to find out the UUID I trust the others know I remember vaguely
it has something to do with opening the terminal and doing blckid
and it list all the hardware? just my guess wish you all the best
leaving you now in better hands :)
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

jjramsey
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Joined: Sun 16 Jun 2013, 03:51

#16 Post by jjramsey »

nooby, judging from my experience so far, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work.

So far, I seem to have had two unrelated problems that combined to confuse me:
  • The Mac uses EFT only, not the BIOS that one would find on a normal Intel PC. This seems to be why Grub4Dos and the Fatdog64 installer don't appear to work right for me. They create a USB stick that would be bootable on a PC that has a legacy BIOS. Creating a Fatdog64 USB stick via "dd" gets around that particular problem, but the catch is that I can't, for example, make permanent modifications to the boot arguments, since the config file for the boot menu is on an iso9660 partition. Instead, when booting, I have to press 'e' and then append "savefile=direct:device:sdb3" to the "linux/vmlinuz" line at each boot.
  • The loading of the savefile from the sdb3 partition of the USB stick wasn't working quite right. I seemed to be able to work around this, though, by adding "waitdev=10" before the "savefile=..." argument. [ETA: Actually, adding "waitdev=10" was enough to allow Fatdog64 to find the savefile.]

Snail
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Savefile USB documentation

#17 Post by Snail »

Hi,

I have just downloaded Fatdog for the first time. Like jjramsey, I used the dd process to create a bootable USB. I gave up on trying to get a savefile onto the USB. Bailing out in mid-shutdown corrupted the USB and I had to go back to the start. I have now installed onto the Windows 7 main NTFS partition.

I had neither a Linux OS nor an optical drive on this laptop. This the norm now days, I haven't used or even seen a data CD or DVD for years. Why then is all the readily accessible documentation on installation so CD oriented? I had to scratch around to find the dd trick and the saving after first boot gives you no opportunity to fix the USB once shutdown is started. Not user friendly.

I'm having a few problems getting everything to work ATM. But the speed the speed!

Peter

nooby
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#18 Post by nooby »

jjramsey cool that you finally got it to work.
So to put in wait cycles can be that important.
Good to know.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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