(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Greetings, Jacqui with a Q (those are usually the good folks from Oz and the UK, like Bridget with a D...).

Unfortunately, the lines you are missing include the one line which is crucial to solve this problem: the "oem:" line.
To be able to see those lines you can run "ddcprobe | more", or just use Shift+PageUp to scroll up in the console...

Once you post that line here rerwin will be able to tell you exactly what you can do with it (no rudeness intended!).


Something unrelated that you might want to look into, since you have little RAM:
You should check if a "shmfs" is mounted at boot. The output of "mount" should let you know, it being mounted on /dev/shm.
If it is, you'll want to disable that, as it just takes up ram and isn't really used (the only application I know that uses it in Puppy is xfdiff, which runs ok without it).
Find the place it is mounted (most likely in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit) and comment out that line (put a "#" at the beginning). Alternately, you could just add "umount /dev/shm" to /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

JacquiG,

also you mightn't be aware that puppy has a nifty little commandline editor called mp. So to edit the file Dougal mentioned, it's:
When you're using mp, Control+A gives you the menu.

JacquiG,
I think your problem is that Xorg just doesn't run in less than 128MB, but that is easily remedied. You need a swap file or partition on your HD for Puppy to run decently. But how to do that within your constraints? BTW, your data shows that you have the Trident video, not NeoMagic; but no matter.

I am rusty on making the swap file in WinXP, but there are explanations in the forum or wiki. I think there is a command you use to create a zeroed file, in Win, top level; name it "pupswap.swp", for standardization. Then you can boot to Puppy (pfix=nox), run "cd /; mkswap pupswap.swp" to format it as a swap file. I'm not sure of the details beyond that, but it involves the "swapon" command. I have had trouble using that with a file, so I hope someone can clarify this process.

Eventually, you will want a swap partition, but do not use WinXP to try to reduce your main partition to make room, because it will destroy your installation. You can shrink it safely once you get Puppy running fully, with Gparted.
Richard

Ok...

Dougal (Jacqui with a Q being French Canadian
ddcprobe returns:
vbe: VESA 2.0 detected.
oem: MagicGraph 128XD 42K SVGA BIOS
Memory: 1984kb
640x480x256....
When I look at System Info and Devic Manager in WinXP it does list NeoMagic MagicGraph?


Dougal/muggins/rerwin
I typed at the command line 'mp /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit' but have absolutely no idea what to with what I'm seeing. I've scrolled through trying to make sense of anything having to do with shmsf, but not sure what to comment out and I don't see shmsf, or any reference to it, anywhere in the file.

Should I worry about a swap file later or do that now?

Thanks...
J

JacquiG,

Forget about /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit for the moment, and try Rerwin's advice about creating a swapfile.

see here regarding creating a swapfile. Note the recommendation not to use the dd command on an XP ntfs file system, but rather to create the swapfile using windows fsutil command. You probably would want a swapfile of the order of 128Mbytes.
Once you've used windows to create the c:\pup.swp file, if you then reboot into puppy, with the pfix=nox prefix, you would then need to do:
Run the command free to see whether puppy is using it. you should see your original memory of 96M, plus swap memory of 128M.

To get puppy to use this on booting, you then need to edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local, and add the line:
Definitely use the mp commandline editor to add this line, but it's only one line, and the file rc.local is a lot simpler than rc.sysinit.
If adding a swapfile still doesn't get xorg working, maybe you should consider checking out dsl, as I'm pretty sure their framebuffer support would work, plus you can install DSL frugally & boot it with a floppy.

@Rerwin,

do you think that the xorg_xfbdev-7.3-1.pet module could support JacquiG's graphics via framebuffer?

Created swap file and confirmed it's presence in XP
Booted into Linux and typed at command
mkswap /mnt/home/pup.swp

Message returned:
mkswap: can't open '/mnt/home/pup.swp' : No such file or directory

Yes,

sorry about that. puppy doesn't have a /mnt/home yet, as it hasn't got to the stage of saving your configuration in a pup_save.2fs file.

Instead try:
Then, if the above is successful, (which you can tell by running the command free), then try running xorgwizard, and see whether it gets past the black screen.

No problem...

Ok, typed in
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/data
Returned
mkswapmount: /dev/hda1 already mounted or /mnt/data busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hda1 is mounted on /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2

Typed in
mkswap /mnt/data/pup.swp
Returned
mkswap: can't open '/mnt/data/pup.swp' : No such file or directory

Thinking these are not desirable results I stopped there and posted here...

JacquiG,

If you enter ls /pup.swp is it found?

Then, (assuming yes), try mkswap /pup.swp

ls: cannot access /pup.swp: No such file or directory

Odd, it's there in Windows ?

Hmmm, it must be mounting c:\ somewhere, maybe it's /mnt/hda1 already? Does ls /mnt/hda1/pup.swp give a positive response?

nope...
ls: cannot access /mnt/hda1/pup.swp: No such file or directory

JacquiG,

what response do you get if you just enter ls? (this is nix equivalent of dos dir).

# ls

Choices ftpd my-applications puppy-reference Startup
File-Sharing ghttpd my-documents spot

Richard: read the first post again (and the follow up) -- it is a NeoMagic.

Muggins: I think this might be a case of the Windows ALL CAPS disease... but also, does Dingo have hd[a-z]? Doesn't it use the PATA drivers?

Jacqui: Since Windows is case-insensitive (and stupid, in general...), it tends to write filenames in caps, so you might have the file as PUPSWAP.SWP...
You should try something like and see if that's the case.
If it is, just rename the file: If the file isn't on /mnt/hda1, you could try /mnt/sda1 and if that doesn't exist, try looking at the output of and see what the mountpoint is.

As for the shmfs, you could try Ctrl+b while in mp to search for "shmfs", but it might not be there. I'll have a look at Barry's scripts and see where he mounts it (this isn't critical, it's just that, as far as I can recall, Barry uses a quarter of your free memory for it... which is a waste).

Dougal,

I don't know about p4 & PATA, but this is certainly becoming an epic adventure. It occurred to me that, rather than trying to activate a swapfile on ntfs, Jacqui could, temporarily, have a swapfile on a usbkey.

Hi Dougal...

Code:
ls /mnt/hda1/[Pp]*
Returned
ls: cannot access /mnt/hda1/[Pp]*: No such file or directory

I wish I could offer more help in my own defence, but I know nothing about Linux/Puppy. Thanks again guys, I really appreciate it and hope you'll be able to brag that you got me up and running

I don't seem to be able to get very far...

Ok, got something to work making progress....

Code:
mount | grep '^/dev'
Returned
/dev/hda1 on /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2 type fuseblk (rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0
/dev/loop0 on /initrd/pup_ro2 type squashfs (ro,noatime)

Jacqui,

what about trying to create, temporarily, swapfile on a usbkey? Is it formatted as vfat? If so, you can try booting windows, copying the created pup.swp to the usbkey, then rebooting puppy, &:

JacquiG wrote:/dev/hda1 on /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2 type fuseblk (rw,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0

Ok, so it's mounted on /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2 (normal with a frugal install, just usually you have /mnt/home as a link...)

Now try and you'll probably see it.

Then all you need to do is:
- if the name is in caps: - run mkswap on it - add enabling it to rc.local: Note that there's still a chance you'll have a problem after that, due to the NeoMagic card -- you'll need rerwin to help you with that.

NB- forget about the shmfs thing -- I checked and Barry has disabled it in Puppy4...