(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Thanks! I was able to get it running fine from a USB Flash. Cool. However, I ran the Puppy Universal Installer to install it to the CF card using the default install options, and it does not want to boot from it. I see it as the Primary Slave in the BIOS setup and I set the 1st bood device as IDE-0, but the box acts as if there is not a bootable device.

Do I need to select a specific boot type option when creating the CF with the Universal Installer?

I guess the compact flash is a slave, so it should be IDE1 in the BIOS.

Installing to "CF in USB adapter, later move to IDE" will actually write the correct syslinux.cfg, like:

Got it to boot off of the inserted CF (BIOS said Primary slave, IDE-0 was only option for boot device order when it was inserted)

In the Puppy Universal Installer, the option I chose on selecting the destination was:
IDE Flash Drive (CF card in IDE adapter)

Instead of the default MBR option I selected the SuperFloppy with ext3 format. That worked fine. Tried a few times with the default format options without success.


I'm dissapointed that this ebox2300 only successfuly drives my KDS LCD at 8 bit color (1024X768). I'll have to see if I have better luck on a different monitor.

MorganP wrote:I'm dissapointed that this ebox2300 only successfuly drives my KDS LCD at 8 bit color (1024X768). I'll have to see if I have better luck on a different monitor.

Sounds like you're running Xvesa. When I run Xvesa, I can only get 800x600 on my LCD monitor. But using Xorg, I get the full 1024x768@16 that I want (note that according to specs, the eBox-2300 is capable of 1280x1024). So you might give Xorg a try

Paul

Thanks Paul. I thought I had tried both, but I went through it again and it spent alot of time on Probing Video Hardware (or something like that) that I know I hadn't seen before. Looks great now.

Paul

Tried to install puppy on an ebox230 - it boots just fine from CF but when i try to do an instalation on the ebox2300 from CF to built in flash it just runt out of memmory and fails.

Finally gave up and doing a dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hda --waiting for it to complete now...

Hope to be using the ebox as a rdp client with a printer attatched to the ebox - will see how it goes...

dd worked just fine - but after shuting down and saving my state the first tim i now only have 30mb free on my ebox 2300 with eboxpup

also the soundcard does not seem to work...

Hi Paul!

Is the ebox alpha ISO image on bexa.org corrupted? I can't get the MD5 to checksum. When I use Nero to burn the CD, it complains that the block size does not match the image length. I tried telling it to ignore the error and burn anyway. This resulted in a CD that appeared to boot just fine. However it was unable to configure devices like the 3189too or sound. Doing modprobes from the command line leads me to believe that the zdrv file appears to be corrupt.

I will check on it. Meantime, the full versions of Puppy 2.13 or 2.14 will have the drivers for that machine, so you can try them out.

Thanks Raffy! Seems to be working now. The Boxpup sound and wired network seem to work well.

Has anyone gotten the wireless network card working on the ebox? I saw a discussion that said that version 1.1 of the VIA VT6655 driver would work with ndiswrapper but that the current 1.3 version would not. I have not been able to locate a 1.1 version of the driver. Can anyone confirm or deny that?

The application I have in mind for the eBox (an autonomous robot) requires the wireless networking. If I can't get it working under Puppy I'll have to change over the project to Win CE! Yuck! Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

- Eric

Hello All,

My problems are all no doubt because I'm a newbie, but since they relate specifically to the eBox2300 and eboxpup, I'm posting in this thread, rather than the newbie sections. My request is basically the same as the one by "Cheetah" earlier in this thread, but the responses to that haven't helped me.

I have a windows backround, so Linux is totally new to me, and need some detailed help on geting linux running on the ebox. I've been bouncing around the web, two eboxes, and other machines for about two weeks, and I'm just getting nowhere,

(I have followed some instructions found in these forums, but suspect that they are incomplete, or assume steps that would be "obvious" to an experienced linux user, but not to me.)

First of all, I find the eBox2300 to be a very frustrating beast just in itself, yet it all my digging around on the web, people seem to be using it happily?! (what am I doing wrong?...)

The ebox bios seems a bit flakey to me:-
* You can't just hold down "del" to enter the bios at power on, it seems one must be hitting it repeatedly.
* In the "advanced options", the choice of available boot devices is often incomplete. "Auto detect" shows my CF card, but it's not shown in the boot device list.
* To get a device into the list, I've had to try booting from something that is listed (but doesn't exist), then the list is updated correctly on next power-up.
* I've never been able to boot from the internal IDE-0 drive, a USB-flash drive, or a USB-CDROm drive, only from CF cards on IDE-1 (but that's all I really need).
* Formatting a CF card on another system and loading MS-DOS to it seems to be the only thing that boots reliably. Having done that, I can fdisk to set up a partition on the internal IDE-0 drive (shows up as drive D), format /S to make it bootable, and copy files to it with no problem. But still the ebox will not boot from it!

Anyway, for now I only want to boot some flavour of Linux from a CF card (IDE-1). Finding eBoxPup, it seemed the obvious choice to go with. I've downloaded the iso given by pakt in the first post in this thread, but I need some help in using it.
I can get the files from the iso by two means:-
* I have burned it to a CD
* Using ALZip to view and extract the files.

But how to get it onto a CF card? The long way seems to be to boot another system from the CD and follow the instructions given by pakt in response to Cheetah earlier in this thread.

I have tried this, which uses the puppy universal installer, with the "CF-USB cardreader and later move to CF-IDE" option. I've done this several times, on real and virtual machines, with different CF cards, and it's never resulted in a bootable CF card for the ebox. I don't see the mentioned "sys-nopart.mbr" choice when I do this (I assume this means selecting superfloppy, despite the advice not to). Also, during the format/copy process I see a message about an unuseable sector (or some such), but the installer doesn't seem bothered by this, and it proceeds and seems to complete the process sucessfully.

Isn't there an easier way? Can't I just format the CF card under windows, and extract the iso files to it (using ALZip)
(I've done this and the CF cards seems to be loaded just fine). But of course it doesn't boot, since there's no bootloader at the start of the drive. Is there a simple way to make this CF bootable?

Apologies for any dumbness on my part here, and thanks for any help you can give me on this...

Cheers,
Rob

TheBert,

It's not just you. I'm having the same problems with the universal installer. There is a new version out which may fix your problems but I haven't tried it yet.

drongo

Rob,
It is not just you. It's a very frustrating little box. I have been trying to document my trials and tribulations with getting the thing working here:
http://www.robotgroup.net/index.cgi/BoX2300

To get the CF card working, you will need to boot from the CD on a regular PC. Use one of those cheapo USB multi-card reader/writers with your CF card to create a bootable CF drive.

- Eric

TheBert wrote:Hello All,

My problems are all no doubt because I'm a newbie, but since they relate specifically to the eBox2300 and eboxpup, I'm posting in this thread, rather than the newbie sections. My request is basically the same as the one by "Cheetah" earlier in this thread, but the responses to that haven't helped me.

I have a windows backround, so Linux is totally new to me, and need some detailed help on geting linux running on the ebox. I've been bouncing around the web, two eboxes, and other machines for about two weeks, and I'm just getting nowhere,

(I have followed some instructions found in these forums, but suspect that they are incomplete, or assume steps that would be "obvious" to an experienced linux user, but not to me.)

First of all, I find the eBox2300 to be a very frustrating beast just in itself, yet it all my digging around on the web, people seem to be using it happily?! (what am I doing wrong?...)

The ebox bios seems a bit flakey to me:-
* You can't just hold down "del" to enter the bios at power on, it seems one must be hitting it repeatedly.
* In the "advanced options", the choice of available boot devices is often incomplete. "Auto detect" shows my CF card, but it's not shown in the boot device list.
* To get a device into the list, I've had to try booting from something that is listed (but doesn't exist), then the list is updated correctly on next power-up.
* I've never been able to boot from the internal IDE-0 drive, a USB-flash drive, or a USB-CDROm drive, only from CF cards on IDE-1 (but that's all I really need).
* Formatting a CF card on another system and loading MS-DOS to it seems to be the only thing that boots reliably. Having done that, I can fdisk to set up a partition on the internal IDE-0 drive (shows up as drive D), format /S to make it bootable, and copy files to it with no problem. But still the ebox will not boot from it!

Anyway, for now I only want to boot some flavour of Linux from a CF card (IDE-1). Finding eBoxPup, it seemed the obvious choice to go with. I've downloaded the iso given by pakt in the first post in this thread, but I need some help in using it.
I can get the files from the iso by two means:-
* I have burned it to a CD
* Using ALZip to view and extract the files.

But how to get it onto a CF card? The long way seems to be to boot another system from the CD and follow the instructions given by pakt in response to Cheetah earlier in this thread.

I have tried this, which uses the puppy universal installer, with the "CF-USB cardreader and later move to CF-IDE" option. I've done this several times, on real and virtual machines, with different CF cards, and it's never resulted in a bootable CF card for the ebox. I don't see the mentioned "sys-nopart.mbr" choice when I do this (I assume this means selecting superfloppy, despite the advice not to). Also, during the format/copy process I see a message about an unuseable sector (or some such), but the installer doesn't seem bothered by this, and it proceeds and seems to complete the process sucessfully.

Isn't there an easier way? Can't I just format the CF card under windows, and extract the iso files to it (using ALZip)
(I've done this and the CF cards seems to be loaded just fine). But of course it doesn't boot, since there's no bootloader at the start of the drive. Is there a simple way to make this CF bootable?

Apologies for any dumbness on my part here, and thanks for any help you can give me on this...

Cheers,
Rob

Thanks guys, good to know I'm not the only one having difficulties with this.

drongo:
Do you have a link to this new installer version?

elundquist:
I've stumbled across your page before, but don't see any discussion of your "trials and tribulations" in the link you gave?

I do have a USB/flash adaptor gizmo, and have used it to load up a bootable MS-DOS CF card. I can format it from windows and copy the iso files to it. I just don't know how to make it bootable.

It still seems to me that since the iso can be be used to boot puppy linux, it's contents extracted to a CF card must be "close" to bootable, with just some simple linkage (a bootloader?) missing.
Surely building a bootable CF card via the universal installer is the long way to go about this. (though I wouldn't mind if it actually worked)

pakt:
As the developer of the iso image, and the poster of the steps in using the universal installer, it would be interesting to have your views (and clarifications) on these issues...

Cheers,
Rob

Rob,

I've never posted a link before in this Forum, so if this doesn't work just go to Additional Software (Pups, n' stuff) and look for "Updated Universal Installer".

Here goes.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17500

Sorry I haven't replied earlier but I've had too many projects going lately...

Anyway, I'll try to help. If you've got all the necessary files on the CF card but it still won't boot you can manually do the following to try to get the card to boot.

Running any recent Puppy (eBoxPup should also work) and with the CF card in a USB-to-CF card adapter, do the following from a terminal (assuming the device is 'sda'):

To fix the Master Boot Record (MBR):
# dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbrfat.bin of=/dev/sda

To make it bootable:
# syslinux /dev/sda1

Hopefully the card will now boot.

Paul

There are other easy options. See below, and note that 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive starting points.

1. Boot from USB (this assumes that you have a Puppy Linux installed in USB drive). To make sure the box allows you to do this, remove the CF before booting, and insert it after Puppy has completely booted. Then partition and format the CF as /dev/hdb1 (hdb1 or hda1 - whatever it shows in Media Utility Tool) and finish with the Universal Installer.

Formatting: Use Gparted in Control Panel and format it as FAT16. If you have no Gparted, do in console "mkdosfs /dev/hdb1" (or is that hda1?).

Booting: From what I know, the ebox boots to USB or IDE, whichever is available. Perhaps it uses IDE first, so make sure that a bootable (say, MS-DOS-bootable) IDE is NOT there when you attempt to boot from USB.

2. (What you have done) Preparing for IDE boot with CF, using CF-USB adapter and Universal Installer, is already good, the usual problem here is the filesystem, the sure thing being the use of FAT16. With FAT16 (done in "Formatting" above), just use the default options in Universal Installer and you're OK.

The usual difficulty in moving to these boxes (from the traditional PCs) is the ebox's lumping together of USB and IDE booting, so you have to isolate your chosen device at boot time. Note further that you can't simply transfer the USB parameters to CF (IDE). You have to get Universal Installer to install Puppy to "CF as IDE" or "CF in USB - later move to IDE".

Once you get the CF to work, updating its Puppy installation is easy. Just replace the pup_xxx.sfs, initrd.gz, vmlinuz, and zdrv_xxx.sfs with the newer files (xxx=Puppy version number, from 212 up). You can do this in a normal PC using a CF-USB adapter and a newly burned Puppy CD/DVD. If you have no CF-USB adapter, just use an updated USB drive to boot the ebox (see #1 above).

Hope that helps.

pakt wrote:To fix the Master Boot Record (MBR):
# dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbrfat.bin of=/dev/sda

To make it bootable:
# syslinux /dev/sda1

Hi Paul and all,

-- I found that sometimes using other Puppy distros i was not able to run syslinux as it reports an error related to mcopy. mcopy reminfs me of something like the mtools for msdos, is it related ? Does syslinux needs mtools to runs fine ?

That would be useful to have syslinux working under puppy linux as i always have to switch to windows to use syslinux.exe

-- For something else, i discovered also another interesting thing. I always had to boot msdos to fix a FAT partition with chkdsk.exe but i have found that one could use FSCK to do it the same. Here again, when i run fsck it reports an error ; does the partition have to be unmounted or mounted to use FSCK ? Did anyone experienced this also ?

-- Last, but not least, I have not been able to use a USB mouse correctly. Most of the time the usb mouse is not recognized and USBVIEW reports nothing on usb. In a few cases with other puppys distros a mouse could be loaded but was totally unusable. At first i thought it came from the mouse being to recent model, so i changed the mouse and tested many, then i tested on other computers, then i tested on others distros.

So i would like to ask, is there someone using with success a USB Mouse ?
or is there something i am not doing right ?

Best regards,
Laurent.

Using USB mouse is the only way if you have no "Y" connector to the ps2 port. With version 2.16, the mouse issue has been fixed. Check out http://puppyos.net/news

As to checking DOS partitions, you can use in console: dosfsck /dev/sda1 . It will be good to have it unmounted first.

Use Find to locate syslinux - it should be in Puppy as that is used by the Universal Installer.