(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi everybody!

I use puppy since a couple of years and i love it! Thanks for the developers! It's small, quick and smart.
I recognize an issue wich - i think so - solvable, but i cant and didnt find answer in forums.
So: any puppy version installed on USB drive or CD/DVD can boot easely on most computer but on some system not. I met this problem some years ago when i try to boot Puppy on a PC wich had a Gigabyte MB with BIOS. I dont remember the exactly error message but it was something like " vmlinuz is corrupt". This message sent by MB, not by Puppy! Now I try to boot on a PC wich has a Gigabyte MB with UEFI. I got this message: "Puppy_slacko sfs not found dropping out to initial ramsdisk console." It sent by Puppy not by MB. The USB drive works well some notebook and PC, i tried!
So I think the problem must be in the BIOS/UEFI settings but cant imagine what is.

It's not too important (i can live without this) but I think it is a strange problem and hope anybody has a good idea to solve this.

Thanks

G.

ps.: I hope you can understand my english...

UEFI bios needs to be set to specific settings for most Puppies to boot.

In bios look for an option to turn off or Disable secure-boot.

Also, you may see an option for legacy boot or something like that in the UEFI settings.
May need to also select legacy boot.

If your UEFI/Legacy BIOS has an option for Quick Boot, disable it when using Legacy.

Depending on how new the motherboard and hardware is.
You may need to be using one of the latest versions of Puppy that is using one of the newest Linux kernels.

Could it be a problem with grub or a problem with using the MBR?

I got this message: "Puppy_slacko sfs not found dropping out to initial ramsdisk console."

A Grub boot loader entry that does not correctly identify the location of the "Puppy_slacko sfs" could cause this problem.

Which Puppy, what exact hardware?

This is common when trying to boot a particularly old Pup on newer hardware -- for example, if I try ClassicPup 2.14x-Top10 on my 2009 netbook (Intel Atom CPU, 2gigs RAM, SSD, etc). ClassicPup is meant for old heaps in your grandma's attic (my 1999 Dell Latitude CPi comes to mind, P2 300MHz, 256megs (that's 1/4gig!) RAM, 20gb platter HDD), not anything modern enough to be called a netbook -- so it doesn't know what to do with the newer hardware and curls up for a nap instead of actually booting.

There are of course Pup mismatches going the other direction, but /that/ tends to produce a successful boot that takes enough time to do a sinkful or so of dishes. I once booted a Pup named Guy Dog (a very very pretty-to-look-at Pup about the age of Wary 5.5) on the aforementioned Dell CPi and while it DID boot to a (sort of) usable desktop, it took a good ten to fifteen minutes to get there!