X-Slacko 232's network is M.I.A..!

[Mike Walsh]

Afternoon, all.

I've got a really odd one here, boys & girls.

I run 10 Pups on my 'big' Compaq desktop PC. Amongst this lot, I run rg66's X-Slacko 232; one of my all-time favourites, I have to admit.

The other day, I was testing out something experimental in 232. I fully expected it to 'break' functionality, and, sure enough, that's exactly what it did. Because this was expected, before testing out said item, I backed up the entire partition; save-folder, core Puppy modules.....the lot.

(Don't, for pity's sake, ask me what the item was. I've been testing out a whole heap of stuff recently.....sometimes, several on the same day. So it could have been any of them. Sorry if that's not much help..!)

Now; this is where it gets peculiar. I re-formatted the partition, and re-loaded the backed-up partition. Imagine my surprise when I discover there's no network functionality, of any sort whatsoever. Upon opening the Network wizard, I discover that Pup's not seeing any interfaces. (I use this with 'eth0').

Upon further investigation, it appears that the entire list of network modules has completely disappeared; it's gone AWOL. With one exception. It seems to have loaded one solitary module for a wireless adapter I no longer even have! Mind you, this could be because this particular module was added by me; it's the 'r8188eu' module that rcrsn51 let me have. The wireless adapter I've been occasionally using in recent months uses the '8192cu' module.....which was part of the list that's gone missing.

Odd, huh? Wait up; it gets even more like the 'Twilight Zone'.....

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I regularly back up all Pups in the kennel. I have half-a-dozen backups of 232, dating back to the middle of last year. I've systematically tried out each & every backup, going backwards through them, re-formatting the partition in between.

Not one backup will 'see' any network interfaces. Not one has any list of modules. Yet every single one of them was working perfectly at the time it was backed-up.

All my Pups are running on exactly the same hardware. The other 9 Pups are all functioning perfectly. So how come a backup from 12 months ago (which ran perfectly at the time) can suddenly no longer 'see' the exact same hardware that works fine with all the other Pups?

Can our 'network experts' supply me with any answers....or even any clues? I may need rg66's input on this one, if he's about; there's a lot of stuff with 232 that's substantially different from 570, which it's based on. I don't even know whether regular Puppy 'fixes' will work here.

Any clues, or info, or even 'hints' will, as always, be very much appreciated.


Mike.

[bigpup]

How are you doing the backups?
Specific details.
Program used or method used?

You reformat partition to what format?
Is this the same format when the backup was made?

[Mike Walsh]

Hallo, bigpup.

Well, now; let's see.

1) Method used; simple copy-n-paste, to a folder on an external hard drive. Always worked before; it worked 4 days ago, when I restored Slacko 570 to an earlier point in time. Restored perfectly.

2) Using ext3. Never used anything else for my Pups, and they've always run fine.

I'm frankly stumped by this. Especially about the fact that the oldest backup, from a year ago, still displays the same problem as the others. Yet every other Pup on the same machine is 'seeing' the network interfaces with no fuss at all.

I can guess what you're thinking. It sounds like a corrupted area on my hard drive, doesn't it? Yet this drive (a 500 GB Western Digital Caviar 'Blue'), is less than 18 months old.....and everything else runs perfectly.

I guess I could try installing to a directory inside one of my large data partitions, and see what happens . If that doesn't work, I can only conclude that 232 has, for some unknown reason, become incompatible with this hardware. But what's changed? This is why some input from rg66 wouldn't come amiss.

I think I'll post on the X-Slacko thread, and link to this one. See if anyone there's got any ideas.

Just needed some input on this to 'grease the gears'. Thanks, bigpup.


Mike.

[bigpup]

Use Gparted to do a check on the partition.
(Partition not mounted)
Just to make sure the format (file system) is good.

I have seen a format not go completely 100% good.
Had to delete and redo.

Maybe a good idea to check the partition the backups are on.

[mostly_lurking]

Maybe it keeps loading a corrupted save/sfs file from somewhere on your computer? (Bigpup's filesystem check suggestion sounds like a good idea here.)

Booting with pfix=ram doesn't fix it?

You could check your PUPSTATE file (might be in /etc/rc.d) to see from where the system is loading its main .sfs, savefile/folder, zdrv, or whatever else. Then mount those (copy the slacko.sfs to a different name if the system complains that it's already mounted) and look inside to see if the modules are there. They should be in the main .sfs, or maybe in the zdrv if there is one. That way, you can probably find out which file is causing the problem, and remove/replace it.