Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Roy]

Actually, I might have found a different symptom/cause (referring to the boot issue).

I reaccomplished the boot loading in XP and successfully rebooted the FAT32 thumb drive. Shutdown and created a 218Mb ext3 save file on the thumb drive.....

and "Boot error"

So, is it the presence of an ext3 save file on the FAT32 thumb drive that is killing the boot sequence?

-Roy

[jemimah]

Saving works fine for me with ext2, 3, and 4. Only the Usb drive needs a FAT filesystem.

[Roy]

That doesn't match with what I am seeing on my end. My thumbdrive is a FAT32 filesystem (formatted by XP, not Puppy), but as soon as I create the ext3 save file -- I can't reboot.

There has to be something different that we are doing on our respective ends but -- since you are the developer and I am the dumb end-user -- I humbly defer to your wisdom.

-Roy

EDIT: re-running the XP bootloader again after creating the savefile does restore bootability.

[jemimah]

The XP bootloader works perfectly AFAIK - only the Linux version creates the ldlinux.sys file.

[Roy]

Just tried the rfkill commands you provided earlier...
shows eth0 and bluetooth unblocked (both soft and hard); blocking both of those with the block all command does not bring up wlan0.

Will continue playing with this for a while....

-Roy

[Roy]

jemimah,

Re: wireless connectivity... Does my attachment show anything useful? If I am reading it correctly, ndiswrapper is not installed -- but the quirky b43 module isn't loaded either. #iwconfig doesn't show wlan0, either.

-Roy

[jemimah]

Roy, the driver is not being detected - also I didn't compile the ndiswrapper kernel module for Fluppy yet.

Did you say the proprietary wl driver works well for this card and the b43 driver in Quirky does not work? I can build the wl module and you can test it.

[jemimah]

Big_Bass has kindly created an uploaded an ISO of Fluppy02.

http://www.puppy2.org/slaxer/Fluppy-002.iso

Md5sum: 39522428dff632abb35ed8ccce18fbfb


Grab it with:

[Roy]

jemimah,

The proprietary wl.ko driver works wonderfully with the newer broadcom cards found in netbooks. Tempestuous had made a .pet for the Puppy 4.2x kernel (the numbers escape my memory at the moment), but has stated that Puppy 4.3x onwards has a different file arrangement in the .iso directories. The wl.ko seems to require ssb and b43 (and others maybe?) to be removed for proper operation without conflict. jrb accomplished this in a Special Puppy431 for broadcom 4312 (and other?) wifi cards (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=50570).

I found that the b43 driver in Quirky 1.0 allowed a connection with my Broadcom 4312 wireless card, too -- but I'm kinda' in travel status and have never sat down long enough in a single period to see if it had problems staying connected for any length of time. Apparently, it is with this newer kernel that a freshly redesigned (reverse engineered) Broadcom b43 driver can be implemented.

rcrsn51 had problems maintaining connectivity with the b43 driver in Quirky 1.2 (noted in bug thread) and came up with the ndiswrapper fix referenced previously. Note that ndiswrapper, from my limited understanding, allows WEP encryption but not WAP or WAP2.

A dirty little secret of mine is that I have one of tempestuous' .pets for the wl.ko wireless driver that I use in Boxpup431. It's not supposed to work -- but I have never had any problems with it. [Developers' shrieks may be heard in the background now.] Of course, that particular academic exercise may be irrelevant to this discussion as Puppy431 is an even earlier kernel than you are using in Fluppy....

I realize that this is all rather undefinitive, but the bottom line is that if you want a tester for Fluppy with the broadcom card, I'm game. You just choose whichever route you want to take....

-Roy

[jemimah]

Roy,

Can you run lsmod and see if the b43 driver loaded?

If not, try 'modprobe b43' then run iwconfig and see if a wireless interface shows up.

Also running 'dmesg|grep b43' might provide a clue.

[jemimah]

I've been reading some. It seems the b43 module requires firmware. You can try copying this firmware from Quirky. The file is /lib/modules/all-firmware/b43.tar.gz. Just copy this file to the same place in Fluppy and reboot and that may solve it.

[Roy]

It looks to me as if the b43 is being loaded (I still have the ndiswrapper file, though). See attachment.

-Roy

EDIT: The attachment is only a .txt file! I labeled it as a .gz file only to allow the upload. Remove .gz and substitute .txt for viewing.

[Roy]

[jemimah]

Here it is.

[Roy]

Just an accurate observation here:

I have a folder named 'documents' on Fluppy's FAT32 USB drive. Every time I add a file to that folder, I have to fix the boot with XP before the next Puppy session can begin.