Strange behavior when attempting to boot from flash drive

[Gopher]

First I tried the regular universal installer. When I try to boot from that, it said something like "Cannot mount kernal image: linux".

Then I tried the BootFlash Universal installer. The first time I tried to boot from that, it would start to boot, then suddenly the monitor would power down and go back to the BIOS screen, as if restarting continuously.

Right when I was about to put the cd back in, it managed to boot up. I changed some things and created a save file as I rebooted. Once again it would continuosly restart. This time, I couldn't get it to boot up at all.

Any help solving this problem would be appreciated.

[rhadon]

Which Puppy version do you use?
Which format has the stick?

The Puppy Universal Installer worked for me in most cases. So I would prefer this one first (maybe others have other experience).

If you unplug your stick, booting from cd should work. I would not save to a file till the new install works.

I would boot from cd with boot parameter puppy pfix=ram, format the stick new (using Gparted, than setting the boot flag) and try it again.

If booting the new installation fails again, boot from cd, mount your stick and look at the file isolinux.cfg. Is there anywhere written pmedia=usbflash?

If this all doesn't help, can you post a little bit more detailed what you did?

HTH

Rolf

[Gopher]

Thanks for your help. I'm using 5.0 and the stick is ext2.

I took your advice and reformatted the stick and tried the universal installer again. This time I did two things differently. I used the second option for Master Boot Record instead of leaving it alone, and I didn't take the option for pfix=copy.

Now, it boots up, but for some reason firefox won't start.

Typing firefox in the console gives me:

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/firefox/libxul.so: undefined symbol: _ZN14gfxPlatformCtk22CreateOffscbeenSurfaceERK10gfxIntSizeN11gfhASurface14gfxImageFormatE

EDIT: Removing and reinstalling firefox and saving seems to have fixed it.

[Gopher]

Ok, this isn't working. Several times I've wiped the flash drive and started over. Each time, it works for one or two boots, then something breaks and I can't boot anymore.

Creating a savefile on the stick seems to break it immediately. The other method is usually ok, but also stops working eventually.

The stage at the boot process that has trouble varies depending on what I've done. It breaks in too many different ways to go into detail.

I'm going to try just saving it to the cd, although I'm having trouble with that as well.

[Gopher]

(double post)

[rhadon]

Well, it seems to be a hard way.

I would do installing without changing MBR. It's the Master Boot Record, the place where the system looks first for information. As far as I know, its only neccessary if you want to install a Bootmanager (no need for you at this point). Maybe this is causing your trouble. I don't know exact. With a new formatted stick (also delete partition and create it new) I would leave it alone.

I've never had troubles building a savefile to the stick. No glue at this point what's going wrong. Are there any messages on the screen?

...then something breaks and I can't boot anymore.

Again... are there any messages?

The other method is usually ok, but also stops working eventually.

What do you mean? Messages?

I would prefer to use the newest Lupu, lupu 508 beta3 or wait some days till
Lupu5.1 is coming out. They are very close.

I can't tell you much about firefox. Most time I use Opera, but ask 3 people about the best browser and you get 4 different answers .

~ Rolf

[looseSCREWorTWO]

You could use the below method to put Puppy 501 on the USB Stick, then to change to Puppy 500 (or other version of Puppy) you just copy the files initrd.gz, vmlinuz and pup-***.sfs from the relevant ISO to the USB Stick.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/put-lucid- ... #more-4392

[Crash]

I've always formatted my USB stick as FAT32, although more for compatibility reasons. I'm using a Sandisk 2 GB stick right now and have Puppy 4.31 and 5.01 that I alternate between. The initial boot is to DOS, and then I use LINLD to boot to Puppy. It is very reliable. It sounds like there may be other compatibility issues you are facing though rather than just the choice of file system.

[Gopher]

Like I said, it's different every time. I do sometimes get some weird messages during the boot process, but they often scroll by too fast to read. I recall in one case it said a whole bunch of lines from a certain .conf file were bad, but the part where it stopped working was after that. The last thing printed was a message saying a certain task was being performed.

Another time time it went to the screen where you can set up boot options, but after that it just showed a blank screen with a cursor.

Another time it got all the way to the part where xwin should start, but it wouldn't start regardless of what I did with xorgwizard. No special messages, unless they scrolled by too fast to read during the boot .

I was having trouble getting it to boot up before changing the MBR. I don't know whether that's what fixed it, or something else.

Anyways, thanks for the help. If I attempt this again I'll keep all your advice in mind.

[Béèm]

It has been reported before that some flash drives don't work correctly and show erratic behavior.

I think in those cases the only remedy was to try another one/brand.

[Gopher]

Hmm, is there a list of brands known to work?

[Wheres One]

I've used a number of capacities of the SanDisk Cruzer line (6 of the original line, a few from their new line) and haven't encountered any problems with installing Puppy on them or booting Puppy from them.

http://www.sandisk.com/products/computi ... lash-drive

[Béèm]

Not that I know of.
I have an imation and a integral which do work.
Could also be a bad series in the manufacturing process of the brand you have.
You could search on flash drive with the puppysearch link in my sigg, but you might have a lot of hits, but eventually brands are mentioned there.

[Gopher]

I tried it on a SanDisk Cruzer. Without changing the MBR, I get a message saying "No operating system" when I try to boot from it.

[Wheres One]

Whenever I install to a flash drive, I choose the MBR option from within the universal installer and haven't encountered problems doing so.

Also, you might want to check the settings in your BIOS relevant to booting from USB flash media. On a machine I once used, these settings were causing a similar problem to yours. I believe they dealt with how the system viewed and handled the drive. You might try altering these and see if your problem is resolved.

[Gopher]

Thanks for the help everyone. It seems to be working now that I've used the BootFlash installer.

[looseSCREWorTWO]

what Béèm said about different makes of Flash Drive is true. I've had lots of probs with Lexar. Never a worry with Kingston. I stick with the FAT32 format that Flash Drives are supplied with, but if I have to re-format I run this Format Utility from Windows: