Puppy2 Installer and USB tests; a bit long

[jim232777]

Found this thread while trying to get a stick (as a matter of fact, a 512MB SanDisk cruzer mini) to boot. I had booted a 2.14 CD and run the universal installer script to set up the USB stick. I accepted the defaults and got no error messages, but it wouldn't boot. For others' info, this is how I got it to work.

1. I checked out the MBR, and it was OK, with c033 at the beginning.
2. I looked at the BIOS settings for my Dell Latitude D620, but there were no options to enable USB legacy support.
3. Finally, I looked at the partition table. This was the problem! The partition (created by SanDisk--I just reused it without reformatting it) was not marked bootable. Setting the bootable flag with gparted fixed everything, and the stick boots Puppy without a hitch.

(Incidentally, as partitioned by Sandiisk, gparted shows only one partition, sdb1 in my case. If I use pdisk to start cfdisk, cfdisk shows unused areas of 0.12 and 0.52 MB before and after (respectively) the 511.85 MB sdb1 partition. Next time I install, I think I'll get rid of these small, unused areas.)

Lesson: make sure your partition is flagged as bootable!

Jim

[edoc]

From what I just read on the Developer Forum 2.16a (Alpha), soon to be
a Final Release, has "perfected" USB Boot & Run with an autosave feature
as well.

Sure am looking forward to that!