Multisession CD won't reboot on other machines

[watchman]

I have loaded the 1.0.8. live CD onto several different machines but, in each case, after I have closed down the first session and saved it, the machines all refuse to boot up again from the CD. Also, the same build of Puppy loaded differently onto different machines - for example, on a desktop machine with an AMD 1600 and 512M of ram, the OS loaded immediately and, on the desktop I had a 'save' icon whilst on a laptop with similar spec. I got an initial options menu ( I chose 5 - force multisession) but no 'save' icon. Strange. This looks like a really good distro if only I could get it working. Any ideas?

[Ted Dog]

I have a compaq laptop which has the same behavior. Its the drive. It is also a good idea to use one multi CD/DVD per computer. Since sound & screen settings usally do not transfer well. Multisession idea is somewhat new, puppylinux has blazed the trail with CD & DVD multisession. The laptop drives are more questionable than desktop versions. Check the wiki for working laptops.

[watchman]

HI,

I don't really see how this works - in the case of my laptop - a Toshiba Equium, the original disk image was downloaded straight to the laptop using windows and burnt using burncdcc on the same cd writer which is subsequently used. When I boot into the Puppy from the CD and then close and save session a new folder is created on the CD with the date as its name but the computer then won't boot from that CD again. I am using version 1.0.8 as I have not been able to download a working version of 1.0.8r1. Thanks Ian

[Flash]

It won't boot on the same computer? I thought you meant the multisession CD wouldn't boot on other computers.

[watchman]

That's right and also won't reboot on other computers. I now have a stack of CDs which I have been trying to persuade to work on three different computers - the laptop and two desktops. I've downloaded the distro and burned it on the laptop and one of the desktops and I am getting the same problem on each - its most frustrating. I've swapped the CDs about amongst the computers also with no improvement and I've also tried release 1.0.7 without success. What info would be useful to track down the problem? Ian

[Flash]

May I suggest that you use a CD-RW until you work out the bugs?

Try this: burn a straight live CD (not multisession) using your Windows burning program. Boot it with boot option 4. Using MUT, mount the Windows partition where the Puppy iso is located, then use Start -> Multimedia -> Burniso2cd in Puppy to burn a multisession CD-RW. See if that works any better.

[watchman]

Thanks, I'll try that but I'm a bit uncertain about the R/W CD part - do I have to format the CD into R/W mode first as in Windows and, if so, do I do that in Windows or using a Linux utility?

[Flash]

No, burniso2cd takes care of any formatting for you. If the CD-RW is a used one, you can erase it in Windows first, but I think burniso2cd can even erase it for you.

[raffy]

In my experience with 1.07, graveman erases (and writes data to) CD-RWs quite reliably.

[watchman]

I'm still having no luck. For some reason the program doesn't seem to want to write to CD R/W properly either - it seems to want to only write to DVD which it appears to do corectly judging from the screen messages. However, none of my machines will boot from a DVD . When I try to write to a CD I get a host of screen messages telling me there are 'script errors' and 'incorrect arguements' found which I take to mean that it doesn't like the CD in the drive - when I put a DVD in (as the screen message has asked me to ) I get none of these messages and it appears to write the file OK. Would an older version of Puppy handle CD's better? Thanks.

[Ted Dog]

I have a compaq laptop which has the same behavior. Its the drive, I have tried all methods I can think of. The gap between tracks (12M or 4+seconds) confuses the BIOS boot loader and refuses to read the disk. The gap is default in the program cdrecord and added to the padding that the scripts also laydown. Only DAO will work. If you can read the CD after booting then it is the same problem that my laptop had. I have updated the CD/DVD drive firmware from the manufactors site and later when it did not fix the problem I updated my BIOS (which made my laptop worse almost unuseable )
That the problems exists on two other computers is very rare. Every disktop computer I've tried it on worked fine. Most laptops I have tried was problematic.
DVD+RW seem to work best ( modified the shutdown routines )
The mount command also seems to be an issue but without the config file for busybox I cannot duplicate the failure (other distros with same kernel/busybox versions do not have this problem ) I am looking forward to the next prerelease of Puppy2 to see if these issues have been fixed.

[Ted Dog]

I used my test DVD (one that broke mount in pre Puppy2) and I am happy to report the latest released Puppy2Alpha does work so half of the multisession bugs looked closed, second there is no 'list of files' to cause issues the the saveback routines in Puppy2Alpha (and yes CD does work well so far) I have yet to test it on my laptop but I'll let you know soon

[Ted Dog]

I checked Puppy2Alpha on laptop with multisession and it did not boot, but was readable after boot (btw I poor man installed it along side Kanotix on my laptop)
worked well.