Manually create a Save File for a new Frugal?

[davids45]

G'day,

I've just bought a bottom-of-the-range new barebones-like desktop computer to replace my former top-of-the-range but now 5+ years old and perennially troublesome Medion 8818.

This new computer has a 500GB hard drive and 2GB of ram and an ASUS P5G41T-MLX motherboard with an ATI Radeon HD5450 graphics card.

In installing a variety of Pups fully and frugally with the Universal Installer, I seem to find I'm not always being asked to create a SAVE file when re-booting or shutting down after the frugal install. The three Pup files are there in the new frugal sub-directory on my frugals' partition and I get asked to re-do the xvideo, etc on booting to the new frugal from Grub. But there is again no Save file option and no Save sfs when I re-re-boot to that Pup frugal.

My work-around is to copy the particular Save file from the same Puppy version frugal off the old Medion desktop to the frugal subdirectory on the new desktop, mount the old save sfs and edit what I can to match the file locations on the new desktop. The particular frugal now boots with this partly doctored Save file which enables me to then complete the doctoring and the Puppy is now fine.

These are all existing frugals on the old and the new desktops.

But if I want to try a new Puppy for which I don't have an old Pup-Save file, and I don't see the SAVE to FILE menu during first shut-down, can I somehow create a blank SAVE file sfs to put into the new frugal's subdirectory to get started?

Or should I just rename any old Pup-Save to suit the new frugal's name and pop that into the subdirectory? And edit it once Puppy starts up. Or edit any old one by deleting everything in it and use that for the absolutely new Pup?

This no-Save-to-File problem could also be simply this new el-cheapo computer set-up is not always displaying the Save-to-file message before re-starting. There is a black-screen delay of about 30 seconds from closing down the Live-CD and the re-start - maybe the Save-to-file is there but the graphics are just not working during this phase.

All good Gun and Fames.

David S.

[GustavoYz]

This will give you a new lupusave-XXX.2fs with 25MB (change the count number to get more or less):

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/home/XXX/lupusave-XXX.2fs bs=1k count=25000

followed by

Code: Select all

mke2fs -q -m 0 -F /mnt/home/XXX/lupusave-XXX.2fs

[bigpup]

Here is what can happen:
You boot up with a new version of Puppy.
During the boot, it sees an old save file from another version and it may use it during the boot process.
(depends on name given to save file)
This usually happens if the versions of Puppy are using similar default naming for save files.
Because of this, it has no reason to ask about making a save file on shutdown or reboot.

To prevent this:
Make a live CD of the new version of Puppy.
Boot with the CD
Hit F2 key at boot screen
Enter option puppy pfix=ram
This will make it disregard any save files.
After booted to new Puppy.
Use universal installer to do the frugal install.
Remove the CD.
Reboot
You should now be asked about making a save file.

You can use an older version save file with a newer version Puppy, but they both need to be in the same series.
Example:
Puppy 5 series
Puppy 5.1, Puppy 5.2, Puppy 5.2.5, etc..

This info may help:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=60302

[davids45]

G'day bigpup & GustavoYz,

Thanks for your quick replies to my odd situation with no Save files for some frugal installs.

I have been using the pfix=ram boot parameter, so that's why I thought it may be partly my new desktop set-up that's to blame for this Universal Installer irregularity. I'd not had anything like this on any previous computer.

I have just tried butchering an old Save file (deleting lots of files that didn't look appropriate) and copying this into a frugal subdirectory that had no Save file. When re-booting to this Save-less Pup, I was offered the upgrade or ignore message (as bigpup's link mentioned) and I chose the upgrade as the original Save file was from a similar Pup, and all seems to be OK.

It's working now but I suppose I should see what happens when I close down and re-start this Pup.

My original question looks to be answered by GustavoYz's scripts - that is, can I make a Save file when, for reasons unknown, the Universal Installer doesn't during a Frugal install?

I just replace the XXX and lupusave with whichever Puppy I find is not creating a Save file on my new desktop and run the edited script?

I'll give it a go.

Thanks both,

David S.

[Steve Reed]

Ok!

The object of the game is to post comments faster than Flash can delete them.

This is because [redacted] so why should we?

Remember kids - Tor is your friend. And there ain't no cure.

Ready? GO!

[Bruce B]

The object of the game is to post comments faster than Flash can delete them.

Get a reality check. Put things in perspective. What difference does a post comment make in light of the fact you have just been deleted?

~

[GustavoYz]

G'day david45, i was in a rush the other day and wasn't precise enough.

... that is, can I make a Save file when, for reasons unknown, the Universal Installer doesn't during a Frugal install?

I just replace the XXX and lupusave with whichever Puppy I find is not creating a Save file on my new desktop and run the edited script?
.

The commands above will create an empty 2fs pup/lupu/qrkysave. If you're running any Lucid Puppy, then the right prefix will be a "lupusave-XXX". Replace XXX with something else, lets say "lupusave-david45.2fs" and boot it. If, as bigpup predicted, you do have a previous pupsave somewhere, you'll be prompted about which one of theses Puppy should boot.
The point of this is make a new save file and place it in the right subdirectory, where puppy's files are instaled.
Just an example, I've had this issue before (no "create a save file" screen at first boot's logout) and just installed that pup frugally, by copying the main sfs, vmlinuz and initrd.gz files into a folder and placing there an empty pupsave.

BTW, you'll have to add an entry in your Grub's menu.lst file pointing the locations and the subdir of vmlinuz and initrd files:

Code: Select all

title LuPu 525
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy525/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy525 #nosmp?
initrd /puppy525/initrd.gz

[davids45]

G'day GustavoYz,

Thanks for the extra information.

With all my previous computers, I've often installed Frugals by just copying the needed 3 files to a new subdirectory than booting to that subdirectory. And I have always found Puppy would then create a new save-file.

But with my new desktop, it is not always happening so I am thinking that there is a hardware/setup issue with this computer.

I have also tried recently doing a FULL install and then a FRUGAL install from the same Live-CD booting, so I wonder if that is confusing the Universal Installer or the shut-down scripts.

And just now with snowpup019, trying the Universal Installer, I'm getting the "sanity check failing" message where an invisible or anonymous partition is stated to be mounted and unmountable, so the Universal Installer then aborts.

I have worked-around this "sanity check" by copying the snowpup019 files to a new subdirectory in my frugals partition, and then upgrading an old snowpup017 savefile I copied to this new subdirectory.

So tonight I have a frugal Snowpup019, but no full Snowpup019.

All good fun for a winter's night.

David S.

[Bruce B]

My technique was to do a manual frugal install and make my pupsave file myself.

On first boot Puppy would pick up the empty savefile by its name and location and populate if for use.

When I moved to Lupu 5.20 I found it wouldn't use an empty save file. I could come up with a work around easy enough I suppose if someone needs it for some reason.

~

[Karl Godt]

pemasus Puppies are using a different kernel than standard Puppies .

Maybe some drivers are not loaded automatically or are build into the kernel instead as modules . The kernel might behave differently and the files in /proc and /sys may look differently .

To check for registered kernel drivers I use "elspci -l" command .

There are a buch of commands to check for drives and the installer is using those commands : "partprobe || probedisk || probepart || probedisk2 || fdisk -l || mut --noserv --help || mount -l" and many more .
It might be that the "udevd" daemon deleted some usb-nodes inside /dev and when you boot next time with one more HD , these /dev/[s|h]d[b|c] are missing .

BTW : The "which puppyinstaller" does not create a save file , it is actually /etc/rc.d/rc.shutdown , which contains GustavoYzs' code and creates it . If you don't boot into PUPMODE=5 (pfix=ram) you would not get an offer to create one .
if you comment the

#if [ $PUPMODE -eq 5 ];then
lots of code to create save-file here
#fi

you could create one every time .

I had never problems with the "puppyinstaller" in simple mode but in special gtk-environments that report a lot of warnings into /tmp/xerrs.log , every gkt-dialog GUI that read input like `2>/tmp/input.txt` , these warnings get on top of the /tmp/input.txt file
and the content of "cat /tmp/input.txt" has to be filtered like "cat /tmp/input.txt | tail -n 1" . '2' normally is an error-statement , that could be filtered like "exec 2>/tmp/$0.errs.log" but then the input would also go into this file , and you would need something like "echo "$0 inputbox $COUNT" >>/tmp/$0.errs.log" before and after the GUI got finished to filter the input again .

[Béèm]

G'day,

I've just bought a bottom-of-the-range new barebones-like desktop computer to replace my former top-of-the-range but now 5+ years old and perennially troublesome Medion 8818.

David S.

Hello brother in MD8818 suffering.
Off track, when booting with nolapic, I could get rid of some quirks in the MD8818, but this turns the machine in a single processor one.

Now for your problem, I had this a while on my laptop also.
I discovered that by using on first boot psubdir=xxxxx all of a sudden I got the badly wanted create save file function. Never understood why and nobody could explain.
I also did the trick to create a zero save file as mentioned.

[davids45]

G'day Béèm,

Re our Medion 8818s, I did try your tip about nolapic to try to get my 8818 to perform more reasonably than it did with "acpi=off" as a necessary boot instruction.

However mine still gave a warning with "nolapic" about one IRQ being in error - which was better than about six IRQ problems and then the 8818 failing to boot when I did not use "acpi=off".
With the single IRQ warning message, my 8818 did boot using your noalpic instruction - sorry, I did not check how many cores were in use however.

But I was also experiencing erratic graphic display problems with the 8818 and when I replaced the suspect Medion card with a new non-Medion card, the display performance was quite limited which seemed again due to the "unusual" Medion 8818 BIOS/motherboard configuration.

So I thought, enough was enough, and for my birthday, bought myself from a local computer shop, a barebones desktop (which has a larger hard-drive than the 8818, double the RAM, has more flashing LEDs, runs Puppies of all kernels without needing unusual boot parameters, and was half the price of the 8818, but it is noisier).

I'm thinking of using my retired 8818 as a simple file server on the home network - it wont need a monitor much, and its odd behaviour wont be such a nuisance. And for a desktop back-up I've still got my Medion 8383, two years older than the 8818, but runs any Pup without complaint, as well as XP and Ubuntu 6.06.

David S.