Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[oliver_cfc]

I have a couple of sticks that I'm trying to get 5.2.8 installed on.

One works and one doesn't work and I'm wondering what the difference is.

The working one is a 512mb Kingston... the failing one is a 2gb no-brand moody stick that seems to work as a regular drive with no issues.

When I boot, I see the initial syslinux line but then it hangs before the puppy splash screen. The light is flashing furiously at this point.

Here's how they both identify themselves

moody drive

[smokey01]

Have you tried reformatting with Gparted?

It just might be a faulty stick.

[oliver_cfc]

thanks for responding... yes, I've tried partitioning and formatting a few times using fdisk and gparted and trying both ext2 and ext3.

I've also tried wiping just the MBR (with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1) and both the MBR and partition table (same command but with block size of 512)

I did try some of the alternate MBRs in /usr/lib/syslinux but none got as far as the syslinux one which hangs (usually it was 'invalid disk')

I don't see any errors in /var/log/messages.log when I write to the drive but it was a very cheap no-name one. I was wondering whether some drives simply aren't bootable.

What I haven't tried is an alternate o/s (like sysresccd or something)

[MoebusNet]

There is another possibility to consider...Some of the flash drives on Ebay & other sites are advertised as having a larger capacity than they actually possess; they are intentionally formatted with erroneous capacity information.

This web site describes this situation, a way to diagnose it, and a way to make the flash drive correctly display its actual capacity. If you can't return the drive to the seller, just set it up correctly:

http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/

Something to think about, anyway.

[Semme]

Hi oliver_cfc, and welcome. As an alternative to the post by MoebusNet and if you've got a Win box handy,
I'd say give HP's utility or one of these methods a spin before throwing in the towel.

[oliver_cfc]

thanks for the advice... I think I'm making some progress. The USB stick checked out fine so no issues there and I moved on to trying sysresccd.

This too hung after the initial syslinux line but it did indicate that it reached the "Probing EDD" stage and that I should turn it off. After doing that, it booted fine.

edit - in playing around some more, I read that holding down <SHIFT> as you turn on the computer should put you to a syslinux prompt. I'm not sure exactly what it's doing, but when I do that I breeze straight thru to the puppy splash screen and my 2gb USB drive boots up perfectly.

If anyone knows what the <SHIFT> does and if it could be automated I'd love to hear it

[cthisbear]

oliver_cfc:

If you have a Windows machine try >> RMPrepUSB

I saw >> Tekno's post and it got me interested.
Goodbye many hours >> testing it.

" With RMPrepUSB you can write fake 2nd partition information to the MBR of the USB fooling 99% of BIOSes to treat the USB stick as a bootable HDD ;)

Was one of the reasons I suggested it ... it will make USB sticks bootable on systems that you never thought they would work on (even tested on an old Pentium 3 and Athlon 2500 which previously wouldn't boot USB if their lives depended on it!) ..."

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=72660

"""

I have tried 20 different Puppies on it....multibooting.
I've been at it for hours today...1 boot fail is Wary 5.2

yet it works off my 16 gig USB.

Normally I use Hiren's method....also in the above post.

Chris.

[nooby]

reading cthisbear I realize my post only confuse. Try what Chris suggest most likely that would help

[8-bit]

Also, does Puppy see the USB flash drive as a hard drive?
It would help in not having that USB install Save button on the desktop.
Or is it just for the purpose of booting?

[Burn_IT]

If you have access to a Windows system or Hiren's CD, try BOOTICE and that will tell you a lot about that stick and let you partition and format it.