puppy crashes

[hkleinp]

I am wearing puppy 528 along some months. I made a full install on my PC, pentium 4, more than 700M RAM and 1.6GHZ. In the very beginning everything looked right. After a while, I couldn't boot unless if my live CD was on the tray. Now, no matter what I do, it crashes almost 75% of the times I try to use it. Does someone know how to fix this?

Thanks

Hkleinp

[Semme]

Welcome Hkleinp!

Have you allocated room for a swap partition or file on your hard drive? Find out from a shell: swapon -s

[RJARRRPCGP]

Sounds like a corrupted installation.

[Semme]

If installed on ext2- quite the possibility..

[Lobster]

Does someone know how to fix this?

On the early days Puppy had a release cycle of a completely new version every 6 weeks.
A new install (no upgrade path) was done.

Move your data and upgrade.
Use Puppy 'Lucid' 005 (as of the date of this posting) if wishing to continue with Lucid.
I would recommend you use 'Slacko' 5.3.1, or if wishing for Long term Support Puppy 'Wary' has just been released.

[greengeek]

1) I recommend that you make a backup copy of any important data, as it is possible that your hard disk is starting to fail.
2) After copying your data somewhere else, I think you should probably run a file system check. I dont know how to do this but I think it is something to do with the fsck command.
3) Consider wiping the disk, then doing a fresh installation, then copy your data from the backup copy.

[disciple]

I dont know how to do this but I think it is something to do with the fsck command.

Normally you would boot with the option pfix=fsck, although I'm not sure if it works with a full install. But I imagine there must be some standard way of doing this, anyway (pfix is puppy specific).
I believe you can't use the fsck or e2fsck or whatever it is you need to use on a mounted drive, so you would need to boot from a live CD or another Puppy install to use it to check your / partition.

[RetroTechGuy]

I dont know how to do this but I think it is something to do with the fsck command.

Normally you would boot with the option pfix=fsck, although I'm not sure if it works with a full install. But I imagine there must be some standard way of doing this, anyway (pfix is puppy specific).
I believe you can't use the fsck or e2fsck or whatever it is you need to use on a mounted drive, so you would need to boot from a live CD or another Puppy install to use it to check your / partition.

How about:

1) boot Puppy CD. When offered a command prompt:

Code: Select all

puppy pfix=ram

let the system boot. Open a terminal window, then (without mounting any drives):

Code: Select all

fsck /dev/sda1
(assuming that the system is installed on sda1)

This will scan the partition for errors. If you get a lot of errors, I believe that you can use "fsck -a" to automatically fix errors.

Then the question should be reduced to whether the install itself is corrupted.

As mentioned above, it would be wise to copy all important file off the HDD before doing this (as the stress of a scan can kill weak drives).

[hkleinp]

as suggested I frugal installed wary puppy and now the PC works well. Still, I have to boot it with the aid of live CD-ROM.

Thanks folks!

[greengeek]

Still, I have to boot it with the aid of live CD-ROM.

Sounds as if you have completed the install, but not the grub bootloader setup.

(If you have configured Grub bootloader you should be able to see a folder called "Boot" on your first hard disk)

If you do not see a Boot folder you will need to run the Grub bootloader utility, and it will set up automatic booting from HDD without having the CD in place.

To run the Grub bootloader, you look under menu, system, Grub bootloader config (not bootmanager which is a different thing...)
Usually it is straightforward to complete the bootloader setup, just read each dialog box to see what to do. Accept the defaults if unsure (but also pay attention to the suggestion that comes up about MBR).

Backup your data first.
.

[RetroTechGuy]

Still, I have to boot it with the aid of live CD-ROM.

Sounds as if you have completed the install, but not the grub bootloader setup.

(If you have configured Grub bootloader you should be able to see a folder called "Boot" on your first hard disk)

It actually sounds like he had grub working (full install), and should be able to link into the existing menu.lst with his frugal install.

When you do so, I recommend that you add "pfix=fsck" to the kernel or append line, and perform a fsck on the lupusave on every boot (this keeps things functioning well, and only takes a little longer IF the lupusave was corrupted by an unclean shutdown).