(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Well, an exciting 24 hours it has been!

Here's the 'sitch. Fujitsu Point1600 Pen PC (not using the pen digitizer at this time). 2G+ HD, 160M memory. No CD, not bootable from USB HD. Only Floppy or HD. 800x600 24bit display.

- What worked: finally got my SanDisk USB reader for my Secure Digital camera card (256M) to allow me to boot in conjunction with the floppy drive. (MUCH LESS THAN TRIVIAL FOR A NOOB!)

- What doesn't: Crashes with the cp-FULL errors others have described when I just try to run in memory / USB. When I use PHOME / PFILE and aim it at the HD, it boots and goes thru the initial setup. BUT, the keyboard, mouse (Serial) and video don't work (the video works, but at 640x480 default I can't read it).

- HELP! Is there a way to boot in safe mode so I can mess with the kbd, mouse and video settings until I can make it work?!?! Any better suggestions as to how I can solve this final (hopefully) issue?

Thanks in advance - I am so close....

Strat

First, what version of Puppy are you trying to use? Have you read this thread? It might be some help, or might not.

I have experienced something similar when trying to boot to usb using a floppy. I believe that the boot floppy doesn't work right for the situation where you want both the puppy image and the pup001 file to be on the USB stick.

As an experiment try the following:

in the autoexec.bat on the floppy, add the following lines after echo off (after the blurb about not remembering how to write batch files)
Please post back with the results.

Flash wrote:First, what version of Puppy are you trying to use? Have you read this thread? It might be some help, or might not.

Thanks Flash - I tried that version and it did not work at all - the kernel crashed during boot. I am too noobie to know if I did something wrong or if that image has an issue. I extracted vmlinuz, image.gz and usr_cram.fs, put them in place of the ones on my usb, and went for it again. That's when the kernel halted. Then I restored the originals of those three files and it booted. I think those images may be corrupt somehow.

Thus, I am back to square one - needing to know how to interact with the PC when I can't read the screen. I found something that said that there is no RUNLEVEL in puppy. That may be the death knoll for my attempt...

papaschtroumpf wrote:I have experienced something similar when trying to boot to usb using a floppy. I believe that the boot floppy doesn't work right for the situation where you want both the puppy image and the pup001 file to be on the USB stick.

As an experiment try the following:

in the autoexec.bat on the floppy, add the following lines after echo off (after the blurb about not remembering how to write batch files)

Code: Select all

c:
a:\tiny.exe vmlinuz image.gz root=/dev/ram0 PSLEEP=25 PHOME=sda1 PFILE=pup100-none-262144
goto end

Please post back with the results.

Thanks Smurf. That's how I got it where it is today (except the sda didn't work, I had to use a partitioned harddrive). So now I can get it booted, but I can't see the screen (the resolution is so poor) and I can't get the kbd and mouse to work. How do I know what serial port the mouse is on (ttys01, ttys02, etc?). I have tried 01 and 02 to no avail. The keyboard (PS2) doesn't seem to be working either.

Ideas gratefully accepted!

Ok, I have the keyboard functioning (I think it was all along - I just cound't see it. Mouse is still out of commission.

HOWEVER, playing with various keyboard shortcuts, I remembered I can get out of X with CTRL-ALT-BKSPC. When I do, I go to a screen with red vertical lines (anyone know SPECIFICALLY what that issue is?).

Anyway, if there is a shortcut to changing the screen characteristics, I can now get to a command line and type it in even though I can't really see it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Strat

I just noticed that someone passed PKEYS in their tiny.exe floppy startup. What other kernel parameters are valid???!!! Is there one for video / resolution and mouse type?

Thanks!