pup_400.sfs not found on boot. (SOLVED)

Message

danielblues · #1 Post by **danielblues** » Tue 29 Jul 2008, 21:51

Hi,

I'm trying to use puppy Linux on an old, 128Mb, PII, dell laptop.
I've downloaded puppy-4.00-k2.6.21.7-seamonkey.iso, and checked the signature. After the initial boot screen, I've pressed enter and when it's

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Searching for Puppy files in computer disk drives ...

It fails with:

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pup_400.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console...

Using the console I was able to mount the cd, and cat the file without problems.

I've also tried pfix=ram a verbose, but didn't help.

The laptop has the xubuntu installed and works ok with dsl, but puppy linux seams to be a better option.

After searching the forums and wiki didn't find a similar case, can any one give some pointers on what to test next?

Thanks

daniel

hillside · #2 Post by **hillside** » Wed 30 Jul 2008, 00:23

Are you running this from a cd? It sounds like you may have just written the iso to the hard drive. In that case it won't work. You need to burn it to a cd or install it as a frugal install to the hard drive.

rcrsn51 · #3 Post by **rcrsn51** » Wed 30 Jul 2008, 01:14

This is a fairly common problem with old optical drives. At bootup, try:

puppy ide=nodma acpi=off

Then read here for some other options.

danielblues · #4 Post by **danielblues** » Wed 30 Jul 2008, 13:13

Hi

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puppy ide=nodma acpi=off

Worked!

Thanks

daniel

rcrsn51 · #5 Post by **rcrsn51** » Wed 30 Jul 2008, 13:24

Glad to help. You should now edit your original message and add "Solved" to the title.

For future reference, it would be interesting to know if only one of the two options is needed to fix your problem.

danielblues · #6 Post by **danielblues** » Wed 30 Jul 2008, 17:26

Hi,

Solved with:

puppy ide=nodma

Thanks again.

daniel

fredthomke · #7 Post by **fredthomke** » Fri 22 Aug 2008, 16:23

Thanks for the solution. I searched and found this thread which described EXACTLY my problem, and the options

ide=nodma pfix=ram

worked for me. I didn't try the acpi=off, figuring it was a DMA issue.

By the way, in the option menu when booting from the CD, there is nothing listed as "ide=nodma" (PL v4.00 CD), so how would a newbie know to try this? This is my only beef about Linux -- a LOT of tribal knowledge ("Oh, yeah, I've seen that issue before, here is the fix..."). SOME distros do come with very good docs and online forum help -- PL ranks near if not AT the top, in my book! But I realize almost all the the Linux community is purely a grass roots effort, which I guess IS going to be somewhat "tribal" in nature...

Thanks again to all of you tribe members who support all of us newbies!!

- - fred

wportre · #8 Post by **wportre** » Mon 20 Oct 2008, 20:52

I am having this problem persistently (tried all the suggested options here and on other chats) on a newly built high-spec PC. The optical drive is SATA and I'm wondering if that might be contributing. Anything else I can try? I like Puppy and really don't want to put Ubuntu on there.

rcrsn51 · #9 Post by **rcrsn51** » Mon 20 Oct 2008, 20:59

It sounds like Puppy cannot see your SATA optical drive. The easiest work-around is to put the four core Puppy files on a flash drive - vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pupxxx.sfs and zdrvxxx.sfs. Then boot off the Live CD again. At the short initial pause, type:

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puppy pmedia=usbflash

wportre · #10 Post by **wportre** » Mon 20 Oct 2008, 21:05

Wow: thanks for the speedy reply. The boy's now on "The Beast"
(I built it for him) but I'll give it a shot and I WILL post the result. Cheers

wportre · #11 Post by **wportre** » Mon 20 Oct 2008, 22:06

That worked a treat. Thanks. Can't see the EIDE disk that is on there but I'll sort that out. Cheers. wp

wportre · #12 Post by **wportre** » Thu 23 Oct 2008, 22:06

Anyone else having this trouble try setting "sata mode" in bios from "ahci" to "raid".

#13 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Thu 23 Oct 2008, 22:10

wpotre wrote:Anyone else having this trouble try setting "sata mode" in bios from "ahci" to "raid".

But the consequence could be that Windows won't boot anymore.
At least that was my case with my Medion 8818 PC.

jenciso · #14 Post by **jenciso** » Sun 30 Nov 2008, 20:08

rcrsn51 wrote:This is a fairly common problem with old optical drives. At bootup, try:

puppy ide=nodma acpi=off

Then read here for some other options.

Hi,
tried this on a Pentium-S/133/32RAM... won't work.
Now I've tryed every mix of nodma and acpi and pfix=ram and so on...

Posted in this thread before:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34429
(please read so I don't have to re-post same thing here

somebody who knows?

thanks
/javier

rcrsn51 · #15 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sun 30 Nov 2008, 21:44

You need to recognize that 32 MB of memory is far below the minimum specs for Puppy. To get Puppy running on such a low-end machine you would be better off removing the hard drive and connecting it to a bigger computer. You could then do a conventional full install onto the drive. A swap partition will be essential.

jenciso · #16 Post by **jenciso** » Mon 01 Dec 2008, 03:53

rcrsn51, thank you for answering...

I'm still wondering if this is the answer to the problem. I mean, if it's lack of ram, shouldn't it tell me "out of ram" or something, instead of this message?

IF I find some more ram to this machine (which I doubt) may I pass through this stop?

I do have a swap on disk, but it seems that it can't find the file from cd (because there's nothing on disk yet)

I'm answering some other people in this thread to:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34429

so I'll keep it over there...
thank you all
/javier

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

pup_400.sfs not found on boot. (SOLVED)

pup_400.sfs not found on boot. (SOLVED)

Worked for my Dell Latitude laptop P-II, 128Mb too!