puppy messed up my ubuntu

[rubing]

My recent install of puppy broke my ubuntu. I posted this on the ubuntu forum and they basically said to reinstall and keep puppy on a seperate partition. will reinstalling ubuntu mess up my puppy install?

Here is the problem as I posted it to the ubuntu forums:

my ubuntu was bit by a puppy and lost its video
I installed the newest ubuntu the other day, which works fine! However, after that I installed Puppy linux which saves some files on the ubuntu partition and unfortunately broke the video after doing so.

Now, when using ubuntu it drops me to terminal for login and x will not work. I updated and upgraded, but that didn't fix it. I also tried the recovery mode xfix, which did not work.


When I 'startx' I get the following errors:

exec: 5: /usr/bin/X11/X: not found
giving up.

xinit: No such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server

xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

Even more interesting when I 'exec gdm' I recieve the following and then am dropped BACK INTO A LOGIN PROMPT!!

gdm[3857]: WARNING: GDM file gdm-daemon-config.c: line 2042 (): Cannot run seteuid to 0: Operation not permitted
GDM file gdm-daemon-config.c: line 2042 (): Cannot run seteuid to 0: Operation not permitted

Puppy Linux
Linux 2.6.3.05 [i686 arch]

[tlcstat]

Greetings,
I'm not the expert on this site but since no one else has posted I'll give it a try.
Looks to me that you did a full install which no one here would recommend. You may have to reinstall your ubuntu complete.
If you want to run puppy I suggest you start out with a bootable thumb drive install. Puppy has an option for this in the setup menu. Optionally a frugal install works very good. All puppy files will be installed in its own directory. Also there is a new virtual puppy on this site that can be run in Virtual Box from ubuntu that may be fun to try out. Virtual Box can be Google'd at Sun Microsystems. In addition the new Puppy 431 when booted from the CD will give the option to put the system files and Save file on the hard drive and it will do this in a non destructive way. You would continue to boot the CD but the Puppy will load from the hard drive which is much faster. It will give this option when you shut down.
Don't give up on Puppy, it is a very good operating system. This is the one that got me started with Linux in the first place. Also, no question Ubuntu is a dream.
Have fun.
Tlcstat

[PaulBx1]

Looks to me that you did a full install which no one here would recommend.

Actually it is recommended quite frequently, and is the only option for computers with small memories. No one should expect a full install would cause problems.

However, after that I installed Puppy linux which saves some files on the ubuntu partition and unfortunately broke the video after doing so.

This sounds funny to me. Either you did a full install, in which case Puppy goes on its own partition and files should not end up on Ubuntu partitions. Or, you didn't really do an install other than maybe a frugal install, using grub perhaps. Multi-boot is the scenario most problematic with any OS, not just Puppy. Puppy placing a couple of files in this partition should not cause any problem. I would look at grub configurations, master boot records, do file system checks, that sort of thing.

[Colonel Schell]

What? You didn't give Puppy a seperate partition in the first place? Hmm, no wonder you ran into trouble. Theoretically, with a frugal install, Puppy does OK sharing a partition with another distro, but again, we don't know whether you installed frugally or full.

I commend you on posting the exact screen messages, but you are a little lacking in some other details: when you say you installed the latest Ubuntu, do you mean you installed the beta release of Karmic Koala, or do you mean you installed Jaunty Jackalope? Karmic has not officially been released yet, so in essence, if you installed it, you installed a testing version.

And how did you get along with GRUB? (Would it even work without a seperate partition for Puppy?) i.e. Were you able to boot into either distro at will, or did you not try after you discovered your Ubuntu was 'jacked?'

[Kal]

The advice from the Ubuntu site is good. I at one time, cannot remember how it was done exactly , but, I had another linux on a hard drive and installed a frugal Puppy to it and this other linux had a initrd folder as Puppy uses, this messed up the other linux because it was overwritten to.

Since then I have made sure, if I put Puppy with another distro that it doesn't use an initrd also. I have had no problems doing this with any distro not having an initrd. I have not tried Ubuntu lately and don't know if it uses an initrd or not.

Kal

[rubing]

I did a frugal install and had puppy put all of its files in /puppy430 directory. However, when I was shutting down puppy gave me the option of saving to file or savind to the harddirve (sda?). I picked the harddrive....I think this is what screwed up ubuntu. when i restarted puppy after that save i saw that none of my settings had saved so i picked file the next time and then chose the appropriate pup430 directory. Later on when I tried booting into ubuntu I encountered the difficulties with X. So, I think when I tried saving my puppy session to the hard drive (there is a single ubuntu partition) it overwrote some ubuntu files.

[davesurrey]

Kal,
Ubuntu (at least the latest official version 9.04) does have an initrd.img file in / but not an initrd.gz. It also has a vmlinuz file. Actually these are symlinks and the actual files are in /boot.

But if the OP installed to a subdirectory /puppy430 I am surprised that caused a problem. And I'd be very surprised if adding the pup_save file did anything to harm ubuntu.

Another (unconnected) thing to look out for with puppy and ubuntu together is that I don't know if the next version 9.10 due out next week will need to install to an ext4 partition by default.

Fedora 11 did and it didn't come with a grub that liked ext4 (!!) so I needed to make a separate boot partition in ext3.

Dave

[Jim1911]

Don't be concerned about your puppy frugal installation being messed up by the ubuntu reinstallation. Just copy your pupsave file to a safe location and let ubuntu reinstall. Afterwards recreate the puppy directory and move the pupsave back and copy the other needed files from your CD.

Your puppy frugal installation probably did not cause the problem with ubuntu, especially if its' the latest karmic, since puppy is in it's own directory and a frugal installation of puppy has no problem coexisting without problem on a partition with any OS.

I have had a few problems with alpha Ubuntu Karmic which with it's update managed to trash itself. So far a beta copy has been stable. Karmic, by default, creates and installs to an ext4 partition (not a problem), but also by default with no opportunity to change the default, it installs Grub2 and presently, I cannot get Grub2 to recognize puppy installations.

[scabz]

the problem was that he saved to sdax instead of a save file as he stated.
most likely not a good idea to save to hd if another os lives there.

[rubing]

the problem was that he saved to sdax instead of a save file as he stated.
most likely not a good idea to save to hd if another os lives there.

Yes. that is what i did wrong. do i need to reinstall ubuntu now? i rather just figure out the files puppy overwrote and then maybe try to repair them if that is possible. thx!

[Kal]

Thanks davesurrey for the information on Ubuntu.

It was on PC Linux OS, that Puppy messed with initrd folder, it didn't overwrite an initrd file or the kernel, but added to the folder (which is normally empty) causing the problem during their pivot root. I removed the items, that Puppy added in couple spots and all was well again. I don't believe Puppy was using the psubdir option at the time, that was later.

[Pizzasgood]

Ah, yes. The oft-forgotten "save directly to partition" method - the halfway between a full and frugal install. It is oft-forgotten because the option only appears when you have a Linux partition and the bulk of Puppy users do not, so they never see it and don't realize it exists. And those of us who do know about it generally don't mention it much. It generally isn't very well tested either.


Yes, that is almost certainly what goofed up your Ubuntu install. Sorry.

But when you tried again and saved into the directory, Puppy created a pup_save.2fs file in there and saved into that, and that's probably what has been being used since then. So, as the others said, all you need to do to preserve your Puppy installation is to back up that file. Then reinstall Ubuntu, and then you can either reinstall Puppy and then copy the pup_save.2fs file back into place, or you can manually recreate the Puppy installation and copy the file back in the process. (The latter is what I do - I haven't run the installer in a very long time, and then it was only for testing. I just copy vmlinuz, initrd.gz, and pup_xxx.sfs into a directory, update Grub, and reboot.)