tahrpup64 savefile on hdd is never used

[jcoles]

I boot from the USB stick, set up timezone, etc and at shutdown go through the process of creating a savefile on my hard disk, including copying .sfs files. When I boot tahrpup again, it behaves as a first time boot. None of my settings are retained.

What am I missing?

[Semme]

If there's a syslinux.cfg file onboard, change "pmedia=usbflash" to "pmedia=cd," save'n reload.

As an alternative that should work, have Grub4DOS boot your stick.

[jcoles]

If there's a syslinux.cfg file onboard, change "pmedia=usbflash" to "pmedia=cd," save'n reload.

Where's "onboard"?
The USB stick doesn't have a syslinux.cfg. There's an isolinux.cfg which already specifies "pmedia=cd".

As an alternative that should work, have Grub4DOS boot your stick.

I don't understand. I boot from the stick. Grub4DOS is only available after I've started tahrpup, at which point I've already booted.

When I boot puppy, shouldn't I see a list of savefiles found on the available HDD, USB, CD media? I've checked that the files exist where I told tahrpup to save them.

Thanks

[Semme]

Once you tell us the most important detail you've managed to omit, then maybe we'll get somewhere.

[jcoles]

Once you tell us the most important detail you've managed to omit, then maybe we'll get somewhere.

Do you know which detail that is? If not, we're dealing with an unknown unknown. I appreciate your attempts to help, Semme, but you talk in riddles without answering any of my questions.

All I know is that I follow the wizard for creating a savefile, but it's ignored on subsequent reboots. My savefile is a directory on an ext3 partition. The wizard had no trouble seeing this partition and creating the files. But the boot process does not find and load those files.

[Semme]

OK, you boot from USB. Wonderful! "How" did you put Pup on the stick? ISOBooter for me has been flawless!

[jcoles]

To put the iso on a stick, I used "mintstick" (in Linux Mint). It works. The disk boots. The result is a Live-CD on a stick. Who burns CDs any more?

The solution to my savefile problem was to use the Live-CD stick to install tahrpup onto another USB stick. Afterwards, I changed the syslinux.cfg pmedia parameter to from usbflash to satacd. When I boot from the new stick, tahrpup searches the hard disk partitions and finds my savefile. If there's more than one savefile, it lists them and gives me a choice. That's exactly what I expected.

The Live-CD and installed tahrpup disks have apparently identical content. The difference is file system type, isofs vs FAT. As people could theoretically burn the iso to a CD and boot from it, I would expect the savefile functionality to work in Live-CD mode, but for whatever reason it does not.

[Semme]

Aside from details I wasn't aware of, great sleuthing. BRAVO!

Manually specify the boot interface and/or media using one of the following:

usbflash usbhd usbcd ideflash idehd idecd idezip satahd satacd scsihd

Note: Use of this parameter can prevent some BIOS from finding Puppy, especially in the case of using USB flash drives - because they are identified inconsistently by various BIOS (as flash, hdd, zip ...). Therefore the user should find out in advance exactly how a particular pc works before adding this parameter.

(Applies to Puppy 2.x and later).

And yes, nice of you to follow through and share your findings.

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/BootParametersPuppy