Puppy won't restart after power outage

[iandel]

G'day,

Whenever the power goes out (or circuit-breaker breaks) and the computer is consequently turned off, PuppyLinux doesn't boot up completely. It gets to the line which says
personal config script /etc/rc.d/rc.local. . . done
(I can't read the first part of the line because it is set too far to the left and does not appear on the monitor) and stops.

Short of wiping the disk and starting again I cannot get it to work. I have tried "upgrading" to repair it but that doesn't work either. I have Puppy 2.14. This has happened several times (power is not the most reliable in Baltimore) and it always stops at the same place when trying to restart PuppyLinux. Any ideas?

[sunburnt]

Hi iandel; When Puppy "breaks", the simple fix is to rename the SAVE file.
This forces Puppy to make a new one at next bootup, fixing whatever.
Rename the SAVE by adding "_BAK" to the end of it so Puppy can't find it.

There's always the possability that the HD gets scrambled in a power fault.
If this happened, then hopefully you have something to rescue boot with,
look at the Puppy partition & if it's still there, then delete the SAVE file.
If the partition's gone then you may be able to restore it with a rescue disk.
Short of that... You'll have to make a new partition & reinstall Puppy.

This is why it's a real good idea to make a backup copy of the SAVE file.
So the next time this happens you can restore Puppy to exactly the way it was.
The backup SAVE file can be gzipped smaller in size if HD space is limited.

Power fault problems are common to ALL O.S.s, only fix I know is a UPS unit.

[iandel]

G'day,

Thank sunburnt. I can run Puppy from the CD but where would I find the SAVE file so that I can rename it? I assume that it is in the same partition that Puppy normally runs from (in my case /mnt/hda5)

[klhrevolutionist]

Happened to me once. I ran puppy from live-cd and ran the console program e2fsck on my puppy partition.

Code: Select all

e2fsck -p -y -f /dev/?

? = your partition, example: /dev/hda1

[iandel]

G'day,

Thanks klhrevolutionist but it didn't work. It still stops at the same place.

[veronicathecow]

Might be worth trying a HDD scan to check there is not a damaged area?

[sunburnt]

The SAVE file's usually in: /mnt/home, but it could be in another partition.
And named something like these:
pup_save.2fs
pup_save.3fs
pup_214.2fs
pup_213.3fs

There's been talk about Puppy having an Panel to show this Info.

If your booting from CD then it may be using the save file, & you can't rename it.
However if the CD "IS" using the SAVE file, then it would seem it's okay.

[GuestToo]

when Puppy does not shut down properly, it does not start the X windows server automatically the next time (in case there was a problem with it)

just type xwin or type startx to start the X server ... the screen should tell you this, but if your monitor is not displaying the text properly, you may not be able to read it

if the file system is actually damaged, you will need to try the other suggestions that have been made

[Pizzasgood]

Along with what GuestToo said, in that situation Puppy 2.15CE and both recent Pizzapups will have a simple dialog box with the options "try again" and "commandline".

But it sounds more like a corrupted save-file. Those do happen. I must have hard-rebooted fifteen times last Saturday on my laptop (bumping the wireless USB dongle locks everything up, and people kept walking past me, and my cat doesn't like the laptop in my lap so I have to share the real-estate, thus less stable laptop.... Need to just get a cheap internal wireless card sometime). Eventually, it started acquire settings I hadn't set, then stopped working and I did a re-install. I needed one anyway, as my setup was getting messy after all my failed attempts at getting wine working how I wanted.

One of the reasons I like Puppy though is that a backup is so easy. But I rarely do it because I can re-set it so fast, especially now that I have Pizzapup, so most of the work is already done.

[fudgy]

Thank sunburnt. I can run Puppy from the CD but where would I find the SAVE file so that I can rename it? I assume that it is in the same partition that Puppy normally runs from (in my case /mnt/hda5)

did you use "puppy pfix=ram" to get the live cd running ? If yes, use pmount (desktop icon labeled 'drives') to mount your partition... rox will popup and allow you to rename the pupsave-file in question.

hopefully i remembered the cheatcode all right...

[Pizzasgood]

Yep. Just type that in (without quotes) during that 5 second pause (it will pause indefinitely once you start typing) then hit enter, and it will boot fresh in ram.

[gary101]

Sounds just like the problem I had after a power cut.

Typed xorgwizard when the boot up stopped and went through resetting up xorg

typed xwin and the boot continued to the desktop.

[skomes]

When puppy doesn't start x when booting, it gives you a message saying so.

[alienjeff]

Edison's Theorem: the importance of having a UPS is directly proportionate to the frequency of experiencing power outages.

Prescription: beg, borrow, steal or purchase a suitable UPS; perform frequent back ups.

[jonyo]

I'm running live cd 2.15 save file to HD & copy the save file for backup.

I also have the zdrv_215.sfs file & on some setups have a swap file.

Should I also save these 2 files? Should I save them all as a set?