USB Boot Error

Message

3dmatrix · #1 Post by **3dmatrix** » Sat 23 Jan 2010, 06:20

Among all my booting attempts from the USB pen drive, on abt 50% of all the attempts Puppy is not able to locate the save file which is on the same USB pen drive. When i press CTRL + ALT + DEL the system reboots and this time it certainly recognizes the save file. What cud be going wrong in this case ? Plz advise,

3dmatrix · #2 Post by **3dmatrix** » Sun 24 Jan 2010, 06:15

Seems either no one understood the problem or no one has a solution for this !

William (Dthdealer) · Sun 24 Jan 2010, 07:54

People can take more than a day to respond!

Try this test. Boot cold ( from off state, not the temperature of the computer! ) a few times, and then reboot a few times.

If the pup_save never works on cold boots and always works on reboots then it is the BIOS that is the culprit. The bios is the program that starts when you press the power button and is stored on a chip on the motherboard. Some BIOSs are quirky and play dumb, not giving enough information unless you reboot.

Tomppo · #4 Post by **Tomppo** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 16:31

I have a same kind of booting problem. I posted about it some time ago. On cold boot puppy does not find pup_save on USB. On reboot puppy finds it.

So William do you suggest that if BIOS is the problem there's no way to fix it?

Tomi

jafadmin · #5 Post by **jafadmin** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 16:56

Since it appears to be a hardware problem we'll need to know more. There are way to many versions, brands, and types of BIOS's to say. It can also be affected by the type of MBR you installed to the thumb drive.

For me, the most workable MBR option seems to be the "mbr.bin".

mikeb · #6 Post by **mikeb** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 19:37

This is due to the puppy init file in initrd.gz not allowing enough time for the usb drivers to load and is nothing to do with the bios otherwise the boot process would npot happen at all. Short of editing the boot script I'm not sure what else you can do apart from maybe trying a different flash stick to see if it responds faster. Is this on usb 1 or 2?

mike

#7 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 20:20

mikeb wrote:This is due to the puppy init file in initrd.gz not allowing enough time for the usb drivers to load and is nothing to do with the bios otherwise the boot process would npot happen at all. Short of editing the boot script I'm not sure what else you can do apart from maybe trying a different flash stick to see if it responds faster. Is this on usb 1 or 2?

mike

So this still isn't worked out then.

mikeb · #8 Post by **mikeb** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 20:47

Heres the relevent code...it should wait as long as needed ....

Code: Select all

if [ "$WAITUSB" = "yes" ];then #wait for device to register.
 sleep 3 #2 v403 bumped it up to 3.
 USBSTORAGES=0 ; CNTUSB=0
 while [ $USBSTORAGES -eq 0 ];do
  sleep 1
  CNTUSB=`expr $CNTUSB + 1`
  [ $CNTUSB -gt 25 ] && break
  #v412 bugfix, added 'sort -u'...
  USBSTORAGES=`/bin/dmesg | grep "usb-storage: device found at" | sort -u | wc -l | sed -e 's/ //g'`
  #if booting from usb, USBSTORAGES must be non-zero...
  [ "`echo "$PMEDIA" | grep 'usb'`" != "" ] && [ $USBSTORAGES -eq 0 ] && continue
  [ $USBSTORAGES -eq 0 ] && break
  AVAILABLEUSBSTORAGES=`/bin/dmesg | grep "usb-storage: device scan complete" | wc -l | sed -e 's/ //g'`
  [ $USBSTORAGES -ne $AVAILABLEUSBSTORAGES ] && USBSTORAGES=0
 done
 [ $USBSTORAGES -ne 0 ] && sleep 2 #v4.00 put it back in. WELL...
fi
check_status 0 #END STEP ONE

actually thinking about it the usb interface on the machine side is being the slug and a soft reboot probably gives it a head start.

One machine used to boot the first time 9 times out of 10 from flash...but on the 10th occasions the reset button got it going .

mike

#9 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 20:53

In what file is this code?
Was it the solution Erikson proposed quite some time ago?

mikeb · #10 Post by **mikeb** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 20:57

This is in the init contained in initrd.gz

mike

#11 Post by **BÃ©Ã¨m** » Fri 29 Jan 2010, 21:15

Thanks.

3dmatrix · #12 Post by **3dmatrix** » Sat 30 Jan 2010, 05:13

Sorry for a late reply - had been traveling

Well, in my case the problem does not occurs only during cold boot but just abt 50% of the times of any of the boot attempts.
What cud be wrong ?

Offenbach · #13 Post by **Offenbach** » Sat 30 Jan 2010, 06:39

I get this error message in bios.
DAMAGED OR UNBOOTABLE USB PARTITION
The officialpage on this subkect does not mention that you may have to reformat the USB drive as ext3 rather than the windows friendly vfat or ntfs file format supplied on most USB drives.
Puppy does most of this for you with a few clicks, but there are a few choices to make and the correct one is not obvious.
I am wondering whether OZDISC supplier of puppy linux preloaded USB uses the native ntfs and copies puppy431 liveCD contents onto usb to make it easy for bios to detect. According to the official page
http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php?fi ... 0Puppy.htm
this gives you a frugal instal.
I wouldlike to resolve the issue and just run puppy from the usb, but I have just managed to get WiFi working and terrified of changing any settings as I am using a Dell 1520 which has a temperamental WiFi at the best of times. I know, I know experiment, experiment, but sometimes I wish for a linux pixie to hold my hand and say - type this and it will all work like magic.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

USB Boot Error

USB Boot Error

damaged or unbootable USB partition