(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

After booting from a CD, I set up an SD card to boot from, put a lot of stuff on it, and went to bed. This morning, without putting the CD in, I tried to boot from the SD card, and failed. I put in the CD and tried again, and everything went fine and the SD is mounted. I went in to check to see if it was flagged to boot (it wasn't), and noticed it's fomatted in fat32. I think I need to reformat to ext2 or 3 (does it matter?), but that will erase everything I had put on it , won't it?

And by the way, on this machine you have the choice of booting from USB, removable drive, and something like Broadband. When using the universal boot loader, it gave the option of loading puppy on the SD, but called it "internal". Does that mean it's not seen as a "removable drive"?

1. Did you install a bootloader like Grub4Dos on the SD card? FAT32 is OK.

2. It has been my experience that the "Removable Drives" BIOS option does not work with USB or SD devices. The device needs to be detected as a secondary hard drive.

Similar thoughts... was grub or syslinux applied to make it bootable.

I have a machine with a mmc sd reader and its not bootable even though the usb slots are. (does the card reader show as mmc or sd(n) device?)

mike

The label on the slot says "SD/SDIO/MMC" and the machine calls it "mmcblk0". I don't remember having a choice about which format to use in Universal Installer, though I doubt it was FAT32 before: I almost never use Windoze. It doesn't have a boot flag and Gparted won't let me put one in. It says Model: SD SA08G, size: 7.21 GB, path: /dev/mmcblk0, partition tale: loop, heads: 255, Sectors/track: 63, cylinders: 941, Total sectors: 1512432, sector size: 512. It also has one of those yellow triangle caution signs.

Hm might not let you put a boot flag on if its mounted. Boot flags are not needed for such as grub4dos but other methods and some bios might want it.

mmcblk0...ok my lenovo x60s definitely will not boot this device...ie no bio option...does not show in boot selection screen..nada...not allowed...what machine do you have?

mike

Tried to get into the SD card by unmounting, then trying to boot flag it. . .no good. It had the red "mounted" light when I went in, then, after unmounting it, I tried the green "mounted" light, and it still didn't work. There WAS a "warning" sign with it, that said "dosfsck 3.0.7 (24 Dec 2009)/dosfsck 3.0.7 24 Dec 2009, FAT32 LFN". Don't know what that means. Also, what is the difference between the red light mount and the green light mount? And while I'm at it, the little vertical bar on the tool bar on the bottom right. . .that seems to have something to do with available RAM? Since Puppy loads into the machine's older, limited RAM, and I have an SD card with stuff like Thunderbird and Firefox on it, is that going to be a problem?

perhaps its suggesting it needs a file system check but thats only a guess...others might be more familiar with the warning.
mike

I would suggest the following. Instead of continuing to fight with this SD card, get a regular flash drive and make it bootable.

The easiest way to do this is with ISObooter.

Kinda Looks like the drive was removed while it was still mounted
Now it is not able to complete a fsck
I have used an SD card before for a puppy but i always formatted it to ext2 ,ext3 ,ext4
I always put the boot flag on it too !
Now i don't use puppy installer
Always do a manual frugal install followed by installing grub4dos
Works every time

" It has been my experience that the "Removable Drives" BIOS option
does not work with USB or SD devices "

::::::::::

One of the few laptops etc that I have come across that will boot sd cards
was the old Intel Classmate netbook similar to Barrys' gifted to him by
Intel itself.

http://www.puppylinux.com/baby-laptops/classmate.htm

Ran like a dream....wireless included for my old computer tech
who supplied all my hardware.

Otherwise...most are a dead loss.

It reminds me though....I thought that someone here came up
with a fix to boot SD cards as though they were usbs.

And on the subjject of usbs.
I bought a second hand HP Elite notebook.
Tried every combo to boot my favourite usb.
Was going to give up but plugged another usb in >>instant boot.

Returned home...found another usb port on the other side,
and of course it booted straight away.

Must check my own advice in future...ahem.

Rules for success booting off usbs

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 671#780671

Chris.

May i ask what puppy version do you have Walt52 ?
What kind of box are you running ?
These will offer more insight of what is happening
I have not tried with some older puppies but newer such as 5.3 and up should be no problem
With the exception of Wary !
Your bios prob will recognize your SD card as a usb so you need to set your bios accordingly
Also as for some older pups see this :
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01289
Also just my opinion use a linux file system

Agreed... use a usb flash stick.
SD boots ok when seen as sd(n) this one is not.

chkdsk it in windows and use it for something else.

mike

I was using a Dell Inspiron 1501, which had worked pretty well, and Puppy 528. I'd like to be able to boot from and store the data on an SD card. . .I have used the CD and the thumb drive, and they work fine. I'm experimenting with four different machines and three versions of Puppy: Wary, 528, and Slacko. So far I like 528 best. Right now I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude D600, running Slacko.My goal was to get discs, thumb drives and SD cards with each distro to test them AND my ability to make bookable media.I'm learning. . .

Walt52 wrote:I'm learning. . .

Hi Walt52
Me too
One of the best things that makes puppy so is the people in this forum are also super
LInux and Puppy are alot like life ! Always learning !
Like i said the cool people here always willing to lend a hand
That is what makes Puppy so cool ! And why I choose it over any other distro

Always learning...only familiar with the mmc thing after recently getting a lenovo netbook which has it... previously did have a HP (ugh) one which did boot the SD card but thats saw it as /dev/sdb using a usb driver. Even had it booting XP from one.

mike

I've just tried setting up a bootable SD card in my Toshiba M700 laptop and Grub4dos gave me the message:
"No supported filesystems in /dev/mmcblk0p1|ext4|" so would you agree it doesn't look like it's going to be very bootable like that...?

Tried formatting the SD as Fat32 and f2fs but no change.

Have I got things in the right order -
- Format with Gparted
- Set boot flag on
- Load puppy files
- Run Grub4dos

thats as far as I get.

When formatting an SD card or USB stick to FAT32, you also need to set the LBA flag.

I booted the old Puppy 4.21 ... I think.

And used the regular program to install Puppy to SD.
But can it boot sd???

"""""

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/showthread. ... post316942

"""

This is for a bios upgrade.

But it states SD card will boot if formatted.

Maybe look at just booting the sd card instructions.

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/toshi ... are-2.html

::::::

Best I can do....Chris.

cthisbear wrote:Maybe look at just booting the sd card instructions.

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/toshi ... are-2.html

Hi Chris, thanks for the links. I was struggling to figure out where the heck the "ERASE" button was on my keyboard when I realised those instructions are for a Toshiba M700 camera rather than an M700 laptop. How confusing is that.

Latitude wrote: When formatting an SD card or USB stick to FAT32, you also need to set the LBA flag.

I just realised I can boot ok with the card in an external multicard reader plugged into a usb port, just not in the internal sd slot that sees it as a mmcblk device. This is without the lba flag set. I will try setting the lba and see if that changes anything. Thx.

EDIT : I reformatted with the lba flag set but this made no difference to the inability of grub4dos to see the correct format of data on the sd card when it is in the inbuilt sd reader slot. It works perfectly in the multicard reader plugged into usb. Must be just my bios not permitting the internal sd reader slot to be used for boot functions.
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