Won't Boot

[Cuc Tu]

Old desktop P1 200MHz, 98MB Ram, GeForce MX440 video card

I think the HD was booting windows 3.1, but I took the HD out.

Puppy Linux 2.14 starts to boot, but stops:

Loading vmlinuz....

[Paul Komski]

If it used to work try burning another ISO. Otherwise I suggest you try a different version before troubleshooting further.

[Sylvander]

1. "98MB Ram...Puppy Linux 2.14 starts to boot, but stops"
(a) How big was/is the Puppy ISO file used to burn the CD?
Bigger than 98MB?
And is there no Linux swap partition made anywhere?
[Usually on the internal HDD][Puppy will normally overflow into the swap partition when it runs out of RAM]
I believe you can make one on a USB Flash Drive, but it isn't good for the drive [wears it out rather rapidly].
I guess a swap partition isn't going to get the chance to be made use of anyway, because the Puppy doesn't get the chance to become operational.

(b) What's probably happening, is that...
Puppy is attempting to load ["Loading vmlinuz" = the RAMdrive?] into RAM, but is running out of space, and just sitting there unable to proceed.

(c) You need to use a smaller Puppy version.
There are a number of those; don't have any links .
Smallest Puppy I have handy is BoxPup-413-r1 at 86.4MB. [Not sure if that's small enough]
There are others much smaller than that.

[Paul Komski]

Puppy 1 series will run comfortably on very dated hardware, such as a Pentium computer with at least 32 MB RAM. For newer systems, the USB keydrive version might be better (although if USB device booting is not directly supported in the BIOS, the Puppy floppy boot disk can be used to kick-start it). It is possible to run Puppy Linux with Windows 9x/Windows Me. It is also possible, if the BIOS does not support booting from USB drive, to boot from the CD and keep user state on a USB keydrive; this will be saved on shutdown and read from the USB device on bootup.

Puppy 2.14 (86.5 MB) uses the Mozilla-based SeaMonkey as its Internet suite (primarily a web browser and e-mail client). It comes in different sized editions.

* The standard edition uses AbiWord as the word processor and is 68 MB; a live-CD ISO file with Mozilla Firefox is 52.4 MB; with the full Mozilla suite it is 55.3 MB; with Opera it is 49.6 MB.
* A 96.1 MB "Chubby Puppy" version includes the OpenOffice.org suite as well.
* A 39.9 MB "BareBones Puppy" version contains no GUI,
* and an 83 MB "zdrv" standard edition, which contains more kernel drivers and firmware.

[Sylvander]

1. Browserpuppy 4.7 (63 Mb) (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=42382)
(a) You could of course build upon that once you have it running.
And to help make that possible:
You could either rely upon an auto-made swapfile in the pupsave held anywhere handy...
Or else make a swap partition in some storage medium.

(b) They say that when RAM is low, a conventional installation [to a Linux partition on an internal HDD] is best.

[Cuc Tu]

Di I need a hard drive installed? There is none right now...

I was trying to boot pup-214X-RC2.iso, which is 116MB.

[Sylvander]

1. "Do I need a hard drive installed?"
It's advisable/desirable, though not essential.
What would be even better is to increase the amount of RAM.

2. "I was trying to boot pup-214X-RC2.iso, which is 116MB"
Yes, that's never going to fit into 98MB of RAM...
And right now there's no swap file or partition for it to overflow into.
I don't know enough about about Puppy to predict what would happen if [on some other PC] you made a Linux swap partition on a USB Flash Drive, or external HDD, or memory card in a reader...
Then fitted it to the problem PC, and booted your Puppy from its live CD.
But it would be worth a try to see what happens.
I like such experiments. :)

[Cuc Tu]

I think no USB anyway and I'm probably not going to buy RAM for this.

I'll dig out a HD and see if it works or I'll also burn a smaller puppy.

[Cuc Tu]

I dug out the old hard drive for this machine and found it had boot magic, offering Win98se or Dos. Either OS boots up fine.

I then tried puppy 2.14x, 4.2 and 4.31 (with the HDD installed), they all stop at the same point as before.

I think I'll try something in the 1-series...

[Sylvander]

1. How about trying "BrowserPuppy" to see what you get?

2. Do you have some means other than Puppy to make a Linux swap partition on the internal HDD?
Today, to do that [almost = I deleted the swap partition], I used "Acronis Disk Director 10" loaded from a bootable CD.

3.
(a) Do you have any USB2 sockets?
If so, you could [from within Windows] download a Windows EXE file [I can give you a URL/link for this] that you can "Open" to install Puppy-4.3.1 to a USB Flash Drive.
This doesn't need a swap partition methinks; it makes a swap-file if it needs it, and that is held on the Puppy file-system within the pupsave file on the flash-drive.

(b) Assuming the PC cannot boot USB...
Does it have a FDD, or an optical drive?
One of these is needed so a floppy or CD can be used to load the Puppy RAMdrive from the Flash Drive into RAM and swap-partition.

[Cuc Tu]

Well, I did not readily see any 1-series puppies.

Also, BrowserPuppy is now BrowserLinux. A wee bit bigger (73M), and an option of FF or Chrome...

Do these versions offer standard file management utilities?

[Sylvander]

1. I downloaded the ISO file [73MB] for the BrowserLinux version that includes the Google Chrome browser.
Burned a CD-RW disk, rebooted with that in place, booted OK to the desktop, connected to the web using the wizard, installed the Linux firewall, opened the Chrome browser, came to the PC-Guide, and here I am.

2. I see no sign of a file browser. [OOPS, yes I do, it's at "Menu->File Manager", and it's "Thumbs"]
The taskbar is hiding off the bottom of the screen, or you can right-click to get the menu.
Tried to install "X File Explorer" [Xfe] [using the links in (the 1st page of) my "Puppy Linux" thread in the Linux sub-forum], but that didn't work.
Couldn't open any PET files.
I assume that's because no "Puppy Package Manager" [PPM] is installed.

3. This is too light/minimalist to be of use to me, and I assume also to you.
There are probably other small Puppies out there that can be built upon.
I'm thinking of one by Mark Ulrich [MU]; may go search for that.

4. When I shut this [BrowserLinux] down, I won't make a pupsave file, and nothing I've done in here will be saved.
Will wipe the CD-RW methinks.

[Cuc Tu]

1. I downloaded the ISO file [73MB] for the BrowserLinux version that includes the Google Chrome browser.
Burned a CD-RW disk, rebooted with that in place, booted OK to the desktop, connected to the web using the wizard, installed the Linux firewall, opened the Chrome browser, came to the PC-Guide, and here I am.


Wow, thanks for the input. I bet that whole process took around 10 minutes? LOL


I'm not familiar with thumbs, but it might work. Actually, I don't even need much of an OS and DOS may even be the solution I really need, but we don't have...

I say "we" because the real intention of messing with this old thing is that I want to give it to someone to install a 5-1/4 inch drive so they can get personal files off of these relics moved to modern media. It actually does have a USB card and I'm hoping puppy would see a USB memory device. Otherwise, he is going to try going from 5-1/4 to 3-1/2, about 500 times...

I will not give it with the HDD as it contains sensitive information.

[Sylvander]

Success! :)

1. Wiped the CD-RW of the BrowserLinux that includes Google Chrome, downloaded the ISO file for the version that includes Firefox, burned that to the CD-RW instead, and rebooted with that in the optical drive, and did the necessary to get to the desktop.

2. Rebooted, and at shutdown made a pupsave file on sda11.

3. Once back into the desktop, connected to the web, and installed the Linux firewall.

4. Ran Firefox and installed the Xmarks add-on, and downloaded my bookmarks.

5. Came to the PC-Guide, navigated to my "Puppy Linux" thread post #24 (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showpost.php?p=412611&postcount=24), and installed the Fox Library & Xfe by installing with PETGET rather than saving and then opening.
Just prior, I'd used the included "Thumbs" file manager [on the menu] to make some new folders [/00, /01, /02, /03, /04], and tried saving the PET files to /00 and then "Open" them, but there is no such thing available in Thumbs though there is in Xfe.

6. There aren't many items on the menu [unlike the normal Puppy], so instead...
Ran "Menu->Terminal", and hit <TAB> twice to display a list of ALL installed programs or commands.
Noticed xfe was included, so typed that and hit <ENTER>.

(a) It was reported that libtiff.so.3 [dependency] could not be found.
Eventually found HERE (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44110), libtiff-3.7.4.pet (ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/pet_packages-4/libtiff-3.7.4.pet) which I installed to solve the problem.
Xfe now working normally.

7. BrowserLinux doesn't look as nice as the normal Puppy, but I wonder if it can be tweaked [by installing extra programs, and making configurations?] so you wouldn't know the difference.

8. "I bet that whole process took around 10 minutes?"
A bit longer than that, but not too long.
Seemed like about 30 minutes. :)

[Sylvander]

Just noticed...

1. If I go to "Menu->More..." and click that, a window opens displaying the "/usr/share/applications" folder in which are lots of [programname].desktop files.
These are normally what causes entries in the Menu.
But here, if I click on any one of them, the appropriate program runs.
For example, Xfe.desktop has been added, and if I click on that the program runs and its window opens.

[Cuc Tu]

Impressive! Methinks you need a faster iso burner...I kid of course :)

I've not yet installed pets or even done more than a live boot and pupsave.

Now you've shown me the tools and I'll have to try them out.

Thank you...

[Sylvander]

Happened upon this...

"Fire Hydrant 3.01 Retro Lite" - New 86MB version with Opera - 26MB ram usage at bootup (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=31049).

[Sylvander]

And this...

Puppy 4.1.2 Barebones (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=36727)

The iso file is only 56.8MB.

The idea is that you build upon this by installing your preferred programs [e.g Xfe, and Firefox?]

[jlreich]

Have you given DSL (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) a try?

It is 50MB and they say "Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram".

[Cuc Tu]

I've tried all these solutions. Maybe this PC has some other issue, such as a optical drive issue. IDK...

FireHydrant yielded an immediat CDROM boot error and went to the HDD...

I've tried DSL before and it does not load. I forget where it halts, but I think it failed to bring up the first splash screen.

I might as well just give the PC off and see if they can work with it.

thanks everyone for trying to help here.

[Paul Komski]

I dug out the old hard drive for this machine and found it had boot magic, offering Win98se or Dos. Either OS boots up fine.

I've tried all these solutions. Maybe this PC has some other issue, such as a optical drive issue.

I agree that it looks very likely that the CDROM or the CD Drive is at fault. If you can run Win98se on this box then the specs and other hardware must likely be OK. If you can boot to the desktop using the same Linux Live CD(s) on another machine then it makes it look very likely that the optical drive is the weakest link in the chain. Older drives often have problems in reading anything other than pressed retail CDROMs.

[jlreich]

Older drives often have problems in reading anything other than pressed retail CDROMs.
That's very true. If it is really old it may be it simply can't handle new burned disks. Boot it up to 98 and if it can read a factory disk but not a burned disk there is your problem. But I have also seen ones that have issues reading newer factory disks as well.