@Bas :-
Hallo again. Right; now then...
I'm still a wee bit confused. If I've got this right (correct me if I'm wrong!) you say you've got F96-CE_4 'installed' on the internal drive (that's at /mnt/sdb1)?
But you also say that you need to have the stick plugged-in in order for it to boot, yes?
Mm. Okay. I believe we have a 'conflict' of bootloaders.....one of which shouldn't in fact be there!
In addition to the
ldlinux.sys file which I mentioned above - my guess is this was installed by Rufus - you've also got a
syslinux.cfg that Rufus added as well. Neither of these two should be there. In F96-CE_4, 'isolinux' is provided as a 'backup' bootloader, and this is tucked away inside /boot/isolinux.
Primarily, booting should be performed by Puppy's variant of GRUB2; this is inside /boot/grub. This emulates the way that GRUB2 is accessed in 'mainstream' distros, although Puppy implements it somewhat differently.
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I'm assuming that the window labelled /mnt/home is the contents of the USB stick? That's fine; I can see why you're dubious about whether or not it's fully installed, because half of those files showing in the other window look as if they're missing, don't they?
Short fact-file: everything Puppy needs to boot is there, believe me.
- The 'initrd.gz' is what creates the 'virtual' file-system in RAM, and sets-up the system ready to run after everything else has loaded
- vmlinuz is the Linux kernel
- The 'puppy....' SFS is the main part of the OS
- The 'zdrv' SFS loads the kernel modules at boot time
- The 'fdrv' SFS loads the firmware at boot time (every piece of your hardware requires not just a driver but also firmware in order for it to correctly interface with the OS
- The 'ydrv' SFS loads additional software, originally pre-selected by the dev who assembled your Puppy.....usually browsers & things like that
From the above you can see that this is what makes Puppy 'modular' in nature. The 'puppy' SFS, 'zdrv' SFS, and 'fdrv' SFS can all be unpacked, modified or changed, stuff added or removed as required, then re-packed again and booted from with those modifications and/or alterations.
The 'zdrv' is the one exception to this rule; it's compiled and built at the same time as the kernel.....using the 'kernel-kit' from the Puppy 'WoofCE' build-system over at Github.
(Those additional items are 'enhancements' which improve responsiveness on SOME systems.....but they are in NO way compulsory for Puppy to be able to boot and run.)
Hopefully, that will make things a little clearer.
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Now; I
think what's happening is this:-
Boot loaders will always use files from the 'top' level if these are found first.....it's assumed that the relevant files will have the correct contents, of course! IF no suitable boot files can be found at the 'top' level, the system will then go down one level and start searching the contents of
directories which are found at the top level.
That 'rogue' syslinux.cfg is being found first, because it's at the top level.....but the contents aren't anywhere near correct to boot Puppy. So; if the USB stick is plugged-in, the system will then search the stick's top level first - not finding anything - and then searches the contents of the /boot directory. It finds grub.cfg, and uses that to boot with instead.
In theory, of course, the system should use the corresponding /boot/grub.cfg file to be found on the main drive BEFORE it uses the corresponding one on the USB stick. My bet is that the contents of the file at /mnt/sdb1/boot/grub.cfg probably have the wrong UUID (the 'unique' drive identifier) that will point it AT the kernel on that partition. So; this would need to be modified to use the correct UUID.
Whoops!!! My bad; I've just realised.....
/mnt/sdb1 IS your USB stick. /mnt/home is 'so-called' because a Puppy 'save-folder' has been created (the 'fossapup64save' directory, created at first shut-down). This will now tell Puppy that
this is where it 'lives'.....because the 'save-folder' is where all changes will now be saved.
So; it looks like F96-CE_4 IS 'installed' on the Lifebook's internal drive. This can soon be checked; in addition to an icon for sdb1 on the Puppy desktop, you should also have icons for sda1 (and perhaps others).
Click on sda1. When a ROX-filer window opens......what does it show? And is there what looks like a little 'house' symbol in the top-right corner of that icon?
(Sorry for the length of this post. I don't like to simply bang-out instructions when I answer people; in Puppy's case, because she works so differently to all other distros, I like to try & educate AT THE SAME TIME.)
If you need to ask about anything above.....fire away!
Mike.
So I got it and the other hardware donated
