USB boot no HD, and fast boot

perthie reported a problem with recent Woof-built puppies, when boot from USB and no internal hard drive, boot fails:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201011/fixed-finding-usb-partitions-at-bootup.html

I think that I have fixed this, not confirmed yet (for now, I don't have a PC without HD to verify on -- away from home, only have my laptop).

While I was in the 'init' script, I decided to implement something that I have been thinking about for awhile. The extra USB checking that is now done in the 'init' script has slowed bootup a bit, but what I have done is changed the "Searching for Puppy files..." to run in parallel with the USB checking/waiting code.

More specifically, the USB setup/checking/waiting code has been taken out to a separate script, /sbin/wait4usb, which /init calls as a separate parallel process. While the separate process is running, /init searches the internal drives for Puppy files (unless booting off USB), then waits for wait4usb to complete, then continues the search for Puppy files on any new available USB drives.

As Puppy searches the internal hard drives 2-deep (unless PSUBDIR boot param is specified), this can take at least a few seconds on a large drive, so doing this in parallel with the USB wait, can save a few seconds off boot time. Well, it will be interesting to see just how much in practice.

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Comments

"don't have a PC without HD to verify on"


Missing files
Username: DejaVu
"I've recently lost the HD on my laptop (no longer fixable), and have removed it. While searching for something to boot, I tried 5.25 from flash drive. Puppy searches for files through two levels then returns the message 'lupu_525.sfs not found... HOWEVER, a puppy cd, with save files returns the same message on a friends laptop WITH a hard drive. Otherwise booting from either medium appears to be fine across two PCs. I hope the above helps to point in the right direction, as I like 5.25, probably the best yet and would like to use it.

Me too
Username: PaulBx1
"I run two different computers without hard drives, booting off flash drives. In fact one of the reasons I run Puppy is that I don't need a hard drive. Both computers show this problem. It gives the "searching deeper" message that I normally never see (because the sfs file is in the top directory) and "lupu_525.sfs not found", then dumps you to the prompt. I tried moving the sfs file down in one directory, thinking it would have more time to settle down and find things, but no luck. I tried re-running init at the prompt, it still goes looking and finds nothing. If I slide the unformatted laptop drive in, it boots fine. This is no solution for my main computer though, which never had a hard drive. Yes Barry, you can easily remove a laptop hard drive to test this. I sure hope someone can make a new initrd.gz with this fix - whatever the fix is - for 525, because I really want a functional gnumeric again (broken in 511 and earlier) and I want a functional fixmenus too.

USB boot no HD problem
Username: laurentius77
"I recompiled a puppy kernel and removed hard-drive modules. Tried to build a distribution using Woof builder and got "searching deeper" and "lupu_525.sfs not found" error. Have you Barry fixed that error or are you working on that? Where can I find out when this issue will be fixed? Thank you!

Read first post
Username: BarryK
"laurentius77, Read the first post above.

USB boot no HDD fix not solved the problem yet
Username: laurentius77
"Downloaded today latest Woof builder, build a distribution with 2.6.33.2 with no SATA/IDE modules and got the same error, I think the bug still exists. Have anybody tested Woof after 26'th of april? Is the bug still there? Thank you!

Tags: woof