Hi,
I have had a bit of a love affair going with Mint Linux 19 lately. I have an old 32 bit HP NC6310 laptop however, that does not run particularly well under Mint19, the 32 bit variant ended with Mint 19 also. On a recent update, the boot sequence seems to have been corrupted and this laptop no longer boots to Mint. I can boot it from the live Mint19 CD and demonstrate that all the hardware works just fine, and I got my files off safely. I conclude that the issue is with the boot sequence.

This machine ran very well for several years under Precise Puppy 5.7.1, when WinXP got upset with me, so I thought I'd load PP5.7.1 again instead. I ran the liveCD of PP5.7.1 and all worked according to plan but I could not mount the SDA1 drive to the system. Mint left it as an ext4 system and gParted confirms that it looks healthy.

Googling around, I see Puppy is supposed to work with ext4 but I realize that PP5.7.1 isn't the latest one.

So here is my question: Does PP5.7.1 support ext4?

Thanks,

Brian H.
Uxbridge Ont.

That, I don't know.

However - I'd recommend you check if the hdd is actual healthy. For that, you may get MX Linux 32bit. When in Live mode, you can find a disk tool that let you see the SMART. value of the hard drive. Because, it's no point continue using the hdd if it's in bad condition.

" Ext4 is an improved FileSystem for Linux, introduced in kernel 2.6.28."
https://wiki.debian.org/Ext4

At one time the live distro's didn't really want you to mount local drives. I assume it to be more secure than mount every drive seen.

Anyway fdisk might be in that distro.

It is possible that your old media has defects.

I'd download and check some newer version maybe?

Thanks all.

Wondering if its time to confront my inner hoarder and just pull the plug on this old thing, call it a day. I don't really need it for anything & was just keeping it alive for interest sake.

Cheers,

Brian H.

@ Uxhamby:-

There's a ton of 32-bit Pups that will still run well on that thing.

Precise 571's problem nowadays is the age of its deps, and the fact that it's near impossible getting any modern browser to run with it. A few "alternatives" that spring to mind are:-

Xenialpup 7.5 (32-bit) - my own current 32-bit favourite. (I run a mixture of 32- & 64-bit Pups, including the flagship, Fossapup64 9.5, but still like the 32-bitzers. I spend more time with them than the 64-bit Pups.)

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-xenial/32/

The "UPups" ('buntu-based Puppies.) The last fully 'pure' LTS-based UPup was UPupBB, based on Bionic Beaver. Peebee, the UPup's builder, has had increasing problems getting recent 32-bit UPups to compile correctly, due to Canonical messing-around & constantly changing their minds on whether to provide multi-arch support or not. UPupBB, however, is rock-solid, and is a very good Pup to use as a daily driver.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux.../puppy-upupbb/

Then there's the DPups; Puppies built around Debian offerings. The most recent, DPup "Buster" 8.0 32, is a good 'un. DPup "Stretch" 7.5 32 is not bad, either. These are built by Roger Grider, "radky" on the Puppy Forums.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-dpup/

Finally, there's the 'Slacko' Pups. Michael Amadio, the 'head honcho', or main Puppy 'steward' since Barry Kauler stepped down a few years back ("01micko" on the Forums), has been building the 'Slackos' for years. Slacko 7 32-bit has just been released; these are, as their name suggests, built around Slackware.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-slacko-7.0/

Plenty of choice, as you can see. Take a look for yourself. As for your HDD, you could do worse than do what I did; buy a cheap KingSpec SSD to replace it. A 64GB or 128 GB won't break the bank; a 64 GB would give you plenty of room for Puppy to run & play!

Hope that perhaps gives you summat to think about. Have a nose around the new Puppy Forum, if you want:-

https://forum.puppylinux.com/index.php

There's plenty of life there..!


Mike.

The thread is old, but I hope this helps.
Just don't install Grub, you might get a "wee 13" error.
I boot puppy from USB, save on the HDD.

Consider going 64-bit, some apps are dropping 32-bit versions. If you have at least 2 GB of memory, that is.

Edit: Just looked up, some of these laptops came with 32-bit processors, some with 64. What's yours?