Why Fatdog does not use my
savefile?
Usually there are two reasons for that.
- Fatdog cannot find the device on which the savefile is
located.
- Fatdog cannot find the savefile itself.
Problem #1 usually happens if the savefile is located in a
"slow" device, like USB flash drive. In this case, Fatdog boots
too fast that when the device is finally ready for use, Fatdog has
already completed its boot process and missed the device
altogether.
The solution to this is simple, use the
waitdev=n
boot parameter to slow down Fatdog and tell it to wait a number of
n seconds before continuing. Usually 3 or 5 seconds is
enough for most devices. Slower devices may need more.
Problem #2 usually happens if you rename the savefile
and/or put the savefile in a sub-directory, when you created the
savefile. It is important to know that by default, Fatdog only
scans for savefiles in root directory of devices, and then only
look for the default filename of the savefile (without the
extension).
The default filename is
fd64save.ext4,
which means that Fatdog will only find savefiles named as
fd64save.ext4, fd64save.3fs, fd64save-old.ext2,
fd64save-backup.sfs, etc if they are located in the root
directory.
It is possible to tell Fatdog to search deeper into
sub-directories using the
search boot parameter, but this is not
recommended as searching is slow. The better way is, to tell
Fatdog exactly where your savefile is and what is the name, using
savefile
boot parameter. Doing this stops Fatdog from doing any search at
all, instead it will use the given device and given directory and
given filename as its savefile (if this fails, it will simply boot
without a savefile).