Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Sit Heel Speak · Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 2595 Location: downwind

@Dougal: I'm busy elsewhere for the next ten hours or so, but will give your installer a thorough workout when I return.

Dougal · Posted: Sun 22 Apr 2007, 15:50 Post subject:

I've updated the attachment in the first post again.

I've added the option of selecting the Pupy ISO and then it gets mounted and used.

A couple of things people asked for that I've already done before:
- Automount the cd: the script check the cd-drives and, if not empty, mounts and checks for the Puppy cd. Only if not found does it prompt you for the cd (and only asks that you put it in a cd-drive, no names or anything).
- Mention that "option 2" is only for Linux filesystems: I actually modified the script so that the dialogue giving the two options only shows up if you have selected a Linux fs...

I am attaching here a little script with the "options" dialogue that people find very confusing. You just need to gunzip it and click on it in rox. Let me know what you think.
It is also possible to create this dialogue with gtkdialog and have two "frames", one for each option, and each having a "info" button that opens a little window with info about that option.

I've started looking at grubconfig, but I don't know much about grub, so I'm not sure how much I can do.

bostonvaulter · Joined: 26 Sep 2006 Posts: 269

dougal, that looks much better. I have modified the wording slightly and added a reference to isomaster. Also added reccomended to frugal install

As for not showing the full hard drive option when the user doesn't choose a linux partition, it should say that you cannot do the full hard drive installation there. This would avoid confusion like in this thread http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=111869

Keep up the good work,
Jason

[edit]oops, sorry meant Dougal, thanks Sit Heel Speak[/edit]

BarryK · Posted: Sun 22 Apr 2007, 20:41 Post subject:

Note, I have fixed the bug in grubconfig. Attached.

Dougal, I hope that you looked through my pupyinstaller script -- I recall now, there were some important bug fixes.

Sit Heel Speak · Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 2595 Location: downwind

@Dougal: Great job, guy!

I just downloaded and unzipped Dougal's newest-version installer. With 2.15CE booted from live-DVD, it has succeeded in putting an Option 2 (full hd) install on my 10GB ext3 hdb. No muss, no fuss, no hassles about needing to mount the (unmountable) DVD, this is wonderful...

Next I came to the screen where it asks whether I wish to create a boot floppy (or boot USB pen drive), or put GRUB on the disk. I'm going to bail out here, download Barry's grub installer (above), unzip it, and examine it first to see if it poses any danger to my already-existing multi-paragraph menu.lst. I've been using autoexec.bat on hda1 to start grub.exe (not mbr grub), with three Puppy variants plus Gentoo...

So far, so swimmingly...

Sit Heel Speak · Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 2595 Location: downwind

Well...I'm working from a 2.15CE live-DVD, which is using a pup_save.2fs on hdd1...

Dougal's splendid --I say, SPLENDID-- new Puppy Universal Installer has put an Option 2 (full) install on hdb again; it makes the task so easy, I decided to use GPartEd to re-do hdb as a 512MB Linux swap partition hdb1 plus 9.5GB as the ext3 bootable partition hdb2. Wow. This is the greatest thing since green glow-in-the-dark GMO fishing worms...

Ah, but, alas, when I attempted to use Barry's therein-incorporated new grubconfig to put grub onto a boot floppy in fd0...

...even though the notification tells me I was successful...

...there is in fact nothing on the floppy.

The floppy drive was not mounted, which since the target disk partition needs to be not mounted I assumed should likewise be the case; was I mistaken?

...the floppy diskette itself was freshly formatted and double-checked with a scandisk surface scan in a Win 98 machine; it tested-out as defect-free, just before I attempted to turn it into a grub boot floppy.

Sit Heel Speak · Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 2595 Location: downwind

...and it gets worse:

I just tried starting over with Dougal's new Puppy Universal Installer...this time, with the wannabe-boot-floppy already mounted...PUI wiped the files on hdb2 as commanded...then it copied a fresh full hd install onto hdb2, and this new install appears to be all there...OK so far...

...but, this time, I did not even get the offer to install grub. Puppy Universal Installer exits (vanishes) as soon as hdb2 is finished being freshly written. Grubconfig does not come up.

Ardee · Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 58

Dougal · Posted: Mon 23 Apr 2007, 09:56 Post subject:

Barry: I did add some modifications from the 2.16 version, but not all -- some are specific to the new Puppy, like not having the "ram0" in the grub code.
I'll have a look at the fixed grubconfig.

bostonvaulter: I'll have a look at your modifications. Yes, I could add some message telling the user that a full Linux installtion is not possible on a MS formatted partition... Maybe when I give the choice of partitions to choose from I should mention it?

There's somehting else that might need improving: when people want to install to a NTFS partition I give them a message pointing to some forum thread with help on installing to NTFS.
That thread is obviously outdated (it's not even "murga-linux", just "murga") so maybe someone who knows a bit about using a frugal install on NTFS can have a look at it, post here an updated link and possibly updated info?

Ardee: thanks, are those removable USB drives, or just flash-drives?

SHS: I'll try and find out why you didn't get the option of creating a floppy the second time 'round.

I will try and add usage of grubconfig for frugal installs, but I don't know exactly how it works, so what I might do is check if grub is already installed, in which case just add an entry, and if not run grubconfig -- I'm just not sure how it is with setting up entries for a initrd system (it has a function named "initrd"... will look into it).

raffy · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 4636 Location: Manila

http://www.ph-islands.net/pupinstall/winxp.php

Ardee · Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 58

Dougal,

The drives are actually a single 4G USB memory stick with two folders in the root.

Sit Heel Speak · Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 2595 Location: downwind

@Dougal and @Ardee: Ach, my bad. I mistakenly thought they were removeable USB hard drives.

BarryK · Posted: Tue 24 Apr 2007, 02:40 Post subject:

Dougal, okay, I guess with all the issues and feedback, the whole thing is under heavy development anyway, so I won't put your Universal Installer into 2.16alpha. But, by the time we get to 2.16beta it should be ready.
Yes, the /dev/ram0 thing ...hmm, a small thing really, perhaps the code could test /etc/puppyversion and decide accordingly whether to use it.

Just to clarify, the bug I fixed in grubconfig was the "unionfs" coming up in a dialog box when it should have displayed the target partition. I should have put the string 'v2.15' or 'v2.16' where it was fixed.

Dougal · Posted: Tue 24 Apr 2007, 09:37 Post subject:

kirk · Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 1333 Location: florida