Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Sit Heel Speak]

Hmm...maybe this accounts for many new users' failures...

Here's a PUI bug I hadn't noticed before. I hadn't noticed it because previously, when using PUI, I've left alone my pre-existing grub arrangement, which was:

1. Boot from /dev/hda1 to the standard Win98SE io.sys
2. Menu of various Linuxes is presented by MS-DOS 7 config.sys;
3. Menu choice is passed to MS-DOS 7 autoexec.bat;
4. For the particular choice, a corresponding line in autoexec.bat starts grub.exe (grub4dos), pointing to the relevant menu.lst--either on the same drive as autoexec, or (in the case of my Gentoo install) to grub.conf in /boot/grub on the Gentoo drive. This Just Works(tm) on any vfat, ext2, ext3, or reiserfs Linux partition.

Tonight I rearranged my hard drives, swapping in a new hda1, and decided to try using PUI from the 2.17-1 live-DVD, to put a normal install of Puppy 2.17 on hda2. I chose something new for me, "install GRUB to mbr". For some unknown reason PUI was unable to find the 2.17 files on the live-DVD, so I used IsoMaster (a program which needs interface cleanup...) to unpack a copy of the 2.17-1 .iso which I have on hdb4. PUI has me navigate to the .iso-unpack subdir, then highlight any of the files vmlinuz, pup_217.sfs and so forth and then, by design, when I click go, Puppy commences to copy all the Puppy files onto hda2 for me.

It Almost Works(tm). However, PUI is failing to copy vmlinuz into hda2/boot. Too bad, because the menu.lst which is generated by PUI when one selects "put grub in the mbr" has a kernel line which points to /boot/vmlinuz...

I had to boot from the live-DVD and copy vmlinuz over from a pre-existing 2.17-1 normal install on hdb3 (why it didn't complain earlier about not being able to find the Puppy files on the live-DVD, but does complain now, is a mystery to me).

After I copied a pre-existing 2.17-1 vmlinuz to hda2/boot, then grub from the mbr now Works As Advertised(tm), so now my machine is Totally Redmond-Free(tm).