[EDIT mar 2009: see also this more recent thread post: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 485#288485]
NEW: Modified to include manual frugal install of puppy30x (refer to note 15 below, "If you want to multi-boot from different versions of puppy").
Author: William McEwan. Revised 30oct2007.
WARNING: the following method replaces your existing Master Boot Record (MBR) bootloader with the grub_for_dos provided one. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Read EVERYTHING below carefully before trying any of it!
Note that you don't need any version of Microsoft Windows installed for dual-booting between puppy and DSL, but grub for dos can find W98/W2000/WinXP (with a suitably edited menu.lst file) if any of these are also installed (on the same or on different drives and partitions). On one computer this method has been tested on, the underlying filesystem was FAT32, and on a different test computer the underlying filesystem was NTFS. Note that NTFS support is considered experimental under Linux, however, so it is possible there might be problems in that case. (Indeed, ICPUG has since pointed out, in the following post, that a DSL frugal install to NTFS fails during bootup
A frugal puppy installation installed to the same NTFS partition as Microsoft Windows, on the other hand, appears to work fine. Alternatively, all three can boot happily from a shared FAT32 partition).The following steps worked for me:
1. From Puppy livecd, Boot up Puppy to run wholly in ram (i.e. if not the first boot, use boot option: puppy pfix=ram).
2. mount partition /dev/hda1. i.e. do that from the "drives" icon, or enter in a console:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
3. Make sure your puppy cd is mounted (or click on the downloaded puppy iso so that that is mounted) and copy the following files to /dev/hda1:
pup_217.sfs; zdrv_217.sfs; vmlinuz; initrd.gz
4. Now umount and eject the puppy cd, insert and mount the DSL install cd, and copy the following two DSL directories from the DSL cd to /dev/hda1: boot and KNOPPIX. Note that you can omit this step if you don't want to dual boot with DSL.
5. Now make a directory called grub4dos for the bootloader files.
i.e. mkdir /mnt/hda1/grub4dos
6. Download Grub for DOS from: http://sarovar.org/projects/grub4dos/
(I used version grub4dos-0.4.3pre2 but version http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grub4d ... -0.4.2.zip would
probably work too).
7. Extract the downloaded grub_for_dos archived files into the grub4dos directory you made (i.e. uncompress the archive there).
8. Having done the above, copy the program grldr to /mnt/hda1 (i.e. to the top directory of the filesystem where your operating systems are installed). Note that if any or all of the operating systems are installed on different partitions you must place a copy of grldr on the top directory of each of these partitions.
9. Copy the grub_for_dos boot menu text file menu.lst to /mnt/hda1 (i.e. the top directory of the partition)
NOW DO THE FOLLOWING AT YOUR OWN RISK
10. You are going to replace your existing Master Boot Record with the one provided by grub for dos... It would thus be a good idea to back up your old MBR. For example you can make a copy of your existing MBR when running Puppy Linux using the command: cd; dd if=/dev/hda of=existing.mbr bs=512 count=1
You can then restore the old MBR from that saved copy, if you need to, by using the command: cd; dd if=existing.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
11. Open a console in puppy and enter:
cd /mnt/hda1/grub4dos
./bootlace.com /dev/hda
The above command overwrites your existing /dev/hda drive MBR bootloader program with the grub4dos one (yes, bootlace.com can be run under linux!...
. It doesn't, however, overwrite your existing partition tables! . YOUR RISK THOUGH!12. Now edit menu.lst to tell the new MBR bootloader where the puppy kernel and initrd files are (and the DSL ones if using that, and the Microsoft windows ones if you insist on having that option too... I simply modified the grub4dos provided menu.lst file to include the following. Let me know if it can be improved or if I've missed anything:
-------------------
# This is a sample menu.lst file. You should make some changes to it.
# The old install method of booting via the stage-files has been removed.
# Please install GRLDR boot strap code to MBR with the bootlace.com
# utility under DOS/Win9x or Linux.
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
timeout 30
default /default
title Puppy
kernel (hd0,4)/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0
initrd (hd0,4)/initrd.gz
boot
title DSL
kernel (hd0,4)/boot/isolinux/linux24 ramdisk_size=100000 toram nodhcp
initrd (hd0,4)/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz exec
./boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin
title find and load NTLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP
fallback 1
find --set-root /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
savedefault --wait=2
title find and load CMLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP
fallback 2
find --set-root /cmldr
chainloader /cmldr
savedefault --wait=2
title find and load IO.SYS of Windows 9x/Me
fallback 3
find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
savedefault --wait=2
---------------------------------
13. That's all! Reboot, and you should be presented with a grub4dos boot manager menu in which you can select Puppy, DSL, or various flavours of Microsoft Windows from your /dev/hda1 partition.
14. Want to use different partitions?
The above steps assumed that you want to do a frugal install of puppy onto a /dev/hda1 partition, which also contains (though it doesn't need to) a frugal install of Damn Small Linux and an existing installation of Microsoft Windows. You could use different partitions for any or all of these operating systems if you wish and the grub_for_dos bootloader can find them. To do that you simply need to edit your grub_for_dos menu.lst file to point to the appropriate partitions where each OS is installed, and place a copy of the program grldr in the top directory of each of these partitions. For example, you might have windows 2000 on a /dev/hda1 NTFS partition (which is referred to as hd0,1 in grub_for_dos notation, a puppy frugal install on /dev/hda2 (i.e. hd0,1), and a DSL frugal install on /dev/hdb4 (i.e. hd1,3 in grub_for_dos notation).
15. If you want to multi-boot from different versions of puppy, with frugal installs of each held in separate directories you might find the following two links useful:
a. http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 7&start=30
(especially the posts added to that thread by tazoc)
b. http://puppylinux.org/wikka/BootParms
(which lists extra parameters you can pass to grub for different versions of puppy, should you need them)
As an example, here is an extract from a grub_for_dos menu.lst file for multi-booting between four different versions of puppy installed on the same FAT32 partition. This example assumes the frugal installs are all stored on /dev/hda5 and with their kernels and initial ramdisk images placed in version-specific directories (e.g. puppy version 2.17 vmlinuz and initrd.gz have been placed in directory /puppy217 of partition /dev/hda5). [Note: If you are instead storing everything on the typical Window's C: drive, that is, /dev/hda1, simply replace all references to hd0,4 below to hd0,0].
Except for the case of Puppy 3.01, all the *.sfs files, such as pup_217.sfs and zdrv_217.sfs (as well as usr_cram.fs for puppy109CE) were placed in the top directory of /dev/hda5 (i.e. directory / of hd0,4). However, to get Puppy 3.01 working, vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_301.sfs, and zdr_301.sfs were all put in /puppy301.
The parameter psubdir, available with puppy versions 2.16 and above, allowed puppy217's pup_save.2fs to be placed in /puppy217 (though, as in the menu.lst extract below, you should miss out the leading slash when entering psubdir=puppy217). In a similar manner puppy301, using psubdir=puppy301 allowed its pup_save file to be placed in /puppy301. The other persistent save files (such as puppy109CE's pup001) were stored in the top directory of /dev/hda5:
title Puppy301
kernel (hd0,4)/puppy30x/vmlinuz PMEDIA=idehd psubdir=puppy301
initrd (hd0,4)/puppy301/initrd.gz
boot
title Puppy217
kernel (hd0,4)/puppy217/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 psubdir=puppy217
initrd (hd0,4)/puppy217/initrd.gz
boot
title puppy109CE
kernel (hd0,4)/puppy109CE/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd PHOME=hda5 PFILE=pup001-none-262144
initrd (hd0,4)/puppy109CE/image.gz
boot
title MurgasMeanPuppy
kernel (hd0,4)/MurgasMeanPuppy/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd (hd0,4)/MurgasMeanPuppy/initrd.gz
boot
Notes and additional links:
1. don't confuse grldr with grldr.mbr, they are different. You don't need to worry about the latter file, however, bootlace.com sorts all that out by itself.
2. If you want to dual-boot between puppy and Microsoft Windows, but don't want to overwrite your existing MBR boot loader program, check out ICPUG's Lin'N'WinNewB PROJECT pages at: http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwin/contents.htm
Amongst other things ICPUG's pages show how you can boot puppy via Window's own boot loader program.
