Dual booting grub2 Linux with frugal Puppy?

[nooby]

Finally after some 5 years??? 2012 - 5 = 2007
I started 2003 but where slow so 2006 my first Ubuntu CD
then 2008 joined Puppy having been frustrated over
Ubuntu and Linux Mint during 2006 and 2007 so ...

Finally after all those years now I have a dedicated vintage
Desktop. Dell Dimension 4600 with P4 CPU 512MB RAM
and 40GB HD formatted into three partitions and one Swap partition

all having Ext3. And the grub2 is a must due to all big distros
with a few exceptions are now on grub2
So I can play with three different full installs of Linux all the time.

Now I am not only an absolute Nooby I am totally confused and ...
PropellerHead something ADHD. I forgot everything in seconds
or minutes at most. If I write something down then have no idea
what that was all about or where to find it.

So hope you guys can have patience with those features of Nooby.

My problem is that I love Puppy so frugal install of many puppy
should be on that Dell Linux test machine and available at boot.

But is it not true that as soon as I tell the linux installer of any Linux to make
a full install then it will wipe out Puppy from that first partition or second or third.
So I would need to restore all these Puppes for each test of new distro?

so sure I could ahve a backup on DVD multisession for Puppy
and add that one as frugal install each time it gets wiped out?

Is there a more permanent solution possible?

I am not logical but my fuzzy logic suggests that one could do a kind of
back up on partition 2 and 3 of the current best puppies on partition 1.
then install the new linux that wipe out the first puppy and then I restore
that puppy from the back up residing on partition 2 or 3?

Does that sound as the most practical solution. Being dependent on CD
or DVD or USB is not what I long for.

Are there any better solution. Please help!

Edit. A wild thought that maybe is not practical.

I could tell gru4dos to do a install of g4d on second or third?
and then chainload to g4d from grub2?

Or is it possible to have grub4dos on both second and the third partion
and if second get wiped out by a full install then I still have a working one
on the last partion and all of these available as chain load from grub2?

Now I have no idea how one set that up or it it work at all?

This link is to a thread about how to dual boot with Ubuntu Linux Mint
and it partially instruct me how to start on my journey
but it does not solve my personal dilemma that it gets wiped out
each time I test a new distro.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=74248

[greengeek]

But is it not true that as soon as I tell the linux installer of any Linux to make
a full install then it will wipe out Puppy from that first partition or second or third.
So I would need to restore all these Puppes for each test of new distro?

It is definitely possible to have several frugal puppies installed on the same HDD as another full distro installation. I have attached a picture of what my HDD looks like.

However, I did my "full" install BEFORE I did the puppy frugal installs. That works ok. I do not know if it is easy or safe to do another full install AFTER the frugals.

I think the danger is when a full install wants to "Format" an HDD, or asks you to "Partition" the whole HDD for the full install to use the whole disk. Then you will lose the puppy frugals.

One important thing is this: When you have done a puppy frugal install, and set it up with everything the way you want it, make a copy of the .2fs or .3fs savefile on another disk or USB stick. That way you can easily fix a frugal install if it gets damaged. (Reinstall the frugal and copy the 2fs back into that folder)

[rcrsn51]

Why not use one of your three partitions for Puppy frugal installs? Each Puppy would be in its own folder.

When you install another Linux, it would go in its own partition and never touch the Puppies.

You would just need to rebuild the GRUB2 menu to add the Puppy entries again.

[nooby]

Why not use one of your three partitions for Puppy frugal installs? Each Puppy would be in its own folder.

When you install another Linux, it would go in its own partition and never touch the Puppies.

You would just need to rebuild the GRUB2 menu to add the Puppy entries again.

thanks to both of you. greengeek and rcrsn5.

Yes maybe it is too ambitious to have three partitions for
completely new linuxes. I don't remember exact figures
sda1 9GB
sda3 10GB
sda4 15Gb or something not sure.

I could install the most popular Linux Mint LXDE
on sda1 and make it less big? 5GB maybe?
And resize the others too and have a lot of
unallocated space for things one download.

I have to read up on how others give priorities
to how many partitions and how big.
Formally I have 40GB but them never live up
to that so maybe 37 or something.

rcrsn51 the reason I did not want to dedicate any of
the partitions for Puppies is due to I ahve two Netbooks
that are dedicated to frugal installs and this machine
is only for full install on ext3 and for experiment and learning.

But I need puppy to do things I fail to learn on the other distros
and there is something about DVD and USB that I don't like.

One need to set up BIOS and remember which F12 whatever
to push or Esc or Delete or F2 or F10 it is too much to remember.

So a backup and restore thing that could easily repair things.
That is what I aim for.

I guess that PCLinuxOS is the most logical next step.
Arch is way above me and Gento too and Suse and Fedora
have never indicated them accept to explain how to dual boot
with frugal installs? I doubt them would accept me as a member
of their forums.

But PCLinuxOS claim them are for beginners? I fail to remember
any other distro needing Grub2 that are popular and that accept
beginners?

All the Ubuntu derivates I can do my simplified boot that d4p taught me.

[greengeek]

So a backup and restore thing that could easily repair things.
That is what I aim for.

Maybe a good option would be this:

Partition your HDD like this:

sda1 10Gb (approx) - Ready for Mint LXDE (or similar) full install
sda2 10Gb (approx) - Ready for other experimental Linux full install
sda3 15Gb (approx) - Data only (to keep your downloads and info)
sda4 1.5Gb (approx) - Linux swap

And keep one version of Puppy on a CD so that you can boot from that CD to do repair work. It should be possible to set the BIOS boot option to look at the CD first, then HDD next if the CD is not there. That way you will only boot from Puppy when the CD is in the drive (and it will be automatic - no pressing F2 or whatever).
.

[nooby]

Thanks greengeek.

Looks okay to me. But I don't know much.
Linux mint installed itself and created two partitions
for swap partition and extended. people have told
me that the extended and the swap is the same partition
but they seems to have their own space in gparted.

Both show up there but are identical in space?
Anyway it has sda2 instead of sda4 as in your suggestion.

So I do have three partitions already and can do as you suggested
I have bodhi linux and puppy on sda1 bodhi full install and puppy frugal.

So okay I could decide to be restricted and only use my sda3 for tests.
To keep sda1 as bodhi and puppy or as Linux Mint and Puppy.

Do I need to do something with gparted to make sda4 on my hd as
the data thing?

So with data you mean one place iso and pictures and texts and music
and such there?

[greengeek]

Do I need to do something with gparted to make sda4 on my hd as
the data thing?

If you already have an empty partition (sda2 or sda3 or sda4, it does not matter which), then you can use that partition for data. (just do not INSTALL any distro in there)

You don't need to use Gparted again, because Bodhi has already done the partitioning. (You would only use Gparted again if you wanted to start from the very beginning and change the partitions that Bodhi created. But then you would lose what you already installed)

So with data you mean one place iso and pictures and texts and music
and such there?

Yes, all data can be in there for storage (like an archive). Just remember to also save a backup copy of any important stuff somewhere else too. (In case one day the HDD goes bad)
.
.

[nooby]

Thanks

[greengeek]

.
I don't know if this might help someone else who stumbles across this topic, but some useful info and screenshots from "Gparted" partitioner can be found here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 782#201565
(Not necessary to watch the "flash" movie link they provide - the pics of Gparted can be seen if you scroll down the page)

Getting partitioning done correctly is a good foundation for any kind of install/boot so I thought it may help someone...
.

[Tman]

nooby,

I suggest installing all of your full linux installs first. Then install your frugal pups.
Place each full-install on a separate primary partition. You can have up to 4 primaries for each hard-drive.

You can install frugal pups on a separate partition if you want, or you can install them in any partition that already has a full linux install.

Finally, launch a puppy livecd or liveusb and install the Grub4dos ( *not grub legacy ) bootloader. Make sure to install Grub4Dos to the first partition.
I find that Grub4dos config will autodetect the major linux distros and set up the menu for you automatically.

I have successfully booted the following distros with Grub4dos..please note that I have 2 hard drives, which allows for up to 8 primary partitions:

Ubuntu, Mint, Debian
PC Linux OS
Vector Linux
Slitaz
Windows

When I want to install a different full-linux distro over an existing one,
I make sure I move my frugal pup folders to a different partition, first. You will find that you can move the frugal pup folders to other partitions without needing to modify the menu.lst file.

title Frugal Pup (in a folder on any hard-drive partition)
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /frugalpup/initrd.gz
kernel /frugalpup/vmlinuz psubdir=frugalpup pmedia=atahd pfix=ram
initrd /frugalpup/initrd.gz

[nooby]

Make sure to install Grub4Dos to the first partition.
I find that Grub4dos config will autodetect the major linux distros and set up the menu for you automatically.

So if Iset up say LinuxMint 12 first of sda1 and then say PCLinuxOS
on sda2 and then ....

Then I do what you say there about grub4dos config.
Yes I know it does look at all installed OS but when it see
that LM12 already have installed grub2 there and it wants to
or ask if I want to install grub4dos then can those really work on same drive?

Don't I have to place grub4dos on sda2?

[rcrsn51]

@nooby: Here is the strategy you should use.

1. Make a small (100 MB) FAT32 partition at the start of the drive. It will be used by Grub4Dos to hold the files grldr and menu.lst. Grub4Dos will put its startup code on the MBR of the drive. Nothing else will go in this partition.

2. Make some other partitions. If you need more than three, create an extended partition and put other partitions inside it.

3. Boot up a Linux off its CD and run the install procedure. Here are some general steps:

a. Do a manual install to a partition.
b. With the *buntus, select a partition and click the Change button.
c. If necessary, select the filesystem type and reformat the partition.
d. Set the mount point of the selected partition as "/".
e. Install GRUB2 to the partition boot sector. ie sda2, NOT sda.

It's not a big problem if your only choice is sda. Grub4Dos will replace that boot code on the MBR with its own.

4. When done, boot off a Puppy CD.

5. Run Grub4Dos bootloader config. It will auto-detect the new Linux, create a menu.lst and make the drive bootable.

6. To add another Linux, repeat steps 3, 4 and 5.

[Tman]

So if Iset up say LinuxMint 12 first of sda1 and then say PCLinuxOS
on sda2 and then ....

Then I do what you say there about grub4dos config.
Yes I know it does look at all installed OS but when it see
that LM12 already have installed grub2 there and it wants to
or ask if I want to install grub4dos then can those really work on same drive?

Don't I have to place grub4dos on sda2?

I haven't tried installing a full-linux on sda1..it has always been reserved for Windows even though I rarely use it. In your case I am 95% sure that installing grub4dos on sda1 will work for you (after you installed Mint on sda1) Installing grub4dos on sda2 will not work.

But if you want to be safe, rcrsn51's method will work for sure.

My setup was as follows:

1) I formatted drive1 into 3 partitions, plus a swap partition
2) installed Windows on sda1
3) installed Ubuntu Studio on sda2
- swap partition is sda3
4) sda4 contained vector linux, but I am replacing it with arch.
5) I added frugal pup folders into sda1 and sda2
6) I installed grub4dos ( through a puppylivecd ) onto sda1
7) Grub4dos autodetected everything and I just opened the menu.lst file and edited the title names, and removed some redundant menu-entries.

Everything worked liked a charm...

Well; actually, Vector Linux needed some tinkering with the menu.lst becuase it's bootloader wouldn't install to sda4 for some reason.
The point is Grub4dos was able to boot everything.

I have a second hard-drive as well, but I don't want to complicate things any further.

[greengeek]

So far I have only used legacy grub and not grub2. It sounds as if grub2 is not worth spending time on, and Grub4dos is the best thing to use. Is that the general theme?

[nooby]

Thanks to all of you for sharing your experiences and good advices.
rcrsn51 sounds cool but I don't trust I know what the words means.
Sure it looks very consistent and logical but that only works if one
know how to do it.

But sure I can try. I'm in no hurry so I let it take the time it needs.

Tman so both grub2 and grub4dos can be active on same partition?
I know too little indeed. Surprises me but lacking knowledge I have no idea
what to expect.

greengeek, I have avoided grub2 for many years. But I got curious on
Arch and other distros and some of them can only work if one boot
using grub2? That is the impression I got. Okay if you go for CD/DVD or USB
then one can get them to boot but full install they need grub2?

But it is much about grub2 that I dislike.

One thing is that if one fail to live up to the syntax then they make that entry invisible.

the better way would have been to just flag it as failing syntax
but allow one to correct the syntax of the stanza while booting.
Now one have to boot another OS and correct the error and reboot.

And one have no idea what was missing or what failed so many many reboots and no result.

[James C]

. But I got curious on
Arch and other distros and some of them can only work if one boot
using grub2? That is the impression I got. Okay if you go for CD/DVD or USB
then one can get them to boot but full install they need grub2? .

Just to keep the record straight,you can boot Arch and every other Linux distro I've tried with good old legacy Grub.
I boot everything with regular old legacy Grub. I've got installs of Arch,Ubuntu,Mandriva,Mepis, PCLOS,Semplice plus a lot of various Windows and Puppy installs....everything booting with regular Grub.
I'd just suggest to use the bootloader you are comfortable with..... I just happen to prefer the old reliable regular Grub.

[nooby]

I guess I did not make the situation clear.

I trust that you boot fully installed Arch and other linuxes
but before they are installed you ahve to boot them either on CD/DVD
or USB and then let them install themselves. Then later you can boot
using grub legacy.

But suppose you ahve it like what I have.

Ms Win7 or WinXP or WinVista on NTFS and want to boot Arch live
for to install it on an external HD or USB.

Then it will say that it search and can not find a certain file.
I've spent many many hours searching using google and I
don't trust there is a solution to it. Fully installs is another matter.
USB is another matter CD/DVD is another matter but on NTFS HD no way

[rcrsn51]

@nooby: With all due respect, you are mixing up two different situations. This thread started off talking about an old Dell Dimension 4600 that would only have Linux's on it.

Now you are back to talking about dual booting with Windows and NTFS.

Which is it?

[Tman]

Just to keep the record straight,you can boot Arch and every other Linux distro I've tried with good old legacy Grub

Although I have not used the other bootloaders to any great extent, my opinion is that you should be able to boot any linux with any linux bootloader; the tricky part is learning how.

I find Grub4Dos to be the easiest; Legacy Grub looks similiar to Grub4Dos, IMO.
LILO?...I don't care too much for it. Grub2 and Syslinux/ExtLinux are more complicated.

I'd just suggest to use the bootloader you are comfortable with....

Agreed.

[Tman]

Tman so both grub2 and grub4dos can be active on same partition?

No, only 1 bootloader can be active on each partition, but Mint/Ubuntu/Debian have their boot configuration files, in the /boot folder.
If you install Mint and its grub2 bootloader to sda1...

You can later install Grub4Dos with a puppy-livecd. Grub4dos will replace Grub2 in the MBR, and grub4dos will autodetect the Grub2 bootup files in the /boot folder.
The autodetecting may not be fully accurate for some distros; then you just need to add the exact /path/name for the kernel file and the initrd file.

But I've been thinking, maybe you should just stick to Puppy and Linux Mint. I don't see how using PClinuxOS can benefit you over Mint.
- Arch starts off with just a command prompt; not sure if you would like that. I installed it becuase I want to tinker with under-the-hood stuff to get a better grasp of how linux works. Mint is much more user-friendly than Arch.
-