Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, Starhawk.

I was afraid that might be the case with the MBR. I'll have to rely on the installation programs to re-write it. I don't think that Gparted can do anything to the MBR, only specific programs that write MBRs, like the one that installed Puppeee 4.4. That was bootinst.bat, and wrote:

if %OS% == Windows_NT goto setupNT
goto setup95
:setupNT
\boot\syslinux\syslinux.exe -maf -d . %DISK%:

which looks like an MBR write to me. I could be wrong. My knowledge of MBRs is zilch, really.

All Gparted seems able to do is put an "active" or "boot" flag on a partition, which isn't the same as writing the MBR.

I can see trouble looming when I try to re-format my pendrives and install other op sys.

Mike

songzi · Joined: 22 Jan 2010 Posts: 28

Hi Mike,

I used Puppeee quite a lot previously. In fact I still have it installed on the EeePC 900's 4G internal SSD. I have two other Puppeees - one on an USB stick and the other on a SD card. I really enjoy the fun that the small netbook and puppies have brought me.

Have fun!

Songzi

rokytnji · Joined: 20 Jan 2009 Posts: 2149 Location: Pecos/ Texas

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, Songzi.

Yes, I am enjoying Puppeee 4.4 a lot, even if some of the apps don't work <grin>.

As soon as I find a distro that I'm 99% sure of, I'll try to put it on an SD card and leave it in the SD slot on the side of my Eee 1000HA. Nice thing, that slot. A lot of people don't even know it's there.

Today I tried to install Slitaz 4.0 on a USB stick with the Slitaz USB creator. No dice. The developers put out new releases but forget to upgrade their support programs. Typical.

Tomorrow I'm gonna finally break down and try out one of these installer programs like LinuxLive or Universal USB Installer. I'm wasting a lot of time with bad installs. Gotta try and speed up this process, 'cause I've got a lot of distros to weed through.

Thanks for your support. I may very well end up sticking with Puppeee 4.4. It works.

Cheers!

Mike

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, Rok.

You gave me a few chuckles, there. And I'm very relieved to hear that I can re-format and re-install on the flash drives. I'll try to stop worrying, although the article at siduction.org didn't help to clear my psyche.

Regarding Gparted in Puppeee 4.4, I used it today to look at a pendrive that had an unbootable install of Slitaz, and I couldn't get any right-click context menu for it at all, so couldn't do ckdisk. Any idea how to activate the right-click menu? It would be very useful, to say the least.

Darn but I get ticked off when programs don't do what they're supposed to, even after twenty-five years of computing. (I'm tempted to mention the nasty word that starts with a "W" and ends with an "s", but will refrain.)

These problems never arose with emacs in Unix. Maybe we've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Too much developing and too little development.

Cheers!

Mike

rokytnji · Joined: 20 Jan 2009 Posts: 2149 Location: Pecos/ Texas

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, Rok

I finally got the Gparted right-click context menu working again, I'm not sure how. Like you say, it was probably a bad boot.

What exactly does "puppy pfix=ram" do? Is that the menu choice to run in RAM?

There's nowhere to enter commands on my boot-up screen, just a list of choices, most of which I don't understand.

Doesn't Puppeee always run in RAM, thus requiring those saves to the save file?

While on the subject of boot-up choices, how do I get it to stop making those saves to the save file, which seem unnecessary to me? One save at shutdown would be fine, no? They interrupt what I'm doing and waste power.

Since I'm picking your brains (hope you don't mind), is there a reasonably easy method of installing other live Linux distros onto a pendrive from Puppeee 4.4? I just wasted two days fruitlessly trying to do it using Windows-based programs like Unetbootin, Universal boot loader, LinuxLive, and Live USB. I tried them with maybe ten different distros and nothing would boot. Very frustrating. There must be some way to do it using Puppeee 4.4 and the live-CD iso files I've collected. Any ideas?

Cheers, and thanks once more for all your help.

Mike

kb8amz · Joined: 11 Jul 2008 Posts: 40 Location: Kent, Ohio, USA

Using puppeee-1.0. I would like to try puppeee-4.4 but its nowhere to be found. I wish that jemimah had not left, but I understand her explanation. Unlike BarryK she is not retired.

puppeee-1.0 is okay for my Acer Aspire One 2 GB RAM Atom CPU but its not as fancy as Precise or Slack that I run on my laptops and one desktop.

So I wonder if that Atom version puppeee from jemimah is available from a forum member for up or download?

Ray MK · Joined: 05 Feb 2008 Posts: 771 Location: UK

hi kb8amz

You could consider Fluppy - another Jemimah masterpiece and probably very well suited to your Acer.

HTH - best regards - Ray

rokytnji · Joined: 20 Jan 2009 Posts: 2149 Location: Pecos/ Texas

puppy pfix=ram boots without using your save sfs file. It is a prsitine boot. Try it sometime.

I think yumi handles multiboot pendrives. Naming save .sfs should give a choice on which to load on boot also. If none. Make a blank .sfs in home and name it 1blank.sfs
Now you should get a choice on which save file to boot up.

@kb8amz

Edit: link is no good anymore

is my cloud copy puppy-rc7-atom. Mike 7 can give you the link for stored 1.0 cloud copy of puppeee. I am busy with honey dews today. Smile

rcrsn51 · Posted: Sat 23 Feb 2013, 18:48 Post subject:

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, Terry.

You wrote:

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, Rok.

More silly (?) questions:

-- Where do I put puppy pfix=ram?

-- Does Puppeee load everything, including the save file, into RAM and run in RAM as the default?

Re YUMI, I have not tried it yet. I first want to try out the individual distros. And frankly, after all the trouble I am having with the other flash drive installerss, I doubt that YUMI will do any better.

I am still in the dark how to stop Puppeee 4.4 from doing saves every 20 minutes while still saving on shutdown. Do I need to edit the save2flash file (which I believe is a shell command)? If so, any idea how to do that?

Cheers!

Mike

Mike7 · Joined: 18 Feb 2013 Posts: 340

Hi, rcrsn51.

I went to the linked page (How to Make a Bootable Flash Drive using GRUB2) and read your whole article through carefully twice, then printed it out to study it. I will have some questions on specific points in it later, if that is okay.

For now, though, first this one: Should I use isobooter.tar.gz or isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz, for installing distros like Tiny Core Linux and Slitaz?

I am asuming that ISObooter runs only in Linux. That is, it cannot make bootable pendrives from WindowsXP (the op sys on my hard drive). Is that right?

Anecdotally, I tried to use the Puppy Universal Installer that came with Puppeee 4.4, and which was meant only to install Puppy, to put Grub onto a flash drive on which I had already placed the files from an iso of TinyCorePlus 4.7.4. The application allows you to choose where it will install Grub, and I guessed correctly that it was sdc1 (I am running Puppeee from sdb). Grub did get put onto the flash drive, but, probably because I do not know how to edit the files properly, the flash drive still was not bootable. Maybe I get a star for a good try, though <grin>.

One last thought for now: Because I had so much trouble trying to install Slitaz on a pendrive (their own tazusb.exe does not work!), I went into the Slitaz forum and asked for help. They told me that Slitaz could not be installed onto a FAT file system, so none of the installers that run in Windows would work. Strangely enough, though, most of those installers list Slitaz as a supported distro. Any comment on this?

Cheers for now. I will get back to you when I have had a chance to download and try to use ISObooter.

Mike