Updated Universal Installer

Message

Sit Heel Speak · #16 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Sun 22 Apr 2007, 14:12

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

Dougal · #17 Post by **Dougal** » Sun 22 Apr 2007, 19:50

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 · #18 Post by **bostonvaulter** » Sun 22 Apr 2007, 20:11

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 · #19 Post by **BarryK** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 00:41

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 · #20 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 01:16

@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 · #21 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 04:16

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 · #22 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 04:40

...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 · #23 Post by **Ardee** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 08:03

Dougal · #24 Post by **Dougal** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 13:56

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 · #25 Post by **raffy** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 14:23

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

Ardee · #26 Post by **Ardee** » Mon 23 Apr 2007, 17:33

Dougal,

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

Sit Heel Speak · #27 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 00:44

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

BarryK · #28 Post by **BarryK** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 06:40

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 · #29 Post by **Dougal** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 13:37

BarryK wrote: perhaps the code could test /etc/puppyversion and decide accordingly whether to use it

I thought of that, but since you've been using 2.15 in your experimental builds it could have been a problem.

Everybody: Please test this, at least the first few stages, when it just detects your HW -- it won't cause any harm to your devices...

It is also best to run it from a terminal, so you will see any possible error messages.

kirk · #30 Post by **kirk** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 14:56

Everybody: Please test this, at least the first few stages, when it just detects your HW -- it won't cause any harm to your devices...

It detects my SATA harddrive and partitions correctly. I didn't actually try an install though.

Sit Heel Speak · #31 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 18:26

Everybody: Please test this, at least the first few stages, when it just detects your HW

From 2.15CE live-DVD, with a pup_save on hdd1...your new PUI detects both a USB stick (sdb) and an SCSI hard disk (sda).

Dougal · #32 Post by **Dougal** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 20:07

Sit Heel Speak wrote:
Everybody: Please test this, at least the first few stages, when it just detects your HW
From 2.15CE live-DVD, with a pup_save on hdd1...your new PUI detects both a USB stick (sdb) and an SCSI hard disk (sda).

You mean a "real" SCSI drive? Or SATA? If it's a real scsi, I need help in trying to figure out how to know it's scsi and not sata... (I know sata might have "ATA" at the vendor -- 1st part of the name in probedisk -- but don't know if scsi drives will have "scsi" written anywhere...

If it's a real scsi I can give you more things to test...

Gn2 · #33 Post by **Gn2** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 21:36

help in trying to figure out how to know it's scsi

Philosophy

Architecture
*****************

The Linux SCSI Generic (sg) Driver:

SG3 Utils

SG-IO

Great Fun All: sg_raw ~ cdrecord-scanbus( outputs much same data)

TOOLS
LSSCSI/MAPSCSI

Gn2 · #34 Post by **Gn2** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 22:21

Wot is LS-120?

rerwin · #35 Post by **rerwin** » Tue 24 Apr 2007, 23:42

Thanks very much, Dougal, for tackling the installer to make it more "universal". I have tested your new version (as of yesterday) and find that it does not correct a related problem introduced in 2.15. It relies on /dev/cdrom and /dev/dvd as set during initialization or by the drive wizard.

However, in 2.14 the wizard shows the detected drive correctly, as hdc; the 2.15 wizard incorrectly shows hdb. This causes the installer to persistantly prompt for insertion of a CD into hdb!

The workaround, of course, is to run the wizard to set hdc. This suggests that the dialog might recommend the user do that.

But the main problem is that the initial cdrom detection is invalid; however, the installer is what shows the crazy behavior when the user relies on the default detection. (My PC has only a primary-master HD and secondary-master CDRW. My other PC with 2 HDs gets even more bizarre -- the HDs are offered as the CDROM candidates.)

Here are the differing wizard dialog boxes:

2.14:
Puppy has probed your PC and found these CD/DVD drives:
/dev/hdc LITE-ON_LTR-48125W

Puppy thinks the default CDROM reader drive is: /dev/hdc
Puppy thinks the default DVD reader drive is:
Puppy thinks the default burner drive is: /dev/hdc

DEVICE LINKS:
/dev/cdrom is currently linked to: /dev/hdc.
/dev/dvd is currently linked to: .

2.15:
Puppy has probed your PC and found these CD/DVD drives:
/dev/hdc LITE-ON_LTR-48125W

Puppy thinks the default CDROM reader drive is: /dev/hdb
Puppy thinks the default DVD reader drive is: /dev/hdb
Puppy thinks the default burner drive is:

DEVICE LINKS:
/dev/cdrom is currently linked to: /dev/hdb.
/dev/dvd is currently linked to: /dev/hdb.

I also note that the 2.15 version misleadingly shows a DVD device, even though the device is only a CDROM.

I hope you can correct these regressions as part of your upgrade to the installer (and that on which it depends). Thanks in advance.

Richard

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Updated Universal Installer

NTFS install - try this

Autodetected CDROM incorrect