Setting up a Puppy Linux USB PenDrive
I inserted into the USB port on this PC a PenDrive weighing in at 3.84 Gigabytes (GiB). It is unformatted and has no partitions. The preparation begins.
Menu -> System -> GParted partition manager
GParted appears on the screen. The drive icon is clicked on the upper right and /dev/sda, representing the USB PenDrive, is selected. The entire drive shows that it is unallocated in the color gray. (If your PenDrive is unused but formatted you may wish to use GParted to bring it to this state first.)
I click the long gray bar and click the New button.
The Create New Partition dialog appears. By default it suggests creating an entire Primary Partition using the ext2 Filesystem with the available 3930 MiB. This tutorial will not go that way.
The First Partition
The first partition will be set to fat16. This allows computers that can boot to PenDrives to use it. I click the ext2 button to the right of Filesystem and select fat16. The entire bar is now surrounded in a bright green.
Next I reduce the size of the partition to a more manageable size. Your may change this as you prefer (also, if using a smaller drive your figures should reflect your own needs.) I will select 200 MiB. This is done manually by filling in these figures:
Then I click the Add button.Free Space Preceding (MiB): 0
New Size (MiB): 700
Free Space Following (MiB): 3230
Create as: Primary Partition
Filesystem: fat16
The Second Partition
Now I create a second Primary Partition. While this method is shunned by Windows (at least, the Windows of the past) this is encouraged here. I set my settings as follows:
(Note for historical interest: During the early days of DOS & Windows partitioning a hard drive was unnecessary. But as drives grew in size DOS was not able to "see" and use the entire contents. So partitioning became necessary. DOS, however, could not "see" beyond two partitions. The method was to create the 2nd partition as an "Extended" partition in which several "Logical" partitions could be created (D: drive, E: drive, etc.). Linux does not appear to be hampered by this restriction.)Free Space Preceding (MiB): 0
New Size (MiB): 2714
Free Space Following (MiB): 516
Create as: Primary Partition
Filesystem: reiserfs
Then I click the Add button.
Linux-Swap
I set it up this way to free up some space for a Linux Swap drive. Puppy detects the swap partition and uses it as such, alongside any swap partition(s) it finds on your various drives. I have 512 Mb RAM so 516 should round out to about the same. It should read like something below:
Then I click the Add button.Free Space Preceding (MiB): 0
New Size (MiB): 518
Free Space Following (MiB): 0
Create as: Primary Partition
Filesystem: linux-swap
Click Apply and I'll explain the method behind my madness.
The first partition is set to FAT16, readable by any Windows computer that can detect a USB PenDrive. Once the system is transferred to this partition create a ReadMe.txt file giving your home mailing address (or a P.O. Box #) for return by mail or by hand.
The second partition is set to the Reiser File System, a system not readable by Windows unless a special set of drivers is found and installed. The drive(s) would appear to Windows as simply of "unknown" format. This is the angle that adds to your personal files' encryption. The number of Linux users that would find this PenDrive are fewer according to the odds. So my personal files on this drive are fairly safe and unreadable by a Windows user.
Yes: the drive can be erased by a malicious person. I'm not suggesting I can prevent this. But this method is meant to reduce the locating and tampering of your personal files.
Last, but not least, I right-click the first partition (now labeled /dev/sda1) and click Manage Flags. I click the first in the list ([ ] boot) and then click close.
Now I'm set to install.
Note
From experience I can say this. Install Puppy to USB RAM Drive (PenDrive) first, then save your personal settings file. I found that Puppy would not recognize my USB RAM drive unless I booted from the CD-ROM. Odd that, but there you have it.
Something else that was odd. If I made the ReiserFS partition just large enough for the personal file (1.5 Gb for a file of 1.2 Gb) then things went terribly wrong with Puppy. Just installing bash threw Puppy's RAM from 1 Gb to absolute 0. So my understanding is that Puppy uses that partition for temporary files. Also if I only gave the fat16 drive 200 Mb then the very same thing happened. The only way Slax appeared to be happy is:
/dev/sda1 = 700 Mb = Puppy Linux System (and this can even hold the original ISO file for safe keeping)
/dev/sda2 - 2.7 Gb = Personal Files
/dev/sda3 = 518 Mb = Linux Swap
Although even with this much space I am unable to install OpenOffice. It throws an error complaining that I don't have enough RAM. Hmm. Off to get an answer for that one. :