How to FULL Install Puppy 4.x to Hard Drive

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benali72 · #1 Post by **benali72** » Sun 07 Jun 2009, 03:19

Textual instructions for how to install Puppy Version 4.x to the hard drive as a FULL type install are here.

Anyone may use/alter/copy/distribute them however they like. Please post a reply in this thread if you find anything missing/incorrect in the instructions.

Thank you.

Full url = http://rexxinfo.org/How_to_Install_Puppy/HOW_TO_1.HTM

maggotspawn · #2 Post by **maggotspawn** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 00:56

What's the diff between installing Grub to the MBR as opposed to whatever the default is? I'd like to keep my MBR Grub free. Never done a full install as you can tell.

rjbrewer · #3 Post by **rjbrewer** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 01:56

Unless you want to use a cd, floppy, usb or net boot, it's necessary
to have a bootloader on the mbr.
Grub has 2 parts; one on the mbr and the second (with boot-grub-
menu lst) on a Linux partition.

When dual booting with non Linux os (I've only done it with Mac osX),
Grub can be placed on the superblock of the linux partition, and
booted with the other systems bootloader.

maggotspawn · #4 Post by **maggotspawn** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 02:03

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

Bruce B · #5 Post by **Bruce B** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 02:45

GRUB on the MBR

The other day I compiled a version of cfdisk. Opened it to
see if it looked good, then closed it. That's all.

After I discovered the MBR was knocked out, I put it back.

Repeated the same cfdisk and mbr replacement 2x, same
result, a bad cfdisk.

I think the reason people get in trouble is because they
don't make backups of their MBRs. And keep the backups
on a separate device if possible.

Anytime you repartition the drive, delete the backup, it's
no good. Well, maybe OK if it is a a logical partition, but
best to delete the old MBR back up and make a new one

A save example

dd if=/dev/hda of=hdambr.bin bs=512 count=1

A restore example (note reversing if= and of=)

dd if=hdambr.bin of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

#6 Post by **Flash** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 04:03

maggotspawn wrote:What's the diff between installing Grub to the MBR as opposed to whatever the default is? I'd like to keep my MBR Grub free. Never done a full install as you can tell.

I too have never installed Puppy on a hard disk, but I have installed Windows many times, and several versions of Linux.

If you're going to boot from a hard disk drive, normally the BIOS looks for some kind of boot loader program in the first sector of the hard disk. The boot loader program tells the BIOS where the operating system files are located on the hard disk. The default bootloader is Microsoft's version because that's what Windows puts there when Windows is installed. The reason Microsoft's bootloader must be replaced with something like Grub if you want to dual-boot Linux and Windows is that Microsoft's bootloader won't load anything but Windows.

Running Puppy from a live CD (or multisession DVD

) obviates the need to mess with the Windows bootloader. All BIOSes are normally able to boot from the optical drive. Most BIOSes come configured so that they look for a bootable disk in the optical drive before checking the hard disk. If the BIOS finds a bootable optical disk, it boots from it without the bootloader on the hard disk ever coming into play.

rjbrewer · #7 Post by **rjbrewer** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 04:08

My 1st partition is only 10mb in size and just contains Grub...
never gets deleted.

After almost 2 yrs. and dozens of of other partition changes,
I've never experienced a mbr problem.

Don't use windows at all though.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

maggotspawn · #8 Post by **maggotspawn** » Wed 10 Jun 2009, 16:02

I do use Windows as well. That's why I have been sticking to frugal installs using the Windows bootloader.

pbouf · #9 Post by **pbouf** » Mon 15 Jun 2009, 18:37

Thanks for the nice HOWTO. Unfortunately Puppy does not detect my hard drive, an SSD with a SATA interface. If I run fdisk -l, it only reports my USB flash drive which I am running Puppy from. All this prevents me from creating partitions with Gparted and reaching my goal of running Puppy fro my hard drive.

Any ideas? Almost every other distro I tested detected my HD out of the box.

Benboom · #10 Post by **Benboom** » Thu 02 Jul 2009, 23:48

"Select the Retro Kernel version if installing on an older computer."

How do I know if my computer is an "older" computer? In this case, it's a Fujitsu C2210 from about 2004, certainly old, but not as old as my Amigas or a Mac LC. Sorry, the line just isn't very clear there. I have had quite a bit of trouble with installing Puppy on it but I assumed it was because I wasn't sure what I was doing, not because I had an "older" compter. But maybe it is...

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

How to FULL Install Puppy 4.x to Hard Drive

How to FULL Install Puppy 4.x to Hard Drive

My harddisk is not detected