Puppy Linux Windows Installer - LICK v1.3.3 released

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Snail
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PAE Weirdness

#361 Post by Snail »

I installed Slacko into sda2, the Win 7 NTFS C: partition. This partition is 216GB and is only half full. It was defragmented the day before installation and first boot of slacko. Nothing much was done to it between defrag and install.

The savefile is ext4, non-encrypted. However, there does not seem to be a general problem of slowness, the non-PAE seemed about as quick as the PAE install, with the exception of the X-factor! Wouldn't any slowness associated with a journalled filesystem be seen during writing rather than reading? And wouldn't the X step of the boot be largely a read operation?

Snail
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rcrsn51 was right!

#362 Post by Snail »

rcrsn51 is a genius! And I'm just a snail.

I re-installed slacko non-PAE and made 3 pupsaves, an ext2, an ext3 and an ext4. All were made without changing any of the first boot defaults and without attempting to connect to a network. They are all in the default folder, Fido is not used, they are unencrypted and they are all 512MB.

With the ext2 savefile the Xstep in boot up takes less than 20 seconds, ext3 takes about 5minutes 20secs and ext4 just over 6 minutes.

By comparison, the X step with an ext4 savefile that has been customized a bit takes 13 seconds with the PAE version of slacko.

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mikeb
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#363 Post by mikeb »

Well wild differences...I would be reporting this elsewhere since it may be of significance to others and as mentioned out of th domain of the windows installer.

Only though that popped in my head was could this be related to journalling and puppies dirty / unclean shutdown behaviour....
Though ext4 for saves it journalled or not?? seems to vary.

How big were the save files.... curious how PAE handling was affecting this...sounds more like a kernel config problem between to two....indeed that may also account for the save format variations.....something dmesg output may reveal.
When I used to use save files I never noticed a speed difference between ext2 and ext3..only that ext2 corrupted quickly so this to me is not expected behaviour and if it is now something is fundamentally broken.

mike

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rcrsn51
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#364 Post by rcrsn51 »

This is not a PAE vs nonPAE issue. It has to do with the version of the ntfs-3g driver that was used in Slacko57 nonPAE. Because your savefile is in an NTFS partition, ntfs-3g is in play, and it bogs down when working with journaled filesystems.

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mikeb
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#365 Post by mikeb »

Ah ok.... so an older version of ntfs-3g might work better? or newer.....
just for general reference. Is there a range of puppy releases this would affect or just the slackos...?

Make sense since I don't think I ever used save files on ntfs only fat which is ironic since barry was told it was wrong to have a journaled image filesystem on a non journaled partition..... ext3 on fat worked just fine.

mike

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rcrsn51
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#366 Post by rcrsn51 »

mikeb wrote:just for general reference. Is there a range of puppy releases this would affect or just the slackos...?
That sounds like a project for you.

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mikeb
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#367 Post by mikeb »

That sounds like a project for you.
ouch but yes it arouses the curiosity....will do some testing.

Well think that's sort of solved the problem so we can let the thread drift back to normal if there is such a thing.

Thanks for the information/heads up/clues etc

mike

Snail
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Sorry for the Hijack

#368 Post by Snail »

Noryb, I apologize for inadvertently hijacking your thread in this way. Because I didn't install slacko in the "normal" manner I was concerned that it could be either the new installer or slacko, so I posted in both threads. However I didn't get any response in the slacko thread initially, so kept responding to the questions here.

SFR has now responded on the slacko thread, with a completely different explanation and suggested solution:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 41d7106663

I am very happy to hear that you are tackling the win 8 problem. Mikeb, please don't dissuade him from working on it. Not all of us have a choice about getting a new computer, in my case the old one died right in the middle of an urgent consulting project. Surely we shouldn't be condemned to years without Puppy for that reason? I know that Fatdog could be the answer but Noryb's installer would make it so much quicker than using even the very good Fatdog installer.

Mike, I don't know what the best place to report this would be. Perhaps you could start a new thread for this, in the appropriate place? I am happy to do a bit more testing and can post on that thread if you think it would be useful.

Happy New Year everyone

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mikeb
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#369 Post by mikeb »

Mikeb, please don't dissuade him from working on it.
well I could not even if I wanted too. I am not really part of the win32 installer project just like to support it since I thinks its a very good idea and should be part of the main puppy offerings...one day perhaps.

Actually I was just saying with windows 8 things are a work in progress including this project so don't expect miracles yet after buying yer shiny new machine. There is always going to be a time lag with new hardware and software since the linux world finds out whats going on AFTER release and often has to reverse engineer...that takes time.
On a personal note second hand I find more attractive simply because its so much easier with operating systems...this recent stuff is designed to be as damned awkward as possible....trying to lock users into windows basically....and a naff version at that...at least 7 is half decent.
I dread the time I need to buy a new printer for example and second hand is not a realistic option.

My money would be on the ntfs theory rather than large file handling but again solutions out of my hands but will be testing out ntfs-3g here anyway and feedback if anything useful found.

Ok onward and upward and if you are talking about testing the installer on windows 8 then this thread is the place.

mike

noryb009
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#370 Post by noryb009 »

Fatdog64 700 is now available from the link in the first post. (or here).

disciple
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#371 Post by disciple »

Sevhead wrote:I wanted to use the .exe installer for how simple it seemed to use. I turned off fast boot, disabled secure boot, and and the UEFI is set to legacy. WHen the loader starts, I select "start puppy linux", and am given the folowwing error:

Image
Did anybody ever make any progress on this?
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Classic Puppy quotes

ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

noryb009
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#372 Post by noryb009 »

In short, it still isn't working, but I may be able to get it working soon.

The problem is likely with bcd (the Windows Vista+ boot loader) on UEFI/GPT systems. Right now, I'm working on developing a successor to PLIC which can handle UEFI/GPT/secure boot, as well as installing to a specific drive, etc. It is currently at feature parity with PLIC, minus a GUI. Once that is written, I'll put it up for beta testing, and start working on a plugin for UEFI systems.

disciple
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#373 Post by disciple »

Do you know what it will be using instead of grub4dos, or could you do with input on that?
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Classic Puppy quotes

ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

noryb009
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#374 Post by noryb009 »

I'm not entirely sure yet.

I played around with bootmgr today, and I feel the best option is to extract an EFI loader to the EFI partition, set it as the default boot manager through bcdedit, then chainload windows from that (or a puppy, of course). This can also solve secure boot, as PreLoader.efi can be used.

Since the EFI partition is usually pretty small, the SFS (and possibly kernel, I think fat dog moved the sfs into the initrd) will need to be on the NTFS partition, so the EFI loader needs to support NTFS.

I'm pretty sure grub2 would work, but it has a confusing menu structure. I'm going to explore other loaders, like refind and gummiboot some time. You are welcome to try out a few, let me know and I'll give you what I currently have for manually installing.

disciple
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#375 Post by disciple »

Yes, for general use Grub 2 is incredibly annoying - I had so much trouble with it on Arch that I removed it and switched to syslinux. But that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't the best solution for a specific situation like this.
I think something like refind is the proper answer, but do existing Puppy kernels support EFISTUB? I see this on the Arch wiki, so I guess at least most would not:
The Linux Kernel (linux>=3.3) supports EFISTUB (EFI BOOT STUB) booting
Although I do think I remember some sort of old boot magic that started with one kernel and then handed over to another somehow, which could help, but would be a nasty hack.

Some notes:
Check what progress there was at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 354#744354 or http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 664#697664.
The Arch wiki lists a bunch of boot loaders I'd never heard of, so it might be worth checking out.
It says this, which (I think) is unfortunate for Puppy, because I like syslinux:
syslinux is (currently) limited to loading only files from the partition where it was installed
The GPT page on the ArchWiki lists only grub2 and syslinux as supporting BIOS/GPT hybrid MBR, which I guess is worth knowing.
I also see on the UEFI page that there is a system called DUET for chainloading a UEFI environment on a bios system, so it's also possible to test on an old machine.
Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

Classic Puppy quotes

ROOT FOREVER
GTK2 FOREVER

noryb009
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#376 Post by noryb009 »

do existing Puppy kernels support EFISTUB?
The 3.19.2 kernel .config had the option enabled, but slacko 5.7.0 does not.

I'll slowly work my way through the links you posted, thank you for them!

noryb009
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#377 Post by noryb009 »

Over the years, I've seen how PLIC has it's flaws. Some can be patched, such as adding windows 8 and UEFI support. However, there will be old installers out there which won't be updated, leading to a download-and-try-to-install-it situation, which I would rather avoid. Additionally, you had to download a (large) file, which is otherwise useless.

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on LICK. While it gives up some of the simplicity of PLIC, and solves the above problems in return. You download LICK, a ~5mb download. Give it a puppy ISO, and LICK will install it. When a LICK update comes, you know that all your puppy installations will still work. As a bonus, it supports Windows NT - 8.1, including UEFI and secure boot, with Windows 9x support coming soon.

However, it's not done yet. There are likely bugs. If you want, you can uninstall any PLIC versions you currently have, then get the LICK alpha and try it out. Let me know how it goes.

TL;DR: Alpha of next-generation of PLIC here. Uninstall any puppy installations you currently have first.

Known bugs:
- secure boot isn't working - DONE
- appears to freeze during install - DONE
- drag and drop doesn't work - DONE
- progress bar - DONE
- add UAC prompt - DONE

I'll test it a bit more locally, and release the next version either tonight or tomorrow.
Last edited by noryb009 on Fri 03 Jul 2015, 22:40, edited 4 times in total.

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mikeb
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#378 Post by mikeb »

That all sounds excellent ..... especially the name.

Thee way to install........... :)

mike

noryb009
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#379 Post by noryb009 »

I've uploaded LICK v0.2. Other then some bug fixes, it mostly polishes the user interface.

Try it out, let me know how it goes. You can probably install 0.2 on top of 0.1.1. Make sure you uninstall all versions of PLIC before installing LICK.

Change Log:
- fix secure boot not working
- don't freeze UI when installing
- add progress bar
- [Vista+] fix drag and drop on Vista
- [Vista+] add UAC prompt on Vista

Known bugs:
- doesn't work on windows 9x - DONE
- lick-fltk.exe ballooned in size - DONE

noryb009
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Joined: Sat 20 Mar 2010, 22:28

#380 Post by noryb009 »

LICK v0.3 is released. It now supports Win 9x. I'm considering this a beta, not an alpha.

Make sure you uninstall the bootloader from LICK v0.2 (and before) before installing v0.3 (uninstall all ISOs, then select "Yes"). I made some changes which may not be backwards compatible.

On the other hand, LICK v0.3 and PLIC can coexist. As well, you shouldn't need to uninstall everything again (so if you have v0.3, and v1.0 is released, you can just run the installer and install to the same directory to update).

Changelog:
- add command line argument processing in CLI
- better install/uninstall (update bootloader on install, ask to uninstall all on uninstall)
- use self-made queue (decreases size of lick-fltk binary considerably)
- clean up 9x/nt install and uninstall code, make it testable + add tests
- move/rename menu.lst
- small bug-fixes and optimizations
- [9x] support Win 9x

Known bugs:
- Windows 10 doesn't work
- can skip boot selection if timeout in config.sys/boot.ini is 0

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