(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I had mentioned this in another thread but don't know if anyone really saw the post, I keep seeing here that people are trying to boot usb even if the bios doesn't have an option. I know I was looking for something like this for a long time and ran across this. I've tried it on a number of pc's and it works for me

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html

hope this helps some folks

yim

I've used gag http://gag.sourceforge.net/ since 2005 primarily as an emergency boot loader. It looks like plop might be better overall. It doesn't do everything that gag can do yet but it does some things gag can't do.

Yim, could you edit your post to describe how to use plop to boot Puppy? Thanks.

http://download.plop.at/files/bootmngr/plpbt-5.0.12.zip

download the zip above, extract there will be a plpbt-5.0.11-2 folder in that folder is an iso just burn that to cd and wa-la you have the option to boot usb after the plop iso boots very small . there are other folders and instructions to make a plop grub cd with all sort of options but the one that I've tried is the iso in the top level folder

Btw, plop cannot boot linux directly. ( the same way Grub do not boot windows directly)

You will still need a boot loader in your USB.

how do we exactly set this up?
i have a very old laptop that don't support usb and the cdrom don't work

turf wrote:i have a very old laptop that don't support usb and the cdrom don't work

And it probably doesn't have enough memory to run Puppy adequately either.

it has a 128 of ram though so it might just work with full installation.

turf wrote:how do we exactly set this up?
i have a very old laptop that don't support usb and the cdrom don't work

Turf use the search in my signature there was somebody Maybe Chris Cthisbear or somebody else describing how to make usb behave as a boot floppy in function maybe that could boot on your computer?

I had a HP/Copmaq that refused to boot usb and I heard that if one do a manual frugal install of puppy then one could use that frugal to boot an usb so I did some experiment in sloppy way just to get it to work.

I placed the initrd.gz and wmlinuz on the hdd but the puppyxxx.sfs on the usb but also the other two files there. So when it booted from hdd and could not find the sfs there then it looked at the usb too and could mount it and found the sfs and booted. But it could not do a regular boot from usb it did need the frugal install of the first two files on the hdd too to boot the usb. Very odd to me as a total nooby but it got it going.

I have used PLoP Boot Loader on an old Laptop that did not support booting from USB. I have used it on a CD and a Floppy Disk. It works great, if all you need is to have it point to your USB.

Download the latest version.
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#download
Unzip the file.
In the main folder there is Readme.txt, plpbt.img, plpbt.iso, and a bunch of other stuff.

Write the plpbt.img file to a Floppy Disk Using:
Windows:
Write the disk image with the program rawwritewin to the floppy disk
http://download.plop.at/files/rawwritewin.exe or The Internet somewhere.

Linux:
Write the disk image using dd in linux. fd0 should always be your floppy disk drive. dd is a powerful program that could be used to wipe your entire Hard Drive. Know what you are doing before you do it.
dd if=plpbt.img of=/dev/fd0

You can also burn the CD Image to a CD and use a CD, if you want a CD.

Hello,

You can also burn the CD Image to a CD and use a CD, if you want a CD.

LOL,
CD four times in one sentence...new record??
Only in a Linux forum....

Oh, and I highly recommend reading up before using DD, it is very powerful, and as was said before, can easily wipe your drive, with as little as a typo..."
"Oops, I meant sda3"

All the info on the website might be a bit intimidating or confusing to newbies.
I have attached a compressed file that contains all that is needed to boot Plop installer from a Grub Legacy or Grub4Dos menu.

Caution: Just in case, it doesn't work, make sure you have a way to reset your Master Boot Record. For me, I have Puppy on a CD and whenever I have such problems, I just reinstall Grub4Dos from the CD. Plop worked for me on my desktop PC, but when I tried it on my Laptop which had Puppy and Windows7, it messed up.

To setup the Plop installer, you need to extract the folder to the partition where the mbr is located (hd0,0). Also you need to add a menu entry into the Grub Legacy or Grub4Dos menu.lst file. Here is a sample menu entry:

See Toutou LINUX tutorial (in french) chapter CD de démarrage
make an empty file 'USBflash' on the stick. Run the CD which will boot your USB Stick.

I am surprised that no one had mentioned getting and making a SuperGrub floppy.
Of course, I have not read enough of their docs to tell if it supports USB drives.
But I have it in my collection and can use it if needed.
It is not a fix all though.
From MS Vista forward, MS has boot code that most likely would be overwritten by installation of grub on the same drive and one could no longer boot Windows.