For those of you who might be interested in a translated version I have summarized and extended the German version as follows:
A first suggestion for a frugal installation was ...
With CD
1. copy browser and email data to another partition
2. download ISO and burn to CD
3. start CD and partition your HDD
4. use Universal Installer for a frugal installation
5. install Grub to its own small partition
6. Reboot into the new Puppy; install browser and email client
7. copy back saved browser and email data
8. install other programs
Since this poster used a CD for the installation of – another – Puppy, a method was suggested that avoids burning a CD:
Without CD
First step:
Only necessary for the very first Puppy on a given PC without any grub installed.
>download the desired ISO
>Burn to CD; in Win use e.g. ImgBurn
>Start CD; boot parameter pfix=ram recommended when remnants of previous Puppies could be present
> Partition with gparted; one ext2/3 partition for all planned Puppies; one swap partition. Size min 1GB per Puppy and 2GB for sundry. Swap = 2x RAM, max 1GB.
> Create one subdirectory per Puppy on ext2/3 partition, e.g. "525". Mount CD-drive and copy all files from CD to new subdirectory (actually only 3 are needed but the others are tiny and this way its much simpler for newbies).
>Install Grub with menu-system-grub bootloader config. Choose "simple" und "MBR" when asked. Put folder /boot on ext2/3 partition.
>Goto folder /boot/grub and open menu.lst. Change entry for Puppy 525 to read similar to this:
Code: Select all
# Linux bootable partition config begins
title Puppy 520 Frugal-ext3 (on /dev/sdb5)
rootnoverify (hd1,4)
kernel (hd1,4)/525/vmlinuz PMEDIA=atahd PDEV1=sdb5 psubdir=525
initrd (hd1,4)/525/initrd.gz
# Linux bootable partition config ends
Reboot and create pupsave file in the process when prompted.
Second step:
For installing the second and any further Puppy one only needs to start an existing Puppy and create another subdirectory on the ext-partition (/mnt/home). Mount the new ISO and copy the content to that subdirectory. Amend menu.lst. Reboot and create pupsave file. This entire process takes less than 5 minutes.
Third step:
Configuration: Larger applications like Firefox, Thunderbird, Office etc. will be installed to /mnt/home. There are generally two different methods.
Add an SFS file which can be found and downloaded through Quickpet.
Or one can directly install a programm to /mnt/home. E.g. Firefox can be obtained as tar.gz at the Mozilla site. Download and unpack to /mnt/home. Starting it once creates /root/.mozilla. This directory can be moved to /mnt/home and symlinked back to /root. This way a possibly fast growing profile folder is kept outside the pupsave file. Similarly for Thunderbird, or an Office Suite (see two relevant posts here
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=66202
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=65918
Or, if you want to always get the latest Open Office or Libre Office directly from their websites, first install this pet
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=27067
then download the rpm or deb packages from OO or LO and unrpm/deb them. Put the folder on /mnt/home and drag the executables to the desktop. Done.
Users with an existing grub install for another Linux can omitt step one entirely.
Finally the discussion turned to the subject of a small extra partition for grub. This can be done, e.g. to a 1-2 MB size sda1 partition. However, even then, the MBR is subject to overriding when reinstalling Windows.