Netboot any Puppy - Beginner's Start's Guide

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greengeek
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#2 Post by greengeek »

Very good tutorial. And so easy!! The only thing I would add is "before starting, make sure that the free space in your personal save file is bigger than the iso you are using for the LAN boot". This consideration will be particularly important if you are wanting to netboot a larger iso (eg some of them are 500MB or more...)
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greengeek
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#3 Post by greengeek »

Hmmm, I had a need to access this info to refresh my memory and discovered a problem viewing the Google Doc. I am using Puppy Racy NOP 5.2.2 and it does not display the Google doc properly. No idea why. I don't recall problems viewing any other sites.
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gcmartin

Problems accessing the Puppy Netboot procedure document

#4 Post by gcmartin »

greengeek wrote:Hmmm, I ... discovered a problem viewing the Google Doc...
I am not running RACY but, I am running SeaMonkey in couple distros. I am not having this problem you show.

Is anyone else having a problem accessing the Puppy NETBOOT procedures document?

Here to help

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sunburnt
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#5 Post by sunburnt »

The web page loads fine for me using Puppy528-005 Lucid.

After looking at the tools, it seems that everything needs integrating.
All the tools into a GUI ( probably tabbed ) and some automation.

Don`t know the client Puppy setup, a BIG "Murga style" initrd.gz file?

The easiest to get PXEbooting would be Barry`s Quirky all-in-the-kernel.
Without a initrd.gz file, PXE is a breeze to get booting... Just the kernel.

gcmartin

#6 Post by gcmartin »

sunburnt wrote: ... After looking at the tools, it seems that everything needs integrating. All the tools into a GUI ( probably tabbed ) and some automation. ...
Hi @Sunburnt, I understand what you share, here.

BUT, I also see why JamesBond approached it as he did. See if this helps the understanding so that should you approach it, you have some basic helpful knowledge.

Network booting in Puppy, as currently designed, requires 2 pieces to the current implementation.
  1. It requires a mechanism to allow a PXE PC from the LAN to get service in some standardized way.
  2. A tool to make an ISO acceptable for booting Puppy and placing it in the prepared mechanism mentioned above.
To support these 2 functions, he provides the following PETs mentioned in the document.
  • DNSMASQ - a PET that he purposely left DNSMASQ in a Pristine install state while the PET sets up a Menu item which invokes the Pristine DNSMASQ with the specific instructions to only support network booting of a PC.
  • NETBOOT3 - a PET that loads scripts onto the system. The script(s) will take the ISO and it preps the folder which is used when the remote PC boots.
With this, you should be able to design/redesign the current GUI to address the Preparation process for booting Puppies. In fact, the NETBOOT scripts does need updating to accomodate the differing compressions that are now being used by several different Puppy distro developers.

Hope this helps

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greengeek
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#7 Post by greengeek »

sunburnt wrote:The easiest to get PXEbooting would be Barry`s Quirky all-in-the-kernel.
Without a initrd.gz file, PXE is a breeze to get booting... Just the kernel.
Hi sunburnt - do you have a link to that particular kernel? Is there a forum topic describing it? thx.

gcmartin

#8 Post by gcmartin »

greengeek wrote:
sunburnt wrote:The easiest to get PXEbooting would be Barry`s Quirky all-in-the-kernel.
Without a initrd.gz file, PXE is a breeze to get booting... Just the kernel.
Hi sunburnt - do you have a link to that particular kernel? Is there a forum topic describing it? thx.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think what he offers is an approach which puts everything in the file named kernel instead of the customary kernel and initrd that is used by many/most distros.

If you look at the booting instructions, you would see something like this as standard for most all Puppy ISOs. These initial booting instructions (isolinux.cfg) gives clues to boot Puppy requirements.

Code: Select all

default puppy

label puppy
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=cd
Hope this helps

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greengeek
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Re: Netboot any Puppy - Beginner's Start's Guide

#9 Post by greengeek »

gcmartin wrote:Here's a 5 minute starter's guide.
Newbies and Experience Users Starter's Guide

The older (and more advanced version ) is found here

Comments welcomed
Hi GC, the newbies guide states that the PPM will provide access to the dnsmasq pet. However I have found that this is not the case for PupServer 435, or for Slacko 5.3 (probably some other puppies as well I guess)

The older document that you have mentioned provides a direct link to the dnsmasq pet, which will be useful to those who have puppies not linking via the PPM.

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sunburnt
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#10 Post by sunburnt »

Hi greengeek; Here`s the links for it.

http://bkhome.org/quirky/
Embed the distro inside the kernel
Recent versions of the Linux kernel have the ability to embed the initramfs and the entire distro filesystem inside the kernel. That sure is one big kernel!
Download: http://puppylinux.com/download
Wikka: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Quirky
Last edited by sunburnt on Sun 16 Sep 2012, 14:56, edited 3 times in total.

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#11 Post by sunburnt »

Boy... Those URLs are really touchy aren`t they?

Thanks GreenGeek for the sharp eye.
Last edited by sunburnt on Sun 16 Sep 2012, 14:57, edited 3 times in total.

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#12 Post by greengeek »

Yep. Some weird stuff happened on the forum last night...
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gcmartin

Re: Netboot any Puppy - Beginner's Start's Guide

#13 Post by gcmartin »

greengeek wrote:Hi GC, the newbies guide states that the PPM will provide access to the dnsmasq pet. However I have found that this is not the case for PupServer 435, or for Slacko 5.3 (probably some other puppies as well I guess)

The older document that you have mentioned provides a direct link to the dnsmasq pet, which will be useful to those who have puppies not linking via the PPM.
You are correct.

This may be something as simple as allowing to PPM to update for the newer PUPs. And the older PUPs may need to continue to use that older guide as it "contains a direct connection" to an older, but working DNSMASQ.

I will try to indicate this in the manual. (And, let's hope that newbies are using FATSlacko (a 32bit file and print sharing version of SLACKO) and newer, current PUPs where most forum attention is concentrated for their use.
Here to help.

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greengeek
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Re: Netboot any Puppy - Beginner's Start's Guide

#14 Post by greengeek »

gcmartin wrote:And, let's hope that newbies are using FATSlacko (a 32bit file and print sharing version of SLACKO) and newer, current PUPs where most forum attention is concentrated for their use.
Yes, fair point. The reason I am trialling older Pups with the PXE loading system is that it seems like a good way to use older laptops etc (that might be underpowered for web browsing) that can be used as a storehouse for music, files and puppy isos, and then serve them up to any PC that comes onto the network.

It is quite fun to see an old clunker laptop send a really pretty newer version of Puppy via PXE to my family members fancy modern Windows machine - and give them an up-to-date Puppy experience. And the old clunker laptop can just sit on the shelf under the router :-)

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gameboyab
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#15 Post by gameboyab »

greengeek wrote:Hmmm, I had a need to access this info to refresh my memory and discovered a problem viewing the Google Doc. I am using Puppy Racy NOP 5.2.2 and it does not display the Google doc properly. No idea why. I don't recall problems viewing any other sites.
I have no problem viewing it using firefox (Nightly) in Slacko Puppy 5.3.3
Not running as root is the cause of my inferiority complex.

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sunburnt
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#16 Post by sunburnt »

Never mind GG got it solved...
Last edited by sunburnt on Sun 16 Sep 2012, 14:58, edited 1 time in total.

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#17 Post by sunburnt »

Hi greengeek; Here`s the links for it.

http://bkhome.org/quirky/

At least this shows... There`s other pages for Quirky also.

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#18 Post by greengeek »

sunburnt wrote:Hi greengeek; Here`s the links for it.

http://bkhome.org/quirky/
Embed the distro inside the kernel
Recent versions of the Linux kernel have the ability to embed the initramfs and the entire distro filesystem inside the kernel. That sure is one big kernel!
Download: http://puppylinux.com/download
Wikka: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Quirky
Hi sunburnt - I tried quoting your blank post to see if I could see what you had written, and I could see the whole post, but it wouldn't display when I hit the "preview" button, so I tried trimming parts of it to see what was making it fail to display. As far as I can make out it was caused by a space being present at the end of the "http://puppylinux.com/download" link. (ie, a space immediately before the [/url] tag)

Thanks for the link - I'm downloading quirky now.

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