Puppeee 4.4 revisited

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starhawk
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#16 Post by starhawk »

Mike7 wrote:On the subject of boot sectors and partitions and all that, do you know if re-formatting a pendrive (in WindowsXP or Linux) clears the MBR as well as the partitions?
As a recreational Puppy user (I am guilty of still, after two years on this forum, having my main system use WinXP :oops: ) I can tell you quite certainly that, at least with Windows, formatting does nothing to the MBR -- even through WinXP's storage stuff under Administrative Tools. gparted will help you there, but Windows will not ;)

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Mike7
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#17 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Starhawk.

I was afraid that might be the case with the MBR. I'll have to rely on the installation programs to re-write it. I don't think that Gparted can do anything to the MBR, only specific programs that write MBRs, like the one that installed Puppeee 4.4. That was bootinst.bat, and wrote:

if %OS% == Windows_NT goto setupNT
goto setup95
:setupNT
\boot\syslinux\syslinux.exe -maf -d . %DISK%:

which looks like an MBR write to me. I could be wrong. My knowledge of MBRs is zilch, really.

All Gparted seems able to do is put an "active" or "boot" flag on a partition, which isn't the same as writing the MBR.

I can see trouble looming when I try to re-format my pendrives and install other op sys.

Mike

songzi
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Joined: Sat 23 Jan 2010, 01:43

#18 Post by songzi »

Hi Mike,

I used Puppeee quite a lot previously. In fact I still have it installed on the EeePC 900's 4G internal SSD. I have two other Puppeees - one on an USB stick and the other on a SD card. I really enjoy the fun that the small netbook and puppies have brought me.

Have fun!

Songzi
Puppy Linux | Arch | antiX

rokytnji
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Joined: Tue 20 Jan 2009, 15:54

#19 Post by rokytnji »

\boot\syslinux\syslinux.exe
That is just coupple of folders and a text file. Do not sweat mbr , Wearing out pendrive, Boot removal.

I don't even format pendrives anymore. I just remove the files to clean them out. View hidden files in rox will reveal them all.

Boot flag can be removed using gparted. No formatting needed there also.

You can remove and re run any linux distro from the same pendrive. I have been doing this for MacPup Testing for runtt21 the developer and Anticapitalista, the AntiX develo[per for years now.
I can see trouble looming when I try to re-format my pendrives and install other op sys.
I wish I could see a alien ship looming ahead while riding my motorcycle through the open desert. Sighs with disappointment. :(

You are worrying about nothing in my view. I uses Sandisk, Kingston, Class4, Class 10, Flash drives, SD flash, Usb flash, SSD Flash 64gig.

If paranoid as all get out and it keeps you awake at night worrying about this. Here is something to scamble your brains so you sleep better.

http://siduction.org/index.php?module=n ... 78&lang=en

I tweaked my 64 gig ssd drive for optimal life and speeds, but brother, it aint easy.

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Mike7
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#20 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Songzi.

Yes, I am enjoying Puppeee 4.4 a lot, even if some of the apps don't work <grin>.

As soon as I find a distro that I'm 99% sure of, I'll try to put it on an SD card and leave it in the SD slot on the side of my Eee 1000HA. Nice thing, that slot. A lot of people don't even know it's there.

Today I tried to install Slitaz 4.0 on a USB stick with the Slitaz USB creator. No dice. The developers put out new releases but forget to upgrade their support programs. Typical.

Tomorrow I'm gonna finally break down and try out one of these installer programs like LinuxLive or Universal USB Installer. I'm wasting a lot of time with bad installs. Gotta try and speed up this process, 'cause I've got a lot of distros to weed through.

Thanks for your support. I may very well end up sticking with Puppeee 4.4. It works.

Cheers!

Mike

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Mike7
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#21 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

You gave me a few chuckles, there. And I'm very relieved to hear that I can re-format and re-install on the flash drives. I'll try to stop worrying, although the article at siduction.org didn't help to clear my psyche.

Regarding Gparted in Puppeee 4.4, I used it today to look at a pendrive that had an unbootable install of Slitaz, and I couldn't get any right-click context menu for it at all, so couldn't do ckdisk. Any idea how to activate the right-click menu? It would be very useful, to say the least.

Darn but I get ticked off when programs don't do what they're supposed to, even after twenty-five years of computing. (I'm tempted to mention the nasty word that starts with a "W" and ends with an "s", but will refrain.)

These problems never arose with emacs in Unix. Maybe we've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Too much developing and too little development.

Cheers!

Mike

rokytnji
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#22 Post by rokytnji »

Regarding Gparted in Puppeee 4.4, I used it today to look at a pendrive that had an unbootable install of Slitaz, and I couldn't get any right-click context menu for it at all, so couldn't do ckdisk. Any idea how to activate the right-click menu? It would be very useful, to say the least.
Usually you gotta umount it first before a check. Right click handles that also. I don't know why right click is not working on your save file. I would boot your puppeee pendrive in

Code: Select all

puppy pfix=ram
mode and see if gparted right click with slitaz pendrive works in that mode. Sounds like a corrupted save file to me in your puppeee pendrive install since you say right click
in gparted is broken. Just a desert bikers guess though.

you can type in puppy pfix=ram at the pretty grub choice screen when puppy pendrive boots up. Then hit enter key.

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Mike7
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#23 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok

I finally got the Gparted right-click context menu working again, I'm not sure how. Like you say, it was probably a bad boot.

What exactly does "puppy pfix=ram" do? Is that the menu choice to run in RAM?

There's nowhere to enter commands on my boot-up screen, just a list of choices, most of which I don't understand.

Doesn't Puppeee always run in RAM, thus requiring those saves to the save file?

While on the subject of boot-up choices, how do I get it to stop making those saves to the save file, which seem unnecessary to me? One save at shutdown would be fine, no? They interrupt what I'm doing and waste power.

Since I'm picking your brains (hope you don't mind), is there a reasonably easy method of installing other live Linux distros onto a pendrive from Puppeee 4.4? I just wasted two days fruitlessly trying to do it using Windows-based programs like Unetbootin, Universal boot loader, LinuxLive, and Live USB. I tried them with maybe ten different distros and nothing would boot. Very frustrating. There must be some way to do it using Puppeee 4.4 and the live-CD iso files I've collected. Any ideas?

Cheers, and thanks once more for all your help.

Mike

kb8amz
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Location: Kent, Ohio, USA

Puppeee

#24 Post by kb8amz »

Using puppeee-1.0. I would like to try puppeee-4.4 but its nowhere to be found. I wish that jemimah had not left, but I understand her explanation. Unlike BarryK she is not retired.

puppeee-1.0 is okay for my Acer Aspire One 2 GB RAM Atom CPU but its not as fancy as Precise or Slack that I run on my laptops and one desktop.

So I wonder if that Atom version puppeee from jemimah is available from a forum member for up or download?
Terry Morris - KB8AMZ
Registered Linux User# 412308

Dell Latitude D505 tahr-6.0-CE_noPAE; Dell Optiplex 520 desktop Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; Dell Optiplex 150 LM 17 32bit, HP Quad Core AMD FatDog64 7.02

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Ray MK
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#25 Post by Ray MK »

hi kb8amz

You could consider Fluppy - another Jemimah masterpiece and probably very well suited to your Acer.

HTH - best regards - Ray
[b]Asus[/b] 701SD. 2gig ram. 8gb SSD. [b]IBM A21m[/b] laptop. 192mb ram. PIII Coppermine proc. [b]X60[/b] T2400 1.8Ghz proc. 2gig ram. 80gb hdd. [b]T41[/b] Pentium M 1400Mhz. 512mb ram.

rokytnji
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#26 Post by rokytnji »

puppy pfix=ram boots without using your save sfs file. It is a prsitine boot. Try it sometime.

I think yumi handles multiboot pendrives. Naming save .sfs should give a choice on which to load on boot also. If none. Make a blank .sfs in home and name it 1blank.sfs
Now you should get a choice on which save file to boot up.

@kb8amz


Edit: link is no good anymore


is my cloud copy puppy-rc7-atom. Mike 7 can give you the link for stored 1.0 cloud copy of puppeee. I am busy with honey dews today. :)

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rcrsn51
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#27 Post by rcrsn51 »

Mike7 wrote:is there a reasonably easy method of installing other live Linux distros onto a pendrive from Puppeee 4.4?
I believe that Puppeee 4.4 has the right stuff to run ISObooter.

But set it up on a second pen drive - not the one that has Puppeee on it.

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Mike7
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#28 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Terry.

You wrote:
I would like to try puppeee-4.4 but its nowhere to be found
http://ubuntuone.com/03spbbxEXin5IN44Qn1xNx is still good for downloading the Puppeee 4.4 files. It´s in the tar.bz2 format, which can be handled by any good zip utility.

The distro uses a DOS batch file (bootinstall.bat) to write the MBR, a really good idea since so far this is the only distro I have succeeded in getting to boot from a pendrive without going through an iso on CD. Clever, those Puppeee folks!

Good luck!

Mike

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Mike7
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#29 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

More silly (?) questions:

-- Where do I put puppy pfix=ram?

-- Does Puppeee load everything, including the save file, into RAM and run in RAM as the default?

Re YUMI, I have not tried it yet. I first want to try out the individual distros. And frankly, after all the trouble I am having with the other flash drive installerss, I doubt that YUMI will do any better.

I am still in the dark how to stop Puppeee 4.4 from doing saves every 20 minutes while still saving on shutdown. Do I need to edit the save2flash file (which I believe is a shell command)? If so, any idea how to do that?

Cheers!

Mike

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Mike7
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#30 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, rcrsn51.

I went to the linked page (How to Make a Bootable Flash Drive using GRUB2) and read your whole article through carefully twice, then printed it out to study it. I will have some questions on specific points in it later, if that is okay.

For now, though, first this one: Should I use isobooter.tar.gz or isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz, for installing distros like Tiny Core Linux and Slitaz?

I am asuming that ISObooter runs only in Linux. That is, it cannot make bootable pendrives from WindowsXP (the op sys on my hard drive). Is that right?

Anecdotally, I tried to use the Puppy Universal Installer that came with Puppeee 4.4, and which was meant only to install Puppy, to put Grub onto a flash drive on which I had already placed the files from an iso of TinyCorePlus 4.7.4. The application allows you to choose where it will install Grub, and I guessed correctly that it was sdc1 (I am running Puppeee from sdb). Grub did get put onto the flash drive, but, probably because I do not know how to edit the files properly, the flash drive still was not bootable. Maybe I get a star for a good try, though <grin>.

One last thought for now: Because I had so much trouble trying to install Slitaz on a pendrive (their own tazusb.exe does not work!), I went into the Slitaz forum and asked for help. They told me that Slitaz could not be installed onto a FAT file system, so none of the installers that run in Windows would work. Strangely enough, though, most of those installers list Slitaz as a supported distro. Any comment on this?

Cheers for now. I will get back to you when I have had a chance to download and try to use ISObooter.

Mike

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rcrsn51
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#31 Post by rcrsn51 »

Mike7 wrote:Should I use isobooter.tar.gz or isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz, for installing distros like Tiny Core Linux and Slitaz?
You are running a Puppy, so you will use isobooter.tar.gz. An Ubuntu user who wanted to make bootable flash drives would use isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz.
I am asuming that ISObooter runs only in Linux. That is, it cannot make bootable pendrives from WindowsXP (the op sys on my hard drive). Is that right?
Correct. There are lots of Windows tools for doing this. One of them is discussed here.
Anecdotally, I tried to use the Puppy Universal Installer that came with Puppeee 4.4, and which was meant only to install Puppy, to put Grub onto a flash drive on which I had already placed the files from an iso of TinyCorePlus 4.7.4. The application allows you to choose where it will install Grub, and I guessed correctly that it was sdc1 (I am running Puppeee from sdb). Grub did get put onto the flash drive, but, probably because I do not know how to edit the files properly, the flash drive still was not bootable. Maybe I get a star for a good try, though <grin>.
The point of ISObooter is that you don't have to unpack the ISO file and guess how to install it.
One last thought for now: Because I had so much trouble trying to install Slitaz on a pendrive (their own tazusb.exe does not work!), I went into the Slitaz forum and asked for help. They told me that Slitaz could not be installed onto a FAT file system, so none of the installers that run in Windows would work. Strangely enough, though, most of those installers list Slitaz as a supported distro. Any comment on this?
There is a difference between booting a distro's Live CD and actually doing a hard drive install. But I just used ISObooter to boot Slitaz off a FAT32 flash drive. It took about 30 seconds to set up.

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Mike7
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#32 Post by Mike7 »

You are running a Puppy, so you will use isobooter.tar.gz.
Okay.
There are lots of Windows tools for doing this. One of them is discussed here.
I am looking into that right now. The prep program looks good.
The point of ISObooter is that you don't have to unpack the ISO file and guess how to install it.
That would be a huge relief.
I just used ISObooter to boot Slitaz off a FAT32 flash drive. It took about 30 seconds to set up.
I plan to try it out first thing tomorrow.

Thanks!

Mike

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Mike7
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#33 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

Here's a quickee I've been meaning to ask someone for a long time:
Isn't there a difference between installing an iso on a pendrive and installing the extracted files? If it's the iso, how can it have persistence (in Puppeee, the save file)?

Ubuntu, I believe, creates a separate partition for a casper file for persistence. But how would an iso be able to save changes?

As I understand it, the iso is extracted to RAM. So how do the changes get put back into the iso at the end of a session? It can't be done, can it, without creating a new iso?

Mike

jakfish
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#34 Post by jakfish »

I've been lurking this thread with interest since--using an eee 900--I just moved from an early alpha puppeee (w/ a very-stripped kernel) to Puppy 1.0 Celeron.

1.0 is a great puppeee and doesn't always get its deserved kudos. For one thing, its pwireless2 picks up and connects the 900 the fastest of any puppy I've tried on the eee.

I also think that Chrome serves the 900 very well. jemimah's Chrome is 5, but Chrome 7 will install on top of it nicely:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=61075

Chrome 7 is probably the highest you can go on a 4.31 set-up. For me at least, I find this to be the fastest browsing--but for reasons I haven't determined, you can't log-in to Chrome to sync bookmarks, etc. I can live w/ that, I guess, though I'd like to know why.

Mike7, I highly recommend getting an internal ssd for your machine. To be doing all you're doing, and trying to do it on usb only (especially when playing w/ other linux's) could compound problems w/ the beginner's installations.

Also, w/ an ssd, your puppy--even though frugally installed--will fly much faster, since you can store the OS sfs, save file, and other sfs's on the ssd. There's a neat, one-line trick in the syslinux.cfg file to get this to work.

And, lastly, Lubuntu 12.10 has been--at least for me--the definitive Linux for the eee. Everything works OOB, 3-second shutdown, and if it's installed on an ssd, it boots even faster than puppeee. Not to mention that it's au currant, with automatic updates almost daily.

I have run Lubuntu off a USB, a big pain and very slow.

So I have Lubuntu 12.10/XP SP3 on the ssd and Puppy 1.0 booting off a class 10 sd card, but accessing its main files on the ssd. Obviously, XP is the weak link here. My heart is always with puppy, and I run one on all my netbooks, but Lubuntu and the eee are a great pair.

The forum here, as we all know, is the best--far, far better than the Ubuntu forum, which has over 3 million posts, I believe. Posting there is like jumping off the earth.

You seem to have great enthusiasm for this venture--my suggestion is get an ssd and not hamstring yourself w/ missing hardware. Its purchase will make life very much fun :)

The worst kind of advice, free :)
Jake

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rokytnji
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#35 Post by rokytnji »

Isn't there a difference between installing an iso on a pendrive and installing the extracted files? If it's the iso, how can it have persistence (in Puppeee, the save file)?
Not sure what you are asking. All I can say is how I test MacPup for runtt21.

I download what ever test iso he emails me. I use unetbootin for linux to install the test iso
(by the way, I md5sum check all downloaded files to save headaches in testing later)

I boot the flash drive test iso with the syslinux bootloader provided with unetbootin.
Then after getting to the desktop. I install grub4dos to mbr on the pendrive to get rid of
syslinux bootloader. Why you may ask?

Because grub4dos gives more boot options than syslinux does. After grub4dos is installed. I shutdown and make a 512MB save file ext2 and name it test1(with the date).

Reboot and then set up wireless (which I tested earlier before making save file) and do whatever changes I wish to do to personalize and install certain applications I personally use as part of the test.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 978#647978

That install is a quad booter, (Macpup,Vector,Semplice,AntiX) in my Desktop computer, not pendrive but is a frugal install next to full installs of other linux distros with grub2 and legacy grub, motorcycle shop that I let other bikers play with.

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