Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Steve White]

Is it possible to install Puppy Linux without a CD player?

Say you have a netbook running some other Linux and a bunch of USB flash memory sticks, but no CD burner/player is available. How would you go about installing a bootable Puppy Linux on one of those sticks?

If this isn't possible now, I would say it's high time to make it possible.

Cheers!

[looseSCREWorTWO]

To install the right Puppy files to a USB Pen Drive and make it bootable without a CD/DVD Drive is complicated, but possible, if the Netbook already has Ubuntu or something similar already installed. But to install the accompanying Grub bootloader without having Puppy up and running you would need to be Einstein or a Grub expert, or both.

I would take the Netbook and the USB Pen Drive into an Internet Cafe and talk to the bod at the counter. Tell him/her that you want to use their facilities for an hour or two and can they lend you a CD/DVD Drive that plugs into the USB? An hour or two at an Internet Cafe in Sydney costs 2 or 3 Dollars and most of them don't charge anything for lending you an optical drive. It's usually just part of the service. I assume it would be same in any big city.

If you can't get to an Internet Cafe, you can buy a USB CD Drive for under $20 (Australian) Go to eBay and do a search on:
USB CD Drive

[Aitch]

Steve White

If you have the ability to d/l a Puppy ISO, try reading this

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8674

Also see

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28913

Basically a frugal install plus grub mods.....AFAIK

Aitch

[rcrsn51]

[Steve White]

Thanks for the links! They helped, but none worked exactly. Here is how I did it.

The goal is to install Puppy Live directly from a mounted ISO image to a
USB memory stick. It requires a recent version of Linux, with the right
version of grub installed. No CD involved.

These instructions are for recent versions of grub but not for grub2.
(The grub2 releases have gone very tragically awry regarding ease of
use, which was the main reason for grub's popularity.)

First mount the ISO image somewhere:

$ mount -o loop puppy-431.iso /mnt

Use gparted or other partition manager to partition the memory stick

make one extended partition
inside extended partaion make one logical partition
set boot flag on logical partition
make label of logical partition PuppyStick or something

Mount the stick, say to /media/PuppyStick, and copy the files from the ISO image to the stick:

$ scp -rp /mnt/* /media/PuppyStick

Install the grub boot manager on the memory stick:

$ grub-install --root-directory=/media/PuppyStick DEV

where DEV is the device of the memory stick (use df to determine that--something like /dev/sdb )

Make a file

/media/PuppyStick/boot/grub/menu.lst

containing

[Steve White]

So it is possible. And while it isn't really hard, it isn't easy.

So I propose that it be made easy. This really, really, needs to be easy.

[nooby]

Thanks we have at least one or two such threads now that want to be able to do this.

Me too want to know how to. So much appreciated that you describe it.

Unfortunately for me I am not that savvy to really grasp how to from your text.
I trust it can be done that way but I don't trrust me know how to replicate it.

You don't need an uuid number for puppy but it doesn't hurt either I guess.

[rcrsn51]

[looseSCREWorTWO]

From Windows, or another Linux, will Unetbootin allow the AVERAGE USER (with no knowledge of Grub or Linux at the command-line) to format a USB Stick so that it is Bootable in Puppy?

Because Steve White and Nooby are right:
this needs to be really, really, easy FOR THE AVERAGE USER, otherwise Puppy will be left behind. CDs are "old technology". Netbooks don't even have a DVD drive. Everyone's using USB Sticks.

[nooby]

Yes that works for somebody good at using major distribution of linux.

I've tried that since at least Dec2009 but also since 2006 and 2008 and gave up on it 2009 but started again since Dec 2009 and Puppy linux is the only distro I can use due to all the restrictions in the major linux making the learning curve too steep for me.

I tried http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ in puppy and that doesn't seem to work.

I would prefer we get a good description for noobs on my low level of grasping that works in puppy. I don't want to rely on other distros than puppy.

I barely get how to do things on puppy.

[nooby]

tuxcantfly the dev of unetbootin write this:

[rcrsn51]

When Unetbootin first came out, there were reports from people who tried to install Puppy on a flash drive and accidentally borked their hard drive.

But that's possible with any Linux installer if you get confused or make a mistake. For that matter, burning a Live CD and making it bootable has never been really, really easy either.

[nooby]

Yes but let us not get bogged down on such issues.

Look forward instead. We need an easy way to install any kind of linux without being dependent on CD and preferably not on using usb either.

The best way would be to just boot the iso as it is and install either frugal from that boot or do a full install from that booted iso file.
the only tool needed should be a simple plain text editor and a description on how to find the menu.lst of Grub legacy or Grub2 or Lilo whatever kind of bootloader there is and add linux.iso to it and boot from that one in frugal and from then on it is up to the user to decide on how to proceed. If they install Puppy frugal they get save file while if they install major linux they have to know more to get a save file. Some of slackware does allow it but most other not.


That approach should work to get a linux going regardless if one have windows or linux on the hdd in first place.

[rcrsn51]

[upnorth]

to display uuid's, blkid command is convenient.