Add a Graphical Boot Menu to your Puppy Live CD

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shinobar
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Add a Graphical Boot Menu to your Puppy Live CD

#1 Post by shinobar »

You know the Grub/Gru4Dos provides graphical menu.
You can make your Puppy Live CD as the same.
You can see an example with Lucid Puppy Quickset edition(LupQ).
(Direct desktop with Puppy-4.x, see the topic: Quickset Puppy )
Flappy, and maybe Puppeee, made by jemimah also has a graphical menu using isolinux.

Here is the step to make a Puppy live CD with graphical menu using Grub4Dos. (UPDATED using dir2iso, contained in the file attached.)
  1. Download and extract graphicalmenu-files-20140531.tar.gz
    http://shino.pos.to/party/bridge.cgi?puppy/opt/
  2. Prepare your favorite Puppy or remastered one with .iso file or CD.
  3. Make the work directory at any partition, like /mnt/sda1/my-puppy-linux.
  4. Copy all the contents in 'graphicalmenu-files-xxxx' attached to the work directory, but move the dir2iso-xx.pet to another place.
  5. Install the dir2iso-xx.pet.
  6. Mount your Puppy CD or .iso file.
  7. Copy the 3-4 files, vmlinuz, initrd.*, *.sfs(the main and the driver sfs if exists), into the work directory.
  8. Edit the 3 files, menu.lst, README.htm, splash.xpm. Former 2 can edit by a text editor. The splash.xpm is 640x480x14(14 or less color depth) .xpm file, you can edit by mtpaint or gimp. You can also edit the UPUP.ICO by gimp.
  9. Right-click the work directory and choose 'dir2iso'. Or run from a terminal 'dir2iso' and drag and drop the the work directory on the entry box.
  10. You can type the name of the new CD (default is same of the directory name).
  11. Click 'OK'. You can get the new CD or .iso file
Once you make the Grub4Dos Puppy CD, you can remaster it with the normal step(if your remasterpup2 supports grub4dos).

Happy Puppy!
Last edited by shinobar on Sat 31 May 2014, 02:46, edited 12 times in total.
Downloads for Puppy Linux [url]http://shino.pos.to/linux/downloads.html[/url]

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shinobar
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Screen shot

#2 Post by shinobar »

Here is an example of the boot menu:

Image

You can put 'safe mode', 'RAM mode', and etc.
The items of Windows can boot-up Windows(95 to 7) directly even if the MBR boot loader is broken.
Downloads for Puppy Linux [url]http://shino.pos.to/linux/downloads.html[/url]

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Flash
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#3 Post by Flash »

Very nice. :) I have a few questions:

What is "Puppy safe mode?"

Is "Puppy in RAM only" the same thing as booting Puppy with the puppy pfix=ram boot option?

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shinobar
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safe mode

#4 Post by shinobar »

Flash wrote:What is "Puppy safe mode?"

Is "Puppy in RAM only" the same thing as booting Puppy with the puppy pfix=ram boot option?
"Puppy in RAM only" is 'puppy pfix=ram', yes.

"Puppy safe mode":
Start puppy with safety boot options(without X)
Try 'xorgwizard' after bootup succeed to start graphic mode.

Code: Select all

pfix=ram,nox acpi=off apm=off nosmp noapic nodma nopcmcia
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Aitch
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#5 Post by Aitch »

There's also Catdude's version of graphical GRUB

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=27471

Aitch :)

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shinobar
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color depth of splash.xpm

#6 Post by shinobar »

Correction:
The color depth of the 'splash.xpm' must not be larger then 14. (was described '15')
Edit the 3 files, menu.lst, README.htm, splash.xpm. Former 2 can edit by a text editor. The splash.xpm is 640x480x14(14 or less color depth) .xpm file, you can edit by mtpaint or gimp. You can also edit the UPUP.ICO by gimp.
Downloads for Puppy Linux [url]http://shino.pos.to/linux/downloads.html[/url]

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Iguleder
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#7 Post by Iguleder »

Don't forget "nomodeset" for the safe mode, shinobar :wink:

Thanks for the tutorial, I'll try it with my new Puppy experiment and post it in the derivatives forum if it actually works :)
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sc0ttman
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#8 Post by sc0ttman »

I recently remastered a 4.2 system, and followed the guide on this thread to add GRUB to the live CD..

However the new remastered version does not go to xorgwizard, it stops after the keyboard wizard..
I have to to type 'xwin' or 'xorgwizard' manually to get to the xorgwizard..
This was not the case before I remastered.

I have a few questions..

I have the following options in the menu.lst on my live CD:

Code: Select all

i915.modeset=1 video=800x600
What are these options? What do they do?

Could they affect a 4.2 system from loading xorgwizard?

Can they be removed?
Do they even work with Puppy 4.2? Or only Lupu and later?
[b][url=https://bit.ly/2KjtxoD]Pkg[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2U6dzxV]mdsh[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2G49OE8]Woofy[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/bzBU1]Akita[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/SO5ug]VLC-GTK[/url], [url=https://tiny.cc/c2hnfz]Search[/url][/b]

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shinobar
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boot options

#9 Post by shinobar »

sc0ttman wrote:I recently remastered a 4.2 system, and followed the guide on this thread to add GRUB to the live CD..

However the new remastered version does not go to xorgwizard, it stops after the keyboard wizard..
I have to to type 'xwin' or 'xorgwizard' manually to get to the xorgwizard..
This was not the case before I remastered.
It behaves as 'pfix=nox' option?
Seems somthing fault in the remastaring.

Code: Select all

i915.modeset=1 video=800x600
You need not these options.
It does not affect. At least for me it did not affect to boot up Puppy 4.2.1.
Downloads for Puppy Linux [url]http://shino.pos.to/linux/downloads.html[/url]

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sc0ttman
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Re: boot options

#10 Post by sc0ttman »

shinobar wrote:You need not these options.
It does not affect. At least for me it did not affect to boot up Puppy 4.2.1.
OK thanks, just checking if they affect puppy boot options (particularly with X).
[b][url=https://bit.ly/2KjtxoD]Pkg[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2U6dzxV]mdsh[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2G49OE8]Woofy[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/bzBU1]Akita[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/SO5ug]VLC-GTK[/url], [url=https://tiny.cc/c2hnfz]Search[/url][/b]

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graphicalmenu-files-20120706

#11 Post by shinobar »

Updated graphicalmenu-files-20120706.tar.gz, containd dir2iso.
See the top post.
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TLM
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#12 Post by TLM »

Thanks shinobar. I had posted an inquiry about how to do this in another thread. Now i have my answer. Thank you. :D

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shinobar
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graphicalmenu-files-20140531

#13 Post by shinobar »

UPDATE:
graphicalmenu-files-20140531.tar.gz
http://shino.pos.to/party/bridge.cgi?puppy/opt/
Downloads for Puppy Linux [url]http://shino.pos.to/linux/downloads.html[/url]

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cimarron
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#14 Post by cimarron »

Thanks for the instructions. I was messing with alternate spash screens for grub4dos and came up with this one I liked, so I'll share...
Attachments
splash.jpg
"powered by Puppy Linux"
(41.8 KiB) Downloaded 2810 times
splash.xpm.gz
properly formatted and compressed for use by bootloader
(3.97 KiB) Downloaded 810 times

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cimarron
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#15 Post by cimarron »

Here's another alternative. I use these lines at the beginning of my menu.lst so the text is visible if it overlaps the big puppy:

Code: Select all

splashimage=(hd0,0)/splash.xpm.gz 
foreground=8A8A8A
background=000000
Attachments
splash.JPG
big puppy
(56.76 KiB) Downloaded 2799 times
splash.xpm.gz
splash image formatted and compressed for use by bootloader
(7.17 KiB) Downloaded 708 times

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