Fdisk'd hardrive - can't get further- (hardcore Windoze user

[TomC]

I've followed at least 6 links on FAQ & Beginners. I must've missed something.
Fdisk'd a hardrive and dropped Puppy 2.02 in the CD, It boots, loads this and that code, all says 'ok'
Then at the end it puts up a para. in red about '..not [finding?] suitable hardrive ...' or something.
It's an old HP, AMDK-6 with 128mb memory, 30gb hrdrv.
I used the puppy .iso, and I can get Damn Small Linux to run from their CD, neato.

What do I need to do to get Puppy to install?
Thanks
TomC

[Flash]

Fdisking wasn't what was needed. To prepare your hard drive for a Puppy install you need to create at least one partition, formatted ext2 or ext3, and, because of the small amount of RAM you have, a swap partition would be a good idea too.

I've never installed Puppy on a hard drive (I don't even have a hard drive in the computer I run Puppy on) so I can't give you detailed instructions. There are several threads in the forum that have instructions on using qparted to partition a hard drive for a Puppy install.

[purple_ghost]

Well some thoughts.

Are you sure that you have a good copy of Puppy on the CD. Did you check the MD5 of the download? Did you burn the CD using a low burn speed?

Assuming you feel good about your CD. Let us think on something else.

I am guessing you first want to run Puppy as a live CD, without installing to the hard drive. Which is a bit rhetorically in that the button to install Puppy to a hard drive is inside the live CD desktop. I am guessing you never got the live CD to boot up to the desktop yet?

Where did you get the fdisk you used on the hard drive? Did you fdisk the drive to a FAT32? (other file structures should work, I have not used them.)
If you are prepared to sacrifice everything that was on your hard drive. Which is, I am guessing, what you were thinking when you did the fdisk.
Then you might format the hard drive as the next step. Which really will clobber all the info on the hard drive.

At 128 MB of RAM you are on the edge of what Puppy requires to run without a swap file. I bet you do not have to create a swap file. I have not used only as little as 128 MB of RAM. I think Puppy 2.02 will help you out and create whatever files it needs on the hard drive.

If you are sure you did all the rest of that stuff right. Then 128 MB of RAM must be a bit too little. You might look at the notes of how someone who has, say, 64 MB of RAM gets Puppy to run from the live CD. Then it is like our friend Flash said. You must create the ext file for Puppy to use as a swap file.

After saying all that. Probably what would keep Puppy from not seeing a hard drive after the fdisk, -- is that the Hard drive would need the format program to be run on it.

And if you run the format and try to start the live CD. If you have the same problem. Then you might look for disk tools to create: 1. Multiple partitions. 2. One of those partitions being of a Linux file structure for the swap file.

You are closer to having Puppy romping around than you think. Have fun.

[muggins]

tom,

when you say you fdisked your hdisk, if you do "fdisk /dev/hda", what does option 'p' show your partitiion table as? does it show a linux partition, (Id 83), & a swap(Id 82)?

if this looks OK, maybe try formating the partitions with:

Code: Select all

mke2fs /dev/hda? ,for ext2, (mke2fs -j /dev/hda? for ext3, where ? is the partition number where you want to put puppy)

mkswap /dev/hda? (where ? is partition for swap)

[purple_ghost]

I feel muggins is on the right track.

If you wanted to save what is was on the hard drive. Before you do the format. Then please come back here and ask someone to talk you through using gparted. then perhaps you can save the info on the hard drive and still create a Linux swap partition.

I know the Puppy documentation says that Puppy should run with 128 MB of RAM from a Live CD without a specially created Linux swap file. Like I said, I have not tested that because I have more than 128 MB. I am pretty sure Puppy would run in 128 MB with the versions of Puppy below 2. I do not see any documentation that says Puppy 2.02 would not also work in 128 MB of RAM.

Of course. If you are insistent on doing a hard drive install. Then you must have the devoted (edit) swap file of a Linux file type. Running the Live CD without creating any new partitions seems so much easier for me. (end edit.)

Depending upon your life situation. You could try to download and burn a copy of Puppy 1.0.9CD. Which might prove easier for you to use as a live CD.

I can not know if you have a broadband connection machine sitting next to you. I sometimes use machine time to do things in a way that I know how to do things rather than to work with doing something new to me. Like mke2fs is new to a Windows user. Downloading and burning another CD might seem straight forward to you.

There is also now several limited versions of Puppy 2.02 which might also be easier to download and burn a copy of than fiddling with formating a hard disc to a linux partition.

For the record. The reccomendations I have seen here about a Puppy swap file would be to keep it fairly small. Some say equal to the size of your RAM. In your case 128 MB. Then I saw a post suggesting that is not correct. Perhaps muggins could come back in here and suggest a size for the Linux swap partition for 128 MB of RAM. I have a strong hunch that 128 MB (size) Linux swap partition would work correctly. ????

If you like to work from the Windows side in terms of working with your hard disk. If you need a complete Windows boot disk. You might try to download one from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
I have found that fdisk and format from a Windows 98 SE boot disk seem to create a FAT32 partition Puppy is happy with.

If you actually do go ahead with the format. then you might start off with creating two partitions. So you already have a swap file partition allocated with fdisk. Even if you have not formatted it.

However. I have personally found the Windows boot disk - fdisk program that you need to delete a partition must be the same level of fdisk that I used to create the partition. (Makes not sense to me either. It just is.) So. Maybe do not blow away the fdisk that you have already used.

[richard.a]

I know the Puppy documentation says that Puppy should run with 128 MB of RAM from a Live CD without a specially created Linux swap file. Like I said, I have not tested that because I have more than 128 MB. I am pretty sure Puppy would run in 128 MB with the versions of Puppy below 2. I do not see any documentation that says Puppy 2.02 would not also work in 128 MB of RAM.

I have an IBM Aptiva running an AMD K6-2 500MHz processor with 128Mb of RAM and I tried puppy 2.02 on it.

It runs reasonably well, although an HP Vectra PII-400 with 256 runs a lot better

Also runs better with a swap file enable It uses an existing SuSE 9.1 swap file and it writes personalised files to the SuSE Reiser formatted partition.

I'm a newbie here, and have been looking here to see what people have found about installing the product; I haven't tried installing yet.

But I beta test Linspire (was Lindows) and have tested release candidates of PC-BSD 1.0 and 1.1 and the production 1.2; saying that my background is in MS Windows back as far as 3.1 through to 2000 and OS/2 Warp 3 and 4.

I haven't found a problem using differing versions of MS fdisk although I burned myself a bootable CD of mainly win98 tools for fixing so I guess its mostly the win98SE one I use.

The download of the new Freespire ISO has the magnificent (Gnome-based?) gparted as an item on the GRUB boot menu... it is a honey of a partition manager.

If anyone is interested, I wrote an instruction page for the linspire forums for how to use the MS partitioning tool FDISK. I could post a link here if anyone wanted it.

Enjoy your summer folks, our winter here in Oz has turned to spring with hardly any rain at all. Very bleak outlook on water storage.

Richard in (South) Australia - although I have lived in WA

[muggins]

richard,

i assumed that tomc was referring to linux fdisk, not MS, when he said he'd fdisked a linux partition. when i last used MS fdisk, several years ago, it couldn't see linux partitions. next time you boot puppy, open up a console & type fdisk /dev/hda, & i think you'll agree that linux fdisk has much more functionality than the MS one.

[richard.a]

muggins, on re-reading his post, I suspect you are right

Thanks for the point; I was looking at it with tunnel-vision from the perspective of an ex-Windows user, which is where most non-commercial distros appear to feel they might have a niche.

I'm currently (slowly) putting together one or more posts comprising a series of questions.

Why? Because I have difficulty in finding the answers I need to be able to unequivocally recomend it to others; I would like to use puppy universally on my LAN because of its extreme portability. However I'm having two major problems...

1. An ongoing problem with suddenly corrupt configuration files, located on a FAT-32 data storage file on every computer (I have several). I believe I've nailed this back to keeping on defragmenting it when in MS Windows. Bad move I suspect, and something I didn't think through. If this IS the case, then it should be emphasised imho.

Edit here... In fact, I've just proved this is not the case, but I'll leave it to my catalogued list of questions Suffice it to say it happened immediately after checking the tray height option (for corruption), then changing wallpaper and theme... then checking tray height modification again which returned the "New config corrupt. Keeping original" message box

2. I appear to be unable, after following instructions to the letter, to boot from the OS after installing it to several USB plugs (64, 128 and 1024 Mb) and a regular HDD (partitioned at 1024Mb).

There seem to be conflicting instructions on the MO to be used, although I have not followed the one above suggesting formatting the desired partition as ext2 or ext3. Instructions also seem to be spread around a bit.

On one occasion I got the WakePup floppy to recognise where the installation was, but it required a question and answer session for that to work... I tried that three times. I also tried GaG which has worked for me with corrupted MBRs before.

So I'm slowly putting together this list of questions, and intend to tabulate the very large number of screencaps I've taken with the product with associated "how-to" pages on one of my vhosts.

Hope this doesn't come across as a newbie blowing their bags; far from it, I used to write instructions aimed at newbies for Australia's premier CAD magazine until it ceased print production some years ago. I try and give back to the community something as a thankyou for how well it has financially supported me over the years

There is one point which is a matter for concern for me. It appears from many of the posts one can dig up that a section of the PuppyLinux community seems to want to "grow the product" to include KDE and all sorts.

My worry is that this direction will likely kill the attractiveness of the product and make it just like any other distribution, suffering (as a result) from either bloat, or being inadequate.

My 2.02 works very well, albeit with a few enhancements for the user needing to be added - like being able to edit the menu - and it is simplicity in itself. I don't need to do more than it provides, which includes the playing of DVDs magnificently.

I like what I see, but am loathe to standardise on it if it is going to change like this, because I want to use something that will continue.

Enjoy your weekend, Europe and the States; it is Sunday afternoon here in Australia