Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[ETP]

Like many Puppians, particularly those new to Linux, I have always preferred to run my pups from USB2 flash rather than by installing them to my C: drive in some sort of dual boot arrangement. These can work fine but also, can be fraught with difficulty and the corruption or total loss of your Windows system may be the result.

The method described below involves no changes or additions to your C: drive. It was arrived at after a good deal of trial & error and won out due to its simplicity.
No menu.lst is needed.

The downside of booting puppy from USB is that you can be forever popping in & out of the BIOS to change the boot order when switching between XP & puppy. Providing you leave the stick plugged in this need is eliminated as the modified syslinux menu provides the option to boot into XP or Puppy.

For the purposes of this method I used syslinux 4.04 with the graphical vesamenu.c32. It assumes that you already possess a working USB stick using syslinux & vesamenu. Vesamenu.c32 and syslinux.cfg should be in the root of the flash drive together with the splash screen (bart9splash.jpg) if used.

All files including a full copy of my syslinux.cfg, the 2 required grub files and the splash screen are attached.

STEPS:
1. On your stick create the directory structure shown and place the 2 files in it.



2. Append the following block of code to your syslinux.cfg or use the one attached and modify it to suit your particular pup(s).

[ETP]

Alternate splash screen for syslinux/vesamenu.c32 (1024x768 - 68KB)

[ETP]

Hello World,
Some relevant feedback would be nice (good or bad - "Nice font" will not suffice)

[nilsonmorales]

tnx i will try a report ok
http://nilsonmorales.blogspot.com/
where you download the grub.exe
some link?

[ETP]

Nilsonmorales,

Thanks for your interest. All files are included in the attachment at the bottom of the first post.

[OscarTalks]

Hello ETP,

Thanks for posting these dual boot methods. I know how time-consuming it can be working these things out.

I have been using Puppy for a few months now but have always run Live. I have just started dipping my toe in the water of installing and booting and grub and stuff.

I would like to try your method on my little netbook with Windows XP on the HDD and Puppy frugal on an 8 Gig SD card which I have slotted in.

As a first step though, I would like to install Puppy to the SD card after it has been formatted as ext4, which I haven't been able to do yet. Can you (or anyone) tell me how to do this such that it can be booted using the BIOS?

I have currently got it working perfectly (not dual boot of course) by using BootFlash to make the SD card bootable and then Puppy Universal Installer to install the files (Slacko 5.3.3), but BootFlash forces formatting as vfat (unless I missed something) and PUI alone doesn't seem to create an install that boots on ext4 (or is it one of those mbr options that I need to use?). Does it become necessary to install grub or grub4dos even though it is not needed if the SD card is vfat?

Once I can figure this out I would then hope to go on to try the dual boot system. Where did the vesamenu.c32 file come from?

[ETP]

Hi OscarTalks,

It is good to hear that you have created a working vfat SD using Bootflash & the PUI. With very little work that can be modified to provide a dual boot but you will need to stick with vfat.

It is possible to create an ext4 partition at the end of the card to hold your main sfs & save file but I would advise against it as the gains are minimal. The benefit of having a vfat volume which is accessible from both Puppy & XP is the better option. If however you have a pressing reason for creating an ext4 partition let me know & I will post instructions.

Vesamenu.c32 is one of the many modules provided within syslinux. Its use enables posh menus with high resolution png or jpg splash screens up to 1024x768. (Grub is limited to 640x480)

A copy of vesamenu.c32 from syslinux 4.04 is attached – place it in the root of your SD.

For the benefit of other readers using XP
Syslinux (4.04 zip) can be downloaded from here:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/

Instructions here:
http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/HowTos

Attached is a (tested) syslinux.cfg specifically for Slacko 5.3.3. In conjunction with the 2 grub files placed as per the first post in this topic it will provide the dual boot with XP from an SD card or USB stick.

Steps to set this up.
1. Rename your existing syslinux.cfg to say syslinux.osc
2. Place the attached files (syslinux.cfg & vesamenu.c32) in the root of your SD.
3. Off the root create the directory p533 and move all your Puppy files into it:
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
slackosave.xxx.xfs (whatever yours is named)
puppy_slacko_5.3.3.sfs

4. Place the 2 grub files as shown in first post.

5. Place the splash screen (bart9splash.jpg) in the root of your SD.

Caveat:
You may find that depending on your screen resolution, the menu may be off centre. Adjust the HSHIFT & VSHIFT values in syslinux.cfg to suit.

[canbyte]

Hoping to hitchhike on this thread but haven't yet got to the point of usb/flash install. Now running from cd with files on flash drive. A new cd RW drive is presenting difficulties getting the disk in/out before windows boots up (and also a bit lazy and just hoping to leave CD in the drive). Having various _save files on the flash drive, puppy presents them in a list and waits for a number input corresponding to the desired running profile.

Would it be possible to simply add a choice '0' to the list for going back to the C drive and starting windows (xp)? Seems there must be something in this thread to do that but I'm not expert enough to identify what and where to put it. Thanks in advance.

[greengeek]

ETP, Just getting this on my watchlist 'cos I want to try this on my work netbook... Looks like a neat idea.

Just to clarify - does this method mean that I can leave my Win XP install untouched, then set my netbook to boot from usb, then plug in a usb stick with a version of puppy (including the setup you describe), then I will get a choice of booting into Windows or Puppy?

[ETP]

[greengeek]

p.s: I don't understand how I would get a working puppy on the stick without using grub already? Can you point to a tutorial how to get the stick ready for the additions you mention? cheers. (the link on the syslinux tutorial pointing to "bootable usb" seems inactive)

[ETP]

[ETP]

[greengeek]

EDIT

[greengeek]

OK, I just found a stick that I made ages ago, and it is bootable - but could you look at these contents and tell me if you think it is suitable please? Is it ok that it contains ldlinux.sys? (Just checked with Gparted that it's a FAT32 partition - so that part should be ok)