HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Linux

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Scooby
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#21 Post by Scooby »

Les Kerf wrote: As I was playing with this, it dawned on me that this is an ideal means of "test driving" Puppy linux. Just drag an ISO file into the thumb drive it and take Puppy for a walk. No need to fiddle around with partitions, bootloaders, etc. If you don't like this one, delete it and try another.
Sweet :-)
Les
Thats exactly why I love it and wanted to share it. Just download the iso straight into the AUTO folder and boot.

Remember it is not only for puppy. Other Live Linux ISO's works as well :lol:

If you are a windows user check out this

It may be easier for you to prepare the USB if you are not familiar with Linux.

linbie
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Joined: Sat 09 Jan 2010, 05:03

Not working for me

#22 Post by linbie »

I can't get this to work - followed both the Linux and windows methods. I end up with grldr not found. If I copy the grldr from the created folder it will run and I get a message "try (h0,0)" and then blank screen. With the Windows method I get a message along the lines "limited Grub editing available" with an open console looking like

GRUB:>

Scooby
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#23 Post by Scooby »

I am happy you ask questions, This tutorial was made with intention that everyone can do it.
You can help me improve it.

Lets try the windows version first!
Did you follow all 4 steps?

Steps 3 and 4 is under the picture.

in Step 3 there is a warning, Did you follow it?
(you must hit the Enter key when requested - do not just quit the console window!).

Did you download and extract Easy2Boot-grub4dos_v0.5.zip to USB memory stick?

Do you have many partitions on USB?

Which files and dirs do you have in root folder of USB

Which files and dirs do you have in /grub folder of USB
linbie wrote:If I copy the grldr from the created folder
What is this "created" folder? elaborate please.

Les Kerf
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Joined: Sun 24 Jun 2012, 13:30

#24 Post by Les Kerf »

I don't get to town often so it has been a while since I was on the internet.

On a whim, I tried this method on an old IDE 40 GB hard drive I had lying around, and it worked! I have an old Frankenstein computer I built out of junk parts attached to a piece of plywood.

I formatted the hard drive as FAT 32, then installed Grub4Dos, deleted the files that Grub4Dos had installed, then dragged the Easy2Boot file onto the hard drive, unzipped it, then proceeded to drag over 40 ISO's into it. Most of them boot (Lighthouse 64 obviously needs different hardware).

When I had additional hard drives connected, I had to use a PLoP boot floppy, followed by a Grub4Dos boot floppy to get it to boot, but with no other hard drives attached it booted just fine.

I actually got Hiren's Boot ISO to boot, also the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN), Linux Mint 11, Ubuntu, and FreeDos ISO's. Mint, Ubuntu, and FreeDos all wanted to install themselves to the hard drive.

Anyway, this gives me a handy place to store ISO's, and also test them.
Les

Les Kerf
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Re: HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Linux

#25 Post by Les Kerf »

Scooby wrote:Alternative 1 - the easiest way

1. Most puppies have the program Grub4Dos Bootloader config under their system menu.
(Or execute in terminal /usr/sbin/grub4dosconfig)

Run it and choose your target USB Drive - press OK trice when prompted.
You should receive a message saying everything went well.

2. Delete everything on USB

3. Download, unzip (extract) and copy the Easy2Boot-grub4dos_v0.5.zip
(attached below ) file to your USB drive
Newer versions might be availible at the Easy2Boot page

4, Drop any number of puppy linux ISO's of your choice in folder _ISO/Linux/AUTO.

5. reboot and play :lol:
For those who have experienced difficulty with this, I found it important to not skip Step #2. After running Grub4Dos, there will be some files on the thumb drive. Yes, you need to delete them, then follow the rest of the steps.
Les

Scooby
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#26 Post by Scooby »

I am fiddling with some upgrades of Easy2Boot and I intend to make .pet for a graphical installer.

Feedback of difficulties are desired so they can be fixed.

My intention is a really easy way of doin it.

I'm thinkin of conjuring up a bat file for windows so its easy to start of trying puppies
when you only got windows and little or no knowledge of Linux. Maybe one version with a puppy onboard.

Do you have any suggestions of which puppy is easiest for a beginner?
Perhaps carolina or lina-lite?

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Ray MK
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Location: UK

#27 Post by Ray MK »

hi scooby
have a look at Magoo - runs the best on my ram challenged kit - and so easy to setup and use.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=82607

HTH - very best regards - Ray

I prefer v6 - good for netbooks as well as laptops.
[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.

gcmartin

#28 Post by gcmartin »

... For those who have experienced difficulty with this, I found it important to not skip Step #2. After running Grub4Dos, there will be some files on the thumb drive. Yes, you need to delete them, then follow the rest of the steps. ...
Yeah, I saw that issue as well. Which leads me to ask the following.

I am assuming that what is intended by step 1 AND step 2 is to get the drive (USB/HDD) into a position for booting. Once in that position, the files to assist booting are to be removed so that the subsequent tool can place the necessary files on the drive to support ISO booting.

Questions
  1. Would it be favorable to make a PET to ONLY delete the files presented by GRUB4DOS versus trashing all information on the drive?
  2. Is there another system tool to merely prep the boot record of the drive without running GRUB4DOS, such that the drive will be prepared without the effort of GRUB4DOS and without destruction of the drive's current information?
The reason for the questions is that it seems to me that the drive can be setup without the need to destroy the existing data that the drive may already contain so that this thread's can guide appropriately.

Here to help

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kooliepup
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#29 Post by kooliepup »

This is a bit of a diversion, which is not intended to demean the project at hand.
I also am keen to see a .pet to enable HDD ISO booting.
My machine does not boot from USB.

The way I do it is I keep a directory called TESTRUN for testing new Puplets, and I put the 3 needed files from the ISO in there.
Nothing more has to be done.

This is my menu.lst entry:
Your uuid will be different.

title TESTRUN
uuid 65a8ce93-769e-425a-b02b-e32494af59ef
kernel /TESTRUN/vmlinuz psubdir=TESTRUN pmedia=atahd
initrd /TESTRUN/initrd.gz

It may be an option for some of you to do it this way.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1

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greengeek
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#30 Post by greengeek »

kooliepup wrote:title TESTRUN
uuid 65a8ce93-769e-425a-b02b-e32494af59ef
kernel /TESTRUN/vmlinuz psubdir=TESTRUN pmedia=atahd
initrd /TESTRUN/initrd.gz
So are you saying that the boot folder and menu.lst are on HDD, but this grub stanza tells the system that the puppy files are on a usb drive?

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rcrsn51
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#31 Post by rcrsn51 »

greengeek wrote:So are you saying that the boot folder and menu.lst are on HDD, but this grub stanza tells the system that the puppy files are on a usb drive?
Are you asking this because of the UUID entry? Hard drive partitions can also be identified by a UUID.

Scooby
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#32 Post by Scooby »

kooliepup wrote:This is a bit of a diversion, which is not intended to demean the project at hand.
I also am keen to see a .pet to enable HDD ISO booting.
Since I wont myself do it this way I cannot test or develop.
Of course it is free for anyone else to take this up.
kooliepup wrote:My machine does not boot from USB.
You could try plop too boot from cd first and then USB.
but it doesnt work with the automated approach of Easy2Boot.

But I guess this wouldnt be so nice a solution. Harddrive install is better.
Last edited by Scooby on Thu 07 Feb 2013, 17:34, edited 1 time in total.

Scooby
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#33 Post by Scooby »

gcmartin wrote:

Questions
  1. Would it be favorable to make a PET to ONLY delete the files presented by GRUB4DOS versus trashing all information on the drive?
  2. Is there another system tool to merely prep the boot record of the drive without running GRUB4DOS, such that the drive will be prepared without the effort of GRUB4DOS and without destruction of the drive's current information?
The reason for the questions is that it seems to me that the drive can be setup without the need to destroy the existing data that the drive may already contain so that this thread's can guide appropriately.
Martin after re-reading your post a few times I believe you want to install grub4dos
on internal HD and want to preserve data.

However although the Easy2Boot solution is good to use on HDD I will not make an installer for it.
Since I wont myself do it this way I cannot test or develop.
I will do for USB only.

Of course it is free for anyone else to take this up.

I think its better you search the web for how to install Grub4Dos to hd
for your particular situation

There is information how its done for example on a windows installation
here

Then if you want you can have the system boot the menu.lst of Easy2Boot

trueriver
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Location: Manchester, England

#34 Post by trueriver »

hi Scooby,

Thanks for the work you have done here! Seems ideal for my case, as I want to run Puppy from a USB stick and do not have a CD drive nor a Windows system to start from. I will run the "second easiest" method from another Linux distro.

Question: Do I use the multi-boot Puppy as a "CD" and use that to do an "install to USB" onto a second USB stick?

Or can I miss out that step, and immediately start using the multi-boot Puppy as my long term Puppy? Would I need to tweak it at all? (I am wonderimg if it might need settings like noatime to avoid wearing out the flash drive, for example)?

Incidentally, any other users like me who are not starting from a working puppy may like to know that the bootlace program (used in the second easiest method) is in the grub4dos zip file downloadable from
grub4dos version 0.4.5c

or check the project's downloads page for an even newer version.

Regards
River~~

edit: updated link to download info for grub4dos (link originally given was to a much older version, sorry)
Last edited by trueriver on Sun 10 Feb 2013, 14:16, edited 2 times in total.

Scooby
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#35 Post by Scooby »

trueriver wrote:Thanks for the work you have done here
I am just the prophet, the god is steve at rmprepusb

trueriver wrote: Question: Do I use the multi-boot Puppy as a "CD" and use that to do an "install to USB" onto a second USB stick?

Or can I miss out that step, and immediately start using the multi-boot Puppy as my long term Puppy?
You can miss out that step and immediately start using the multi-boot Puppy as your long term Puppy!
trueriver wrote: Would I need to tweak it at all? (I am wondering if it might need settings like noatime to avoid wearing out the flash drive, for example)?
I dont think you have to worry about that. Its the issue with savefile and the solution with
psavemark but Im working on a solution for that. In the interim there is a solution under
subtitle Save File
trueriver wrote: Incidentally, any other users like me who are not starting from a working puppy may like to know that the bootlace program (used in the second easiest method) is in the grub4dos zip file downloadable from the grub4dos project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/files/
~~
I must confess I only thought of windows and puppy linux users. I will take your suggestion and update for regular Linux users. I dont however know how to make
a solution for an automated install across other Linuxes. Bash-script?

I am originally a Windows user but now a puppy convert. Only limited experience
with other Linuxes and my favourite puppy is Archpuppy.

The update will take some time though
Last edited by Scooby on Thu 07 Feb 2013, 18:14, edited 1 time in total.

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greengeek
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#36 Post by greengeek »

rcrsn51 wrote:Are you asking this because of the UUID entry? Hard drive partitions can also be identified by a UUID.
Yes, I made the assumption that a UUID would only be relevant to USB devices (Doh! wrong again!)

trueriver
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Location: Manchester, England

#37 Post by trueriver »

Scooby wrote:...

I must confess I only thought of windows and puppy linux users. I will take your suggestion and update for regular Linux users. I dont however know how to make
a solution for an automated install across other Linuxes. Bash-script?
...
You could wrap a bash script together with bootlace.com as an add on for non-puppy users. The issue would be getting the right drive...

If you wanted to produce a GUI program, I'd suggest Python -- but that would be a *lot* more work.

I will post an even easier way in, later tonight, if I can get it working

River~~

Scooby
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#38 Post by Scooby »

I have a question about implementation.

Two solutions to choose between

1. edit boot option on ISO itself with script PSavemarkelyfy. The default use is
./PSaveMarkelyfy precise-5.4.3.iso

2. Have to folders on USB stick one called Linux for regular booting with chainloading.
for Linux Live CD and puppy linux without savefile. And one folder called puppy
with puppy linux isos which gets called with boot option psavemark that makes
savefiles work


I myself tend to go with option 1. Let users use my bash-script to edit a configfile on ISO
It is really easy to run.

trueriver
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Location: Manchester, England

Re: HOWTO create easy multi-boot USB Puppy from Linux

#39 Post by trueriver »

Scooby wrote:...
Alternative 2 - the second easiest way

This did not work for me with the instructions as given (at least if I understood them correctly). I did find a slightly different way to do things.

I was working from a terminal window running in Ubuntu 12.10, though the exact flavour of Linux should not matter, Puppy does tend to mount filesystems differently to most larger flavours of Linux (*)

2. ...

Code: Select all

mkdosfs - F 32 -I /dev/sdxx


where sdxx is exchanged for your label
and -I is i and not the L character.
Firstly: a typo: there must not be a space between the - and the F.

Here I was not quite sure what you meant by "label". To Linux users usually (*) means a human readable name for the disk whereas sdxx looks like a Linux disk identifier.

If sdxx is a label, the syntax on many Linux distros (*) is /dev/disk/by-label/sdxx

If sdxx is a partition (eg sdc1) then /dev/sdc1 is the more usual form (*), and /mnt/sdc1 is specific to Puppy's way of doing things.

So I used /dev/sdc1 here instead of /mnt/sdc1

Thinking of labels, you might actually want a label on this partition: this is how you do that:

Code: Select all

mkdosfs -F 32 -n easy2boot -I /dev/sdxx


Then when you look at the drive in Windows and in most (*) Linux versions it will show as easy2boot
3. Make USB drive bootable with Grub4Dos.

Code: Select all

bootlace.com --floppy=y /dev/sdxx
where y is exchanged for the number of the partion you want to install the bootloader on(most commonly 1
and sdxx is exchanged for your label
Here I typed --floppy=1 /dev/sdc1. That appeared to work at the time, but at the end of the process the bios failed to find the bootsector.

Referring back to the grub4dos manual, this is because your form of the command installs to the *Partition* MBR, and the BIOS looks at the *disk* MBR. (+)



So I changed the command to refer to the disk, and bootlace then complained that the --floppy option is illegal

So I left that out, and the version of this that worked for me was as follows:

Code: Select all

bootlace.com /dev/sdx
where sdx is the disk not the partition (for example sdc not sdc1)

Having done that, I followed the remaining instructions as given and it booted nicely. After setting up the wifi, the first thing I did from my *new* *working* Puppy was to post this.

River~~

edit to add footnotes

(*) In this post, "Linux usually" and "most Linux" means the mainstream distros like Debian, SuSE, Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu; and in contrast to how Puppy does things.
Anyone swapping in either direction between "most Linux" and "Puppy" has some learning to do. Most of these differences arise from BarryK's efforts to reduce bloat.

(+) Looking back, I wonder if my mistake was simpler - did I check that the "boot" flag was set on that partition? I'm not going to go back and test that now I have got a bootable Puppy
Last edited by trueriver on Fri 08 Feb 2013, 10:42, edited 3 times in total.

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kooliepup
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#40 Post by kooliepup »

@greengeek,

You can replace the UUID line with the more common

find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /TESTRUN/initrd.gz

It is usually quicker booting using the UUID, but not always.

HTH.

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