Puppeee 4.4 revisited

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Mike7
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#21 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

You gave me a few chuckles, there. And I'm very relieved to hear that I can re-format and re-install on the flash drives. I'll try to stop worrying, although the article at siduction.org didn't help to clear my psyche.

Regarding Gparted in Puppeee 4.4, I used it today to look at a pendrive that had an unbootable install of Slitaz, and I couldn't get any right-click context menu for it at all, so couldn't do ckdisk. Any idea how to activate the right-click menu? It would be very useful, to say the least.

Darn but I get ticked off when programs don't do what they're supposed to, even after twenty-five years of computing. (I'm tempted to mention the nasty word that starts with a "W" and ends with an "s", but will refrain.)

These problems never arose with emacs in Unix. Maybe we've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Too much developing and too little development.

Cheers!

Mike

rokytnji
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#22 Post by rokytnji »

Regarding Gparted in Puppeee 4.4, I used it today to look at a pendrive that had an unbootable install of Slitaz, and I couldn't get any right-click context menu for it at all, so couldn't do ckdisk. Any idea how to activate the right-click menu? It would be very useful, to say the least.
Usually you gotta umount it first before a check. Right click handles that also. I don't know why right click is not working on your save file. I would boot your puppeee pendrive in

Code: Select all

puppy pfix=ram
mode and see if gparted right click with slitaz pendrive works in that mode. Sounds like a corrupted save file to me in your puppeee pendrive install since you say right click
in gparted is broken. Just a desert bikers guess though.

you can type in puppy pfix=ram at the pretty grub choice screen when puppy pendrive boots up. Then hit enter key.

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Mike7
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#23 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok

I finally got the Gparted right-click context menu working again, I'm not sure how. Like you say, it was probably a bad boot.

What exactly does "puppy pfix=ram" do? Is that the menu choice to run in RAM?

There's nowhere to enter commands on my boot-up screen, just a list of choices, most of which I don't understand.

Doesn't Puppeee always run in RAM, thus requiring those saves to the save file?

While on the subject of boot-up choices, how do I get it to stop making those saves to the save file, which seem unnecessary to me? One save at shutdown would be fine, no? They interrupt what I'm doing and waste power.

Since I'm picking your brains (hope you don't mind), is there a reasonably easy method of installing other live Linux distros onto a pendrive from Puppeee 4.4? I just wasted two days fruitlessly trying to do it using Windows-based programs like Unetbootin, Universal boot loader, LinuxLive, and Live USB. I tried them with maybe ten different distros and nothing would boot. Very frustrating. There must be some way to do it using Puppeee 4.4 and the live-CD iso files I've collected. Any ideas?

Cheers, and thanks once more for all your help.

Mike

kb8amz
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Location: Kent, Ohio, USA

Puppeee

#24 Post by kb8amz »

Using puppeee-1.0. I would like to try puppeee-4.4 but its nowhere to be found. I wish that jemimah had not left, but I understand her explanation. Unlike BarryK she is not retired.

puppeee-1.0 is okay for my Acer Aspire One 2 GB RAM Atom CPU but its not as fancy as Precise or Slack that I run on my laptops and one desktop.

So I wonder if that Atom version puppeee from jemimah is available from a forum member for up or download?
Terry Morris - KB8AMZ
Registered Linux User# 412308

Dell Latitude D505 tahr-6.0-CE_noPAE; Dell Optiplex 520 desktop Ubuntu 14.04 LTS; Dell Optiplex 150 LM 17 32bit, HP Quad Core AMD FatDog64 7.02

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Ray MK
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#25 Post by Ray MK »

hi kb8amz

You could consider Fluppy - another Jemimah masterpiece and probably very well suited to your Acer.

HTH - best regards - Ray
[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.

rokytnji
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#26 Post by rokytnji »

puppy pfix=ram boots without using your save sfs file. It is a prsitine boot. Try it sometime.

I think yumi handles multiboot pendrives. Naming save .sfs should give a choice on which to load on boot also. If none. Make a blank .sfs in home and name it 1blank.sfs
Now you should get a choice on which save file to boot up.

@kb8amz


Edit: link is no good anymore


is my cloud copy puppy-rc7-atom. Mike 7 can give you the link for stored 1.0 cloud copy of puppeee. I am busy with honey dews today. :)

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rcrsn51
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#27 Post by rcrsn51 »

Mike7 wrote:is there a reasonably easy method of installing other live Linux distros onto a pendrive from Puppeee 4.4?
I believe that Puppeee 4.4 has the right stuff to run ISObooter.

But set it up on a second pen drive - not the one that has Puppeee on it.

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Mike7
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#28 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Terry.

You wrote:
I would like to try puppeee-4.4 but its nowhere to be found
http://ubuntuone.com/03spbbxEXin5IN44Qn1xNx is still good for downloading the Puppeee 4.4 files. It´s in the tar.bz2 format, which can be handled by any good zip utility.

The distro uses a DOS batch file (bootinstall.bat) to write the MBR, a really good idea since so far this is the only distro I have succeeded in getting to boot from a pendrive without going through an iso on CD. Clever, those Puppeee folks!

Good luck!

Mike

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Mike7
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#29 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

More silly (?) questions:

-- Where do I put puppy pfix=ram?

-- Does Puppeee load everything, including the save file, into RAM and run in RAM as the default?

Re YUMI, I have not tried it yet. I first want to try out the individual distros. And frankly, after all the trouble I am having with the other flash drive installerss, I doubt that YUMI will do any better.

I am still in the dark how to stop Puppeee 4.4 from doing saves every 20 minutes while still saving on shutdown. Do I need to edit the save2flash file (which I believe is a shell command)? If so, any idea how to do that?

Cheers!

Mike

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Mike7
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#30 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, rcrsn51.

I went to the linked page (How to Make a Bootable Flash Drive using GRUB2) and read your whole article through carefully twice, then printed it out to study it. I will have some questions on specific points in it later, if that is okay.

For now, though, first this one: Should I use isobooter.tar.gz or isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz, for installing distros like Tiny Core Linux and Slitaz?

I am asuming that ISObooter runs only in Linux. That is, it cannot make bootable pendrives from WindowsXP (the op sys on my hard drive). Is that right?

Anecdotally, I tried to use the Puppy Universal Installer that came with Puppeee 4.4, and which was meant only to install Puppy, to put Grub onto a flash drive on which I had already placed the files from an iso of TinyCorePlus 4.7.4. The application allows you to choose where it will install Grub, and I guessed correctly that it was sdc1 (I am running Puppeee from sdb). Grub did get put onto the flash drive, but, probably because I do not know how to edit the files properly, the flash drive still was not bootable. Maybe I get a star for a good try, though <grin>.

One last thought for now: Because I had so much trouble trying to install Slitaz on a pendrive (their own tazusb.exe does not work!), I went into the Slitaz forum and asked for help. They told me that Slitaz could not be installed onto a FAT file system, so none of the installers that run in Windows would work. Strangely enough, though, most of those installers list Slitaz as a supported distro. Any comment on this?

Cheers for now. I will get back to you when I have had a chance to download and try to use ISObooter.

Mike

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rcrsn51
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#31 Post by rcrsn51 »

Mike7 wrote:Should I use isobooter.tar.gz or isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz, for installing distros like Tiny Core Linux and Slitaz?
You are running a Puppy, so you will use isobooter.tar.gz. An Ubuntu user who wanted to make bootable flash drives would use isobooter_other-1.0.tar.gz.
I am asuming that ISObooter runs only in Linux. That is, it cannot make bootable pendrives from WindowsXP (the op sys on my hard drive). Is that right?
Correct. There are lots of Windows tools for doing this. One of them is discussed here.
Anecdotally, I tried to use the Puppy Universal Installer that came with Puppeee 4.4, and which was meant only to install Puppy, to put Grub onto a flash drive on which I had already placed the files from an iso of TinyCorePlus 4.7.4. The application allows you to choose where it will install Grub, and I guessed correctly that it was sdc1 (I am running Puppeee from sdb). Grub did get put onto the flash drive, but, probably because I do not know how to edit the files properly, the flash drive still was not bootable. Maybe I get a star for a good try, though <grin>.
The point of ISObooter is that you don't have to unpack the ISO file and guess how to install it.
One last thought for now: Because I had so much trouble trying to install Slitaz on a pendrive (their own tazusb.exe does not work!), I went into the Slitaz forum and asked for help. They told me that Slitaz could not be installed onto a FAT file system, so none of the installers that run in Windows would work. Strangely enough, though, most of those installers list Slitaz as a supported distro. Any comment on this?
There is a difference between booting a distro's Live CD and actually doing a hard drive install. But I just used ISObooter to boot Slitaz off a FAT32 flash drive. It took about 30 seconds to set up.

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Mike7
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#32 Post by Mike7 »

You are running a Puppy, so you will use isobooter.tar.gz.
Okay.
There are lots of Windows tools for doing this. One of them is discussed here.
I am looking into that right now. The prep program looks good.
The point of ISObooter is that you don't have to unpack the ISO file and guess how to install it.
That would be a huge relief.
I just used ISObooter to boot Slitaz off a FAT32 flash drive. It took about 30 seconds to set up.
I plan to try it out first thing tomorrow.

Thanks!

Mike

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Mike7
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#33 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

Here's a quickee I've been meaning to ask someone for a long time:
Isn't there a difference between installing an iso on a pendrive and installing the extracted files? If it's the iso, how can it have persistence (in Puppeee, the save file)?

Ubuntu, I believe, creates a separate partition for a casper file for persistence. But how would an iso be able to save changes?

As I understand it, the iso is extracted to RAM. So how do the changes get put back into the iso at the end of a session? It can't be done, can it, without creating a new iso?

Mike

jakfish
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#34 Post by jakfish »

I've been lurking this thread with interest since--using an eee 900--I just moved from an early alpha puppeee (w/ a very-stripped kernel) to Puppy 1.0 Celeron.

1.0 is a great puppeee and doesn't always get its deserved kudos. For one thing, its pwireless2 picks up and connects the 900 the fastest of any puppy I've tried on the eee.

I also think that Chrome serves the 900 very well. jemimah's Chrome is 5, but Chrome 7 will install on top of it nicely:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=61075

Chrome 7 is probably the highest you can go on a 4.31 set-up. For me at least, I find this to be the fastest browsing--but for reasons I haven't determined, you can't log-in to Chrome to sync bookmarks, etc. I can live w/ that, I guess, though I'd like to know why.

Mike7, I highly recommend getting an internal ssd for your machine. To be doing all you're doing, and trying to do it on usb only (especially when playing w/ other linux's) could compound problems w/ the beginner's installations.

Also, w/ an ssd, your puppy--even though frugally installed--will fly much faster, since you can store the OS sfs, save file, and other sfs's on the ssd. There's a neat, one-line trick in the syslinux.cfg file to get this to work.

And, lastly, Lubuntu 12.10 has been--at least for me--the definitive Linux for the eee. Everything works OOB, 3-second shutdown, and if it's installed on an ssd, it boots even faster than puppeee. Not to mention that it's au currant, with automatic updates almost daily.

I have run Lubuntu off a USB, a big pain and very slow.

So I have Lubuntu 12.10/XP SP3 on the ssd and Puppy 1.0 booting off a class 10 sd card, but accessing its main files on the ssd. Obviously, XP is the weak link here. My heart is always with puppy, and I run one on all my netbooks, but Lubuntu and the eee are a great pair.

The forum here, as we all know, is the best--far, far better than the Ubuntu forum, which has over 3 million posts, I believe. Posting there is like jumping off the earth.

You seem to have great enthusiasm for this venture--my suggestion is get an ssd and not hamstring yourself w/ missing hardware. Its purchase will make life very much fun :)

The worst kind of advice, free :)
Jake

[/url]

rokytnji
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#35 Post by rokytnji »

Isn't there a difference between installing an iso on a pendrive and installing the extracted files? If it's the iso, how can it have persistence (in Puppeee, the save file)?
Not sure what you are asking. All I can say is how I test MacPup for runtt21.

I download what ever test iso he emails me. I use unetbootin for linux to install the test iso
(by the way, I md5sum check all downloaded files to save headaches in testing later)

I boot the flash drive test iso with the syslinux bootloader provided with unetbootin.
Then after getting to the desktop. I install grub4dos to mbr on the pendrive to get rid of
syslinux bootloader. Why you may ask?

Because grub4dos gives more boot options than syslinux does. After grub4dos is installed. I shutdown and make a 512MB save file ext2 and name it test1(with the date).

Reboot and then set up wireless (which I tested earlier before making save file) and do whatever changes I wish to do to personalize and install certain applications I personally use as part of the test.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 978#647978

That install is a quad booter, (Macpup,Vector,Semplice,AntiX) in my Desktop computer, not pendrive but is a frugal install next to full installs of other linux distros with grub2 and legacy grub, motorcycle shop that I let other bikers play with.

Volhout
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1001ha eeePC

#36 Post by Volhout »

I can support Yakfisk in his choice for Lubuntu 12.10. It really is a good choice for netbooks.

I have a 1001ha eeePC with the standard 1 gig memory, and stille it's original harddisk that has XP sp3 and Lubuntu 12.10 and run puppy from sd card in a grub4dos triboot. 80%of the time I run puppy. Only when apps are missing I fall back to Lubuntu or XP.

But, after running puppeeee for long, I have settled on Slacko 5.3.3. Faster, more stable, and has almost all functions covered that puppeeee has. I did not even bother to replace Seamonkey with Opera (my favorite browser becuase it has turbo that avoids the piratebay blockades we have in Holland).

Good Luck with your investigation. Zorin lite may be an option since it is a Lubuntu derivate.

jakfish
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#37 Post by jakfish »

Huh, Slacko 5.3.3...

It never occurred to me that Slacko might run well on an old eee (though your model has more power than mine).

Thanks for the tip,
Jake

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Mike7
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#38 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Jake.

Thank you for the suggestions. I will seriously consider putting an SSD in my EeePC as soon as the HDD breaks down, which I fear is not far off.

I agree that Pwireless2 is a great program. The interface, with all its data tabs, is brilliant.

Puppeee 4.4 takes a while to boot. For one thing, it has to put everything in RAM. For another, it has to restore the save file. Considering all that, it's pretty fast. A lot faster than XP (but that's not saying much <grin>.

As a firefox adept, I'm having some trouble getting used to Chrome. I really don't like the way it handles bookmarks. The Firefox bookmark organizer is far clearer, simpler, and faster. And since I have around five hundred bookmarks at this point, that makes a lot of difference.

I am planning to try one of the Ubuntu varieties (maybe Lubuntu; maybe Fuduntu, which was designed for the Eee) as soon as I find a USB installer that works. I will try ISObooter later today.

This is a great forum, like you say. Great people. They'd have to be because Puppy Linux, and perhaps especially Puppeee, are such marvellous systems. The programs packed into the 131Mb of Puppeee 4.4 are amazing. Abiword, for example. And the integrated file managers and word processors. Plus the simple, clear, minimalist GUI and desktop, which beat all the fancy stuff by a mile.

Anyway, thanks again for your post. Since you're a Puppeee user, why not try out Puppeee 4.4 and see how it compares to 1.0. I'd be interested to know your findings.

Cheers!

Mike

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Mike7
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#39 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Rok.

Thanks for the interesting rundown on your procedure. It wasn't exactly what I asked about (a silly question, probably) but did give me some things to think about.

One question: Do you keep the save file down to 512Mb because of the partition limitations on the flash drive?

Cheers!

Mike

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Mike7
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#40 Post by Mike7 »

Hi, Volhout.

Does Slacko 5.3.3 maintain all the power management and keyboard functions of the EeePC? If so, maybe I'll test it out on mine.

Cheers!

Mike

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