[moved and extended from "Cutting edge"]
You reason for doing so might be
- make a "breeding house" for your puppet (e.g. Vector Linux)
- run applications, which you don't want to put on your slim puppy (e.g. TeX)
- examine how other distributions work
- learn why "chroot" is so cool
Disadvantages:
- The proper boot configuration is not done, and sometimes needs a little manual help
- It still does run on a Puppy kernel, so maybe there are drivers missing
Step 1 Installing your alien distribution
If you already have an installed distribution skip to step 2
You could either install the distribution by usual means (e.g. install CD) on a dedicated partition. Your documentation or your distro of choice will tell you how.
If you do not need to boot into your new distribution, but just want to run it from Puppy, you can also install it in a mountable directory on a ext2/ext3/reiserfs filesystem (e.g. a linux partition or the /root directory of your puppy). NTFS/VFAT filesystems do not work directly because of lacking permission settings).
I will show you how to do that with Vectorlinux, as this is the new standard development environment for Puppy. It should be similar for any Slackware-based distribution. Debian has something similar, search for "bootstrap".
1. Download the Vector Linux iso named VL-5.1-std.iso from www.vectorlinux.com, if you haven't done it yet. Alternatively you could use an existing install cd.
2. Mount this somewhere (that means, include it in the filesystem tree)
For the iso file you type in an rxvt
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cd /path/to/directory-i-have-put-the-iso
mount -t iso9660 -o loop VL-5.1-std.iso /mnt/linux2
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mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/linux2
3. Create a directory on a filesystem, where you have enough
room (about 1GB) for the installation and extract the system (thank $DEITY_OF_YOUR_CHOICE for Slackware)[
You can also use the /root directory, but make sure to expand it enough(via Start -> Utilities -> Resize /root filesystem
Assuming you want to install it to /mnt/home/vector
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mkdir /mnt/home/vector
cd /mnt/home/vector
tar xvjf /mnt/linux2/veclinux/veclinux.bz2
tar xvjf /mnt/linux2/veclinux/vlconfig.bz2
Step 2 Run in your new distribution
Make sure, that you have your distribution somewhere accesible in the tree - in other words, have it mounted.
Assuming your alien distribution is installed in /mnt/home/vector, a magic
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chroot /mnt/home/vector
So, if you want to run something from this distribution in the future, open a terminal, "chroot" to the appropriate directory and run the application (e.g. gcc, make, tex, gimp ... whatever).
Caveat 1 (does not affect Vector Linux): some distributions install there main filesystem across multiple partions. Pay attention during the installation and make sure these partitions are mounted in the right place before you chroot. Assuming, hda1 is supposed to be /, but hda2 holds /usr you need something like:
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mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/linux2
mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/linux2/usr
For Vector Linux installed as described above, you may need to run several configuration tools once in order to get your system running.
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netconfig
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dhcpd
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mouseconfig
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xorgsetup
If you want to run the X server from Vector Linux, shutdown the running X (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace), chroot on the console and type "startx". You do not need this if you just want X applications (like Firefox, Gimp etc.).