Full Installer to USB flash drives

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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Scooby
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#21 Post by Scooby »

I changed the message at the end of the installer to

Code: Select all

Hopefully we're done ...

To make this install bootable you need to run grub4dosconfig

If your target is a USB drive then don't forget to add "rootwait"
in the Options textbox, it's the one that has the value "ro"
in it by default.

That would be in the grub4dosconfig window with title:

"Grub4DosConfig - List of detected operating systems"

This is essential for a successful boot.

Now proceed by running grub4dosconfig to complete the install
and making it bootable.

Hope this makes things a bit more clear?

bigpup could you update first post to
https://gist.github.com/suedi/8897880a8 ... e54bc8.zip
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bigpup
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#22 Post by bigpup »

scooby I will update the first post after you consider these suggestions :lol:

Thanks for this code!!

Wonder if you could put a yes or no option at the end to start grub4dosconfig :idea:

Something like start, open, or run, etc... grub4dos bootloader configure program?
Enter y for yes or n for no

If you enter y for yes.
Grub4dosconfig starts.

What do you think?
Last edited by bigpup on Sat 16 Apr 2016, 22:48, edited 2 times in total.
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bigpup
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#23 Post by bigpup »

Suggestion for the info.
To make this install bootable you need to run grub4dosconfig
Change this to:

Code: Select all

To make this install bootable you need to run grub4dosconfig to install a bootloader to the USB drive.
In Grub4dosconfig -choose to install to the USB drive and choose selection:
search only within this device.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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april

#24 Post by april »

I thought to try this on a hard drive connected via sata to USB adapter . It all went very well.

I have a problem I don't understand with "Grub4dosconfig".

I find it does not show the options box at all and putting the grub on the MBR seems to only give a menu.lst with windows options on it and no reference to Puppy at all. It does not boot so I know I am not getting something right. Made no diff to tick search this device only option.
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bigpup
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#25 Post by bigpup »

It is hard to see in the images you posted.

When you ran grub4dosconfig
On the first window
Does it list the USB hard drive?
If yes.
Did you highlight it as the drive to install on?
Did you select option to search only within this drive?
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
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april

#26 Post by april »

Yes to all .edited so should be seeable now
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bigpup
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#27 Post by bigpup »

You are using an older version of Grub4dosconfig
Could be a bug in that version.

The latest version is this:
Grub4dosconfig V1.9.2
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51697
This is a listed bug fix
fix was failed full install on usb flash, my puppy, safe mode options

How is this drive partitioned?
What format is on each partition?

Problems like this with grub4dosconfig, usually have something to do with the partitioning and format used on the drive.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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april

#28 Post by april »

Complete drive is ext4 and only 1 partition-sdc1
I will try to install the later version and do again

I'm completely pissed off at this whole "grub" thing . Why do we need it ?
I don't run windows on my machine and if I want it I have another for that which is not connected to the world.

Why can't we just have a sane simple file that goes in a boot directory that starts Puppy?

Why all this crap.

So I got the latest and it does not even give you an option for a quick install to anything other than sda1.
So you must use the experts thing which assumes you can be bothered with all this windows crap of (hd0,0) etc

I changed all that to what seemed logical and it still does not boot and is a total f/up now . Sorry I started this


So below is the window I have to work with so can someone tell me how to set up the experts section to set up a full install on sdc1 thanks.
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april

#29 Post by april »

I see that updating the above now gives me two menu entries for this . Moved the first up to the top .

Using the install on the desktop I installed frugal puppy on sdc1
Then I used the Grub4Dos to write to sdc1(it found the frugal entry)
I got it to boot for a while there but in trying to clean up the menu.lst files and get rid of windows crap I have now lost it again .

What a bloody mess this Grub4Dos system is .

Sdc1 as a USB hard drive is (Hd1,0)
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Scooby
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#30 Post by Scooby »

bigpup wrote: Wonder if you could put a yes or no option at the end to start grub4dosconfig :idea:

Something like start, open, or run, etc... grub4dos bootloader configure program?
Enter y for yes or n for no

If you enter y for yes.
Grub4dosconfig starts.

What do you think?
I am not to keen on it but am willing to go halfway and add parameter for
it somthing like --auto. Will you take that?

If you then want to make a pet you can yourself put in a wrapper

A file called full_puppy_installer that contains

Code: Select all

#/bin/bash
puppy_full_installer --auto "$@"
promote full_puppy_installer and you get your wanted behavior

bigpup wrote:Suggestion for the info.
To make this install bootable you need to run grub4dosconfig
Change this to:

Code: Select all

To make this install bootable you need to run grub4dosconfig to install a bootloader to the USB drive.
In Grub4dosconfig -choose to install to the USB drive and choose selection:
search only within this device.

I did add this but is it only useful for USB or is this misdirection??
like april tried.

new one
https://gist.github.com/suedi/8897880a8 ... 68abc1.zip
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bigpup
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#31 Post by bigpup »

april,

You are installing to a USB hard drive, so may be other issues here.
I have only installed to a USB flash drive.

A full install to a USB flash drive or hard drive is not a normal way to install Puppy.
Grub4dosconfig seems to be able to handle making a working boot loader, so it is being used.

I do not know why you are having so much trouble with this.

First do not use Legacy Grub.
It is known to have problems with the newer versions of Puppy.
In fact, I do not know why people still offer that boot loader.

Grub4dosconfig should be working for you.
I have no problem getting it to make a good boot menu.
I am using Grub4dosconfig V1.9.2

A long shot is, maybe ext4 format is an issue with the Puppy you are running this in, to do the install.
Full ext4 support was not complete in earlier versions of Puppy.

Example:
Slacko 6.3.0
Installed to a USB flash drive with ext2 format.
When you run Grub4dosconfig you should see this:
Attachments
capture31819.png
Select the flash drive
Select search only within this device
(36.1 KiB) Downloaded 372 times
capture3067.png
Add rootwait in options window
(24.31 KiB) Downloaded 367 times
capture3733.png
Select OK
(11.27 KiB) Downloaded 360 times
capture4738.png
Close Grub4dosconfig or edit the menu
(27.74 KiB) Downloaded 371 times
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bigpup
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#32 Post by bigpup »

To make this install bootable you need to run grub4dosconfig to install a bootloader to the USB drive.
In Grub4dosconfig -choose to install to the USB drive and choose selection:
search only within this device.


I did add this but is it only useful for USB or is this misdirection??
like april tried.
I do not think so.
It is telling someone to install to the device you installed Puppy on.
Even when you install to a internal hard drive, you need to install the boot loader to it and only search that drive.

A boot loader has to be on the device you make the computer boot from.
The boot loader has to know what is on that device.

Here you are installing to a USB drive and going to tell the computer to boot from it.

PS:
I updated the first topic with your latest zip package.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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bigpup
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#33 Post by bigpup »

bigpup wrote:
Wonder if you could put a yes or no option at the end to start grub4dosconfig Idea

Something like start, open, or run, etc... grub4dos bootloader configure program?
Enter y for yes or n for no

If you enter y for yes.
Grub4dosconfig starts.

What do you think?


I am not to keen on it but am willing to go halfway and add parameter for
it somthing like --auto. Will you take that?
So, grub4dosconfig would auto start?
That would be even better.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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bigpup
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#34 Post by bigpup »

Scooby,

Using your latest installer code.

Something that may need tweaking.

When you get to this point in the install (see image below)
It looks like nothing is happening or the program has stopped working. It can take several minutes, before anything changes.
Finally you get the result info.

I am not sure what is exactly happening, at this point in the process, but maybe a place to put a progress meter or something to tell people it is still doing something. :idea:
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starhawk
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#35 Post by starhawk »

@bigpup, Scooby. I noticed that spot too, last time I used the installer.
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#36 Post by bigpup »

I have installed only to USB flash drives.
My computer has no USB 3 ports.
No such thing, when this computer was made.

I would like to know if someone has done a full install to a USB drive that has USB 3 connection speed.
Your results?

My results are using USB 2 connections.
I have found it is usable, but it does run things slower.
I have also seen different speed results, depending on the brand of USB drive used.
All the USB flash drives say they are USB 3. They should be able to run at USB 2, but that does not seem to really indicate real world results.

I have installed to two different 8GB flash drives and a 32GB drive.
The 32GB flash drive runs the slowest.
It has two partitions .
First one has a Puppy frugal install. It runs fast and well.
Second partition has the Puppy full install. It runs slow, really slow.
Wonder if drive size has anything to do with this speed thing?
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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starhawk
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#37 Post by starhawk »

No. Flash media such as USB flash drives and SD cards are what are called "unmanaged" media. The controllers in those do not have the sophisticated wear-leveling (etc) algorithms that an SSD has.

Remember that an OS, also, has far more read/write cycles to disk than a flash drive or SD card would otherwise experience. Transferring a few gigs of pictures is relatively easy for such media, as that's what they're designed for. An operating system... that's a whole different kind of heavy lifting.

You are experiencing the results of that.

This is what I would call a "known bad" configuration. It will eventually kill the flash drive. At the very least, the drive will develop 'bad spots' where writing to certain places will give it problems, or later reads will give a corrupt file, because that cell will no longer 'hold' the contents it's supposed to.

I needed this script for one purpose and one purpose only. I have a strange-relative-to-ordinary-PCs system, one kind of what's called a "thin client" (basically, a computer designed to remote-desktop into a far-away server session upon which the real work is done). I want to use that client --and several others-- for a project; however, in the process of testing them, I discovered that the graphics driver intended to run on that hardware had a problem that broke it for the very unusual chipset in this client.

As a result, I opened a bug report on the tracker for the driver. That bug report now has in excess of three hundred comments on it, and the driver has been almost entirely rewritten as a result of somewhat lackluster enthusiasm on the devs' part with respect to the code itself, and assistance from an extremely helpful newcomer to the project, a man named Kevin Brace who is primarily a hardware dude but saw that he could help me out and did so, to considerable effect.

However -- in order to report back to him why what didn't work, didn't work, I needed to be able to retrieve logs from Puppy sessions where the system hung and had to be hard-rebooted (i.e. with the power switch). That meant a full install, and the easiest way to do that was with an SD card in an IDE adapter, as I had those, and the "real" drives that I have either wouldn't operate in the system (its IDE header has insufficient power to it, to spin up a standard notebook platter drive), or were already on Death's doorstep. There was also the matter that the system I had originally in place for that -- wherein I could plug in a drive, boot from USB, and do a standard full install, then transfer the drive back -- developed a problem where it would no longer properly access its internal IDE header, similar to what's going on with this client now.

Since then I've had problem after problem with the client. It hasn't been working with the driver, even though, by all reports from Kevin and others, it should be -- and then it developed the same issue with its IDE header that the other box (a different client from a different manufacturer) did, where the drive attached to the IDE header would be assigned a volume name -- sda1 -- but was both unbootable in all ways, and could not be accessed once the system was booted from USB (mount errored out with something to the effect of "this drive doesn't actually exist" even though a name was allocated to it).

I've ordered a replacement client, since replacing the internal SD adapter did not work, but right now it's stuck in USPS purgatory. Not the Postal system's fault -- it was sent Media Mail by the unwisely cheap seller on eBay.

For those outside the USA or unaware -- Media Mail is a special service intended for books and other print media. While it *can* be used for electronic media, there are severe restrictions on what can and cannot be sent via that service. As such, it is the single cheapest rate available to ordinary US citizens (bulk rates for junk mail can be lower, I've heard -- but that is by no means available to the everyday Tom, Jake, or Harry). Hence, the eBay seller thought he'd be clever and save a few bucks. Instead, he had to refund me a little while ago, and I may or may not get the dang thing ever. Just a little bad luck, but the good thing for me is that these clients are insanely cheap. I paid $20 for that thing, and it's in as close to perfect condition as you can get without the original power supply (a Netgear router wall wart works fine, I've found) and with the system being gently used.
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april

#38 Post by april »

Jeez another fairy chaser ^!^
bigpup wrote:I have installed only to USB flash drives.
My computer has no USB 3 ports.
No such thing, when this computer was made.I would like to know if someone has done a full install to a USB drive that has USB 3 connection speed.
Your results?
Got that USB 2 hard drive120G working and it is definitely a lot faster running than the USB 2 Stick of 16G by twice? If that helps.Full installs on both for the flips
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bigpup
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#39 Post by bigpup »

april,

Thanks!
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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starhawk
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#40 Post by starhawk »

bigpup, did you see my explanation? I know it wasn't nearly as short -- but it's perhaps a bit more informative.

@april -- I don't know what you mean by "fairy chaser", but I'll gladly listen if you'll explain.
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