Boot up search for Tahr puppy files takes too long

[foxpup]

On an efi machine I used to boot puppies with grub4dos on an usb. It seems to me this could be a good way for this 4T HDD machine (I didn't know that exists, mine has "only" 256M SSD !) also. It seems strange to me to boot from (slow) CD every time unless your machine cannot boot otherwise.

On my usb are grldr, menu.lst and x maps with the kernel and init of each x puppy in it. I just copy kernel and init from the iso's.
On my SSD I have a partition (sda9) with x maps named exactly as the x maps on my usb and containing the main.sfs, and other system .sfs if necessary, of each x puppy. The pupsave(s) for each x puppy are also placed in these directories. I use pupsave.fs, a file; I guess a pupsave directory would be placed in the same place.
I almost forgot: grub4dos installed mbr on the usb.
The menu.lst on the usb has a kernel lines with psubdir and pdev1=sda9 boot parameters as in my example in the second message of this post. You can add it in the menu.lst. First let grub4dos create a draft menu.lst.
I had to make changes in bios to make booting from usb the first boot option.

The mere size of your harddrive may well be the cause of the "long" boots. So I would certainly try if adding the pdev1 boot parameter helps. You can try it at the flash screen.

Btw

Puppy bootloaders won't work.

I think grub2 will work on your large HDD though and it can boot puppy. You may consider installing it, if it is not on your HDD yet.

[nubc]

If you don't count the sda1 partition, the sought file, tahrsave-605, is only one directory deep. I think grub4dos does not recognize GPT partitions. I have been told grub2 works with GPT partitions. As far as size goes to explain the long boot, sda1 is only 30 GB. I see grub2 is available through PPM from an Ubuntu repo. What's the diff betwwen grub2-common_2.02 (a durectory) and grub_2.02 (a file)? Would there happen to be a .pet for grub2?

bigpup, what's actually on the thumb drive for each frugal install?

EDIT: I installed grub2 with PPM. Not only is it nowhere to be found in the menu tree, it can't be called from urxvt console.

[bigpup]

bigpup, what's actually on the thumb drive for each frugal install?

What is normally in a frugal install of a Puppy.
Each Puppy version, in it's own directory, with all the files from the iso in it.

I do them the easy way by using this program from a running Puppy.
Yapi
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=107601

I usually use the option to right click on a Puppy iso and select open with.... or send to.... yapi.
Yapi starts already with the iso selected and goes into the install process.
(This also makes sure the name of the directory, each frugal install is in, is a name that Grub4dos config recognizes.)

After installing to the USB drive.
When you run Grub4dos Bootloader Config
Select the USB drive as the location to install Grub4dos.
Select search only within this device.
(See image)

When you boot the USB drive
The normal Grub4dos boot menu pops up and select from it as to what to boot.

[foxpup]

As far as size goes to explain the long boot, sda1 is only 30 GB.

I mean the size of 4T could be a problem, because puppy (init or kernel?) may be looking for the main.sfs on the entire disc. To narrow down this search, I think it is important to use kernel options like this:

Code: Select all

 subdir=/DpupStretchOsc/ pdev1=sda9

I think grub4dos does not recognize GPT partitions.

I am not sure, because one can put grub4dos on an usb and boot a puppy on the GPT harddisc. It may have difficulties if the harddisk is too large.

I installed grub2 with PPM. Not only is it nowhere to be found in the menu tree, it can't be called from urxvt console.

Maybe you still have to install grub2, with a command like grub-install <partition> ? I would recommend to make a new small boot partition for this, vfat/fat32 with boot/esp flag.
I got grub by accident, installing Fedora Games on my harddisc. It turned out all right.
Grub2 is also in the efi partition of an efi build, as bootloader. It is often called bootx64.efi. Look for efi.img in the iso of a puppy-uefi.iso and extract it. You can drag the content of efi.img to your new small boot partition and add a grub.cfg.

Your new boot-system on the small partition should show up in your bios where you can put it top of the list.

[nubc]

The reason I asked what exactly was on the thumb drive was to make a decision on the size of the drive. I still don't have any idea how much space might be taken up by two frugal installs, especially when one Puppy version seems to auto-adjust size according to its needs. Right now Slacko is 2.2 GB and Tahr is 1.0 GB, for a total of 3.2 GB. I'm inclined to choose an 8- GB flash drive. Be advised I will not be using YAPI. Just a reminder, I have been a full install Puppy user for 10 years, and I am not a fan of frugal installs. Meaning, I don't know much about frugal installs. Both Slacko and Tahr are 32-bit versions.

[bigpup]

That size all depends on what you add to the Puppy.
If using a save file how big you made it.

Just the frugal install with no save and no added stuff is going to be around 300 to 500 MB.

[nubc]

Maybe you still have to install grub2, with a command like grub-install <partition> ? I would recommend to make a new small boot partition for this, vfat/fat32 with boot/esp flag.

How small is "small"?

The boot partition is inside sda1? Or inserted as the first partition? How will new boot partition be designated, as the new sda1?

[foxpup]

Maybe you still have to install grub2, with a command like grub-install <partition> ? I would recommend to make a new small boot partition for this, vfat/fat32 with boot/esp flag.

How small is "small"?

The boot partition is inside sda1? Or inserted as the first partition? How will new boot partition be designated, as the new sda1?

Sorry for being so short.
You should have some unallocated space on your hard disc to make an extra boot partition. You can check with Gparted.
In gparted you can also see what is your boot partition now. It should be flagged boot/esp. There should be an EFI directory with subdirectories if you have a look.
You can decide to add grub in this partition, if it does not have grub already in it. Maybe in one of the subdirectories of EFI you already have grub (look for grub.cfg). If not you can install it in the partition and after installation you should find it as a new subdirectory.
You could also decide to install grub in its own boot partition. Then you have to have some unallocated space on your hard disc to make an extra partition. Gparted will give it an appropiate number (sda3?). 100M is enough, make it 256M to be safe. Also give it a label and name to better identify the partition. Then you install grub to it. You could "populate" it with another bootloader, like rEFInd, also. Fatdog for example uses both refind and grub next to each other.
The first time I got some pretty good and useful understanding of efi and booting was after reading this from Barry:
http://bkhome.org/news/201612/quirky-in ... 200ha.html
Barry uses syslinux as bootloader here.
After installing grub to the new boot partition, you will have to go into bios to choose grub as the first boot. Installing grub in a new partition makes it more sure that the bios will find the grub as a new possibility for booting.

[nubc]

Assuming that you know I wish to install grub2 to the hard drive in order to do a full install of Tahr 605 to sda1 (30 GB partition), there is no reason for an EFI directory to be present on this hard drive. Partition sda1 has been flagged boot partition from a previous full install that failed because legacy grub does not work with GPT partitions. (The remnants of that failed install have been manually removed.) A Slacko directory, a Tahr directory, and a fsckme.flg file are present on sda1 and nothing else. There is a boot directory in both the Slacko and Tahr systems. in both, the boot directory contains a grub directory and a system.map file. Both grub directories contain only a single file gfxblacklist.txt and nothing else.

[foxpup]

Assuming that you know I wish to install grub2 to the hard drive in order to do a full install of Tahr 605 to sda1 (30 GB partition), there is no reason for an EFI directory to be present on this hard drive.

Hi nubc
At the moment you boot Slacko and Tahr from CD, probably with syslinux, or whatever is on the CD. That works because it boots from the classic small medium.
I propose to you to boot from your hard disc. Since it is GPT, very large and your computer is an EFI machine, I suppose, your first choice to do that is grub2 in EFI. Grub2 and not legacy grub.
The "boot installation" in EFI should be on a separate small partition, and not in a big partition like 30G. I do not know however if this is absolutely necessary, but it is always done like that. It has to be on vfat anyway to be detected as a boot partition; the flags esp/boot are not enough.
The remnants of earlier attempts to install on and to boot from your hard disc are unlikely to work.

[nubc]

This Dell Precision 390 Core Two machine has a plain BIOS, so unless there is a very compelling reason, I wish you would drop references to EFI or UEFI. To my knowledge I have never owned a EFI or UEFI computer, so I don't have a clue what you're talking about.

[foxpup]

This Dell Precision 390 Core Two machine has a plain BIOS, so unless there is a very compelling reason, I wish you would drop references to EFI or UEFI. To my knowledge I have never owned a EFI or UEFI computer, so I don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Well, that is how I know grub2, on efi. At least we know now you have a plain legacy bios.
Because of the size of your hard disc, I think - not sure if there is any other possibility - that you will need grub2 to be able to boot from your hard disc without CD required and with more control.
Grub2 on plain legacy bios, with mbr is out of my experience, sorry. I used grub4dos, which worked simple and good for me.

[nubc]

Boot from GPT hard disk in Legacy BIOS mode
https://www.aioboot.com/en/gpt-legacy/

Legacy BIOS Issues with GPT
http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html

EDIT: I extracted AIO Boot on an ext3 GPT partition, but this action produced empty directories. The downloaded executable (AIO_Boot_Extractor.exe) is 42.3 MB in size; the extracted output directory is 488 kB in size. I'm extracting an extractor, how confusing. I really don't know what this executable is doing.

[foxpup]

Boot from GPT hard disk in Legacy BIOS mode
https://www.aioboot.com/en/gpt-legacy/

Legacy BIOS Issues with GPT
http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html

EDIT: I extracted AIO Boot on an ext3 GPT partition, but this action produced empty directories. The downloaded executable (AIO_Boot_Extractor.exe) is 42.3 MB in size; the extracted output directory is 488 kB in size. I'm extracting an extractor, how confusing. I really don't know what this executable is doing.

As I understand it, you should run AIO_Boot_extractor.exe in windows. It is an installer package in windows.
Do you have windows on your machine? From the above, I understand you do not.

I am on thin ice here, but maybe this is something to read/try?
https://superuser.com/questions/903112/ ... on/1170352

[nubc]

Since the Vietnamese developer says AIO Boot works with Linux, perhaps I should extract in Windows, then move extracted files to Linux partition (or some specially created fat32 partition on the target hard drive). But if the executable is inserting code into the OS, that course of action is not feasible. If you check the step procedure, there's no indication that anything has actually been installed by running the AIO Boot Extractor executable, since user still has to create a small boot partition and run AIOCreator.exe after the initial extraction. Of course, I also have the advantage of seeing the extracted directories in making this assessment.

[foxpup]

Can you report how it goes with AIO Boot, nubc? This is interesting.
I hope you are right about the assumption AIOCreator not actually installing anything.
Good luck!