(OLD) (ARCHIVED) Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[rimatheou]

[Fossil]

@rimatheou
I Still use Puppy 431 along with several other older Puppy's on equally ancient computers, all booting from a USB!
I'm with greengeek, try removing the hard drive and then booting from the USB. Have you made the USB bootable by ticking the flag in GParted?

If all else fails and the BIOS will not see the USB stick as a bootable device, try the boot manager, PLOP.
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html
Enclosed an image of one of my USB sticks with various older Puppy's frugally installed using Grub4DOS. There is no need for multiple partitions.

[rimatheou]

lupu-500 is booting fine from hd, x-server works out of the box, mouse is working. After installing one has to setup grub manually and edit menu.lst.

[bigpup]

OK!

I think we are getting confused on what you are exactly doing and what your problem still is.

Need to be detailed and specific.
Booting from what device?
Using what boot loader?
You do what?
You see what?

At this point.

I do not know if booting from a hard drive is a problem.

Booting from a USB drive is a problem.

Mouse still not working when Puppy Slacko 6.3 is installed to the hard drive, and you are booting from that hard drive install.

Slacko 6.3 may just not be a good Puppy for your hardware.

[greengeek]

[rimatheou]

@ bigpup

I'm also a little bit confused on what I've all done, because I cannot remember all the steps.

I now boot from hard drive, using Grub (not Grub4Dos). I run Puppy Linux 500 frugal in sda1 dir puppy500. X-Server is great. Mouse is working.

Booting from USB is no problem, I think you missunderstood.

I have the following interfaces:
eth0; Driver: sis900
wlan0; Driver: prism2_usb

Internet connection would be the next thing, but a new thread might be better.

[greengeek]

Now you are using grub instead of grub4dos it would be interesting to see how Slacko 6.3.2 behaved when booted from HDD. Same or different?

If Slacko 6.3.2 does not run well on your hardware 01micko would be interested I think - and may be able to offer possible reasons.

[rimatheou]

Someone here said that he has several Puppies on a usb drive. I want to check out different Puppies because of wlan detection, and I don't want to delete the Puppies from the usb drive. Can you tell me how to make a multiboot usb drive? I now have Puppy 431 and Puppy 500 on hard drive and Grub installed. X-Server ist great and mouse is working. I want to install puppy 520 and so on, until wlan is working (and mouse not ) Now there is a usb drive with puppy 431 and one with 500. I have no more drives, and I don't want to buy.

[bigpup]

Each Puppy is a frugal install in their own separate directories.
Puppy 4.3.1 in directory puppy431.
Puppy 500 in directory puppy500.
Puppy 520 in directory puppy520.
Etc........

Install Grub4dos Boot loader, to the USB flash drive, to have a boot menu with each one listed.

Those are some old Puppies.
You may want to be using the latest version of Grub4dos boot loader.
Grub4dos config
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51697

When you run Grub4dos bootloader config.
select the usb flash drive as the device to install on.
Select search only within this device.
All the other default settings are OK.
OK.
OK.
OK.
Done.

If you remove a Puppy version or install a new one.
Simply rerun Grub4dos config to update the boot menu.

[greengeek]

There are several different methods that can be used to set up multiple puppies on one stick. Is it possible for you to post an image of what Gparted sees on the stick so we can see your partitioning arrangement and sizes?

Also - if you could take a screenshot showing what files are in each of the partitions that hold the grub loader, the menu.lst, and the puppy files, that will help us visualise your starting point.

[rimatheou]

I've now installed Grub4Dos on the USB flash drive with nothing else on it. I have these files on it:

[rimatheou]

This is menu.lst

[rimatheou]

I have a directory puppy431 on the drive and this is the content:

[greengeek]

EDIT : - looks like you and I were posting at the same time so you have already started what I was about to suggest below:

From this point on you have a number of options in order to load multiple puppies - we may all do it slightly differently so try not to mix different methods.

I have never used ext4 so my method may not be suitable but here is what I would suggest:

First - make sure that the boot flag is set on the stick.

Make a subdirectory with a name that reflects the first Puppy that you want to try. Go for a basic one that seems to have liked your hardware. I think you mentioned Lucid as one option. I will use puppy 431 as an example: call the subdirectory "pup431" and inside it copy the 3 files from the puppy 4.3.1 iso eg vmlinuz, initrd.gz and pup431.sfs

Now run grub4dos again to get a new menu.lst (you may even have to remove the one that is allready there).

Recent Grub4dos versions will identify the pup431 subdirectory as a frugal install and write the menu.lst in such a way that the stick can now boot from pup431. Older versions of Grub4dos do not properly understand frugal - and will build an incorrect menu.lst.

If the stick does not boot please post back what happens, along with the menu.lst contents.

If the stick DOES boot then you can now add other subdirectories with other names that identify which pup files you are trialling (eg Precise 56, Lupu2, Tahr503 etc etc). Manually add a new stanza into the menu.lst for each new frugal subdirectory. You should find it straightforward to copy the format of the pup431 stanza when you set up the other entries - just change the names as required.

Some puppies need more than 3 files loaded into their frugal directory - some puppies have a zdrv or an adrv etc. I don't know if they require special treatment in the boot stanza - others will be able to tell you.

I would suggest proving the "multiple frugal" method first by using puppies that have 3 files not the ones that have 4.

[greengeek]