Full Installer to USB flash drives

[starhawk]

starhawk,

That is where this script was originally made.
I posted it here to move it out of the section of the forum that is for discussion of programing in general.

Did you ever get it to work for you?

I feel this is cutting edge for Puppy.
Doing full installs to USB flash drives, has never been supported by Puppy installers.
Well, Quirky did do it, but it is not official Puppy.

That post was directed primarily at april, who does not seem to like me after she (?) was rude to me and I returned fire. Sorry for the confusion.

I did not get it working, yet -- as posted in the other topic, to which I linked -- I'm having what I believe are hardware troubles. The machine will boot from USB but not from an SD card in an adapter via its internal IDE header. I've replaced the adapter, and am in the process of replacing the system itself entirely -- see my most recent post in the other topic, please -- and the card on its own reads fine. If all else fails, I'll replace the card itself -- but since it's a 64gb SD card, it isn't exactly cheap for me (I'm sadly in the income bracket where $15 is kind of a large expenditure), so I'm trying to avoid that if I can.

TBH I'm starting to wonder if there's something in the air around here that fouls chipsets -- that is one of three or four machines, now, that will not properly boot! Very strange...

Well, to be completely fair -- with this particular box, when I took the heatsink off to replace the thermal transfer material underneath, some months ago, I managed to accidentally knock off a tiny surface-mount "passive" (resistor or capacitor) that... well... does something. (The clearance between parts and spring-pins on this thing is INSANE. Way too small.) Threw the part away, as it was in such shape that there was no rescuing it. I've not had any real trouble with it other than (a) stubbornness with openchrome and (b) now it suddenly won't boot, so for a long time I wrote that missing component off as harmless. (In my experience, something like that tends either to have an immediate, severe effect, or be completely harmless forever.) Now, though, I'm beginning to reconsider that conclusion...

[bigpup]

I did not understand where to put the "rootwait" command as I could not find an options box? Actually I found this now where "ro" appears on the first GUI page. I assume you delete the "ro"

You found the correct place to enter the option.
Yes I would delete the "ro" and only have "rootwait" as the added option.

I actually used "ro" and "rootwait" as the added options and Puppy ran even slower.
I edited the Grub4dos boot menu entry and removed the "ro".
It ran much faster without the "ro" option. Just use "rootwait" as the only added option.

[Scooby]

Success ! A booting USB stick

Good news, How would you rate the difficulty of this script? Intermediate?

I did not understand where to put the "rootwait" command as I could not find an options box? Actually I found this now where "ro" appears on the first GUI page. I assume you delete the "ro"

In your opinion could this be communicated in a better way?
How to make it more clear?

I did replace "ro" with "rootwait rw" don't really know the difference
though "rootwait" is essential

Here is the output from this session . let me know and I'll remove the long posts when you are ready.
...

No need to remove, please keep them for reference


Seems like it worked out OK


If keeping it as a terminal script, is there anyway you think that
will make it easier to understand

I don't mean this

Code: Select all

# puppy_full_installer
bash: puppy_full_installer: command not found
# sh puppy_full_installer 

This would be solved by putting script in .pet and place it in /bin
that is in PATH

then you could run it with

Code: Select all

# puppy_full_installer

[bigpup]

I started again and reformatted the USB stick but I cannot get an option that lets me format it as sdc. Rather I can only make sdc1 so that's what I did and I added the boot flag later too .

You did it correctly.
In your system the USB flash drive is seen as sdc.
Any partitions on it are identified as sdc1, sdc2, sdc3, etc.....
That is normal identification.

Any drive has to have:
At least one partition.
That partition has to be formatted.
Data is written to the partition.

[april]

No I think you have it thanks Scooby.
As with everything with computers reading the post carefully is the main bit
cheers

[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

[bigpup]

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

Thanks for this code!!

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

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?

[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.

[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.

[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?

[april]

Yes to all .edited so should be seeable now

[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.

[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.

[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)

[Scooby]

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

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

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

[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:

[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.

[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.

[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.

[starhawk]

@bigpup, Scooby. I noticed that spot too, last time I used the installer.