Hard Drive install with no floppy - Solved

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Marcel
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Hard Drive install with no floppy - Solved

#1 Post by Marcel »

I've tried to install Puppy to my h/d without a floppy, on my old Compaq Presario 1600, which has a dead floppy drive. No success: is there a new or very recent version with a non-floppy install?
Thanks for any help.
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." - Voltaire

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Ian
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#2 Post by Ian »

Have you tried the latest release, 1.0.3, it gives you the option to install Grub as the bootloader rather than booting from a floppy.

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danleff
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#3 Post by danleff »

Could you be a little more specific on what you tried?

I assume you tried to install off the live cd?

If so, what happened? Did Puppy boot on the system off the live cd?

How much RAM is in your system? There are several variations of this model.

The Puppy wiki has some methods, but let's see if your system will support Puppy and what you have already tried.
I love it when a plan comes together

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raffy
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Hard drive install

#4 Post by raffy »

Here's what i have done for illustration of hard drive install

http://www.ph-islands.net/pupinstall/

It's there as i had no time yet for the Wiki, but will transfer the files later. Meantime, you can send me private mail for my errors, or keep discussing here :)
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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Marcel
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Hard disk install without floppy

#5 Post by Marcel »

My laptop is a Compaq Presario 1600, 64MB memory, 4GB hard
disk, no floppy, no MSWindows. There is stuff on the H/D from a previous installation of Mepis linux. I would like to use the whole H/D for Puppy.
I was using Puppy 1.0.2, on a CDRom I burnt after d/loading from the web.
When I chose Step 2, and entered /dev/hda1, it was rejected. I tried /dev/hda2 and 3, with the same result.
Would Puppy 1.0.3 work better? Is there anything else I can do to install successfully?
All help gratefully received. Thanks.
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." - Voltaire

raffy
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Target device must have no Puppy File

#6 Post by raffy »

I guess the target device must have no Puppy file in it. In version 1.04, you can choose not to use a hard disk partition by pressing 3 at boot time. In earlier versions, this choice is not there, so Puppy always uses a partition to store files. If that partition happens to be your install target, then the process will fail.

And you have to check, too, if it is the correct filesystem type being used by Puppy (at "cfdisk" while in console, the type is 83 for Linux filesystem, or "ext2").
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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danleff
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#7 Post by danleff »

Take a look at Rally's excellent ink. Were you attempting a type 1 or 2 installation?

Type 1 looks for a vfat partition just to install the vmlinuz, image.gz and usr_cramfs files. If it is not there, it fails.

If you are doing a complete installation, choose the type 2 install option.

If you used the reiserfs filesystem for Mepis, this may the problem. As Rally suggested, you may need to make one ext2 or ext3 partition.

I seem to remember something about this in verion 1.0.2.

Look closely at the directions. Did it tell you to use the full name of the partition (/dev/hda1) or just the real partition point (hda1). I can't remember which version it was, but one just asks for the name (hda1) not the full designation (/dev/hda1}.

Also, you can get into rxvt and type in;

probepart (hit the enter key)

This will tell you what partitons are on the disk. make sure that you are targeting the right partition. Again, if Mepis was set up on reiserfs, and this is the only partition on the drive, then this is the problem.

If you see the target partiton, but see the filesystem as "unknown" then you need to reformat the partition.

Depending on what filesystems you had on the drive previously, say you had Windows on it with an extended partition, then your partition table may be different. If hda1 is really NTFS, then you know what the issue is. Many systems may have such a table if XP was installed and then a Linux distro.

/dev/hda1...........NTFS
/dev/hda2..........Extended partition (not available, just an extenion of the table)

/dev/hda5.....reiserfs

Notice that the logical ordfer is not 1,2,3,4,5, as hda5 is a logical partition after the windows primary partition..

The probepart command will tell you what you have and if any problems are resident on the partiton table.

There was also a problem with version 1.0.2 using the 2.6 series kernel. Try version 1.0.4, the latest, if possible.
I love it when a plan comes together

--Hannibal Smith

raffy
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Install Page Updated

#8 Post by raffy »

Thanks, danleff, for the info about the WinXP extended partition - am not aware of that. Now, since Puppy 1.04 has the OpenOffice option, users without much games being used can erase the hard disk (delete all partitions and create new ones).

I have installed Puppy 1.04 yesterday, so I have also updated the installation page at:

http://www.ph-islands.net/pupinstall/

What an install by the way - an OS and office suite ready in less than 5 minutes! (using Pentium 4 PC)

BTW, danleff, it's raffy :)
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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danleff
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#9 Post by danleff »

Ooppss..my fingers are a little dyslexic. Sorry about that Raffy!

Yes, it all depends on how one partitioned the hard drive.

If you have all primary partitions, then you get;

hda1
hda2...and so on.

But I found a lot of folks end up having logical partitions. So, the number scheme jumps a bit, depending on the way you set up the partitions, primary vs. logial, or a combination of all.
I love it when a plan comes together

--Hannibal Smith

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Marcel
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Installed OK without floppy!

#10 Post by Marcel »

Thanks for help postings.
Finally I managed to install onto hard disk. I used Puppy 1.0.4.
My problem had been that I didn't understand Grub. Then I had a stroke of genius: :idea: read the Help file - duh! (How many times have I told others to read the Help file!). Now all is well.:D
Puppy is great!
The only problem: it works fine with the touchpad, but can't see the serial mouse.
Can Puppy allow 2 pointing devices?
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." - Voltaire

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