How to install to hard drive + modifying the MBR of the hd

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pirlouwi
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed 27 Jul 2005, 18:50

How to install to hard drive + modifying the MBR of the hd

#1 Post by pirlouwi »

Hi all,
I would like to put puppy on a CompactFlash that is on an CF2IDE adapter. I mean: this 128Mb flash is seen by the bios as a normal 128Mb hd drive.
I would like to boot on it without the need of a floppy disk for the boot manager. How can I do that ?
I suppose I must first boot from the live-cd and then execute the installtohd script.
But then I would like to put the kernel and the boot manager on the flash too. How can i do that? :?:
thx

pirlouwi
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed 27 Jul 2005, 18:50

#2 Post by pirlouwi »

Oops, i am so sorry. :oops:
Just read a little of 10 posts, and found what I wanted: http://www.ph-islands.net/pupinstall/
:P
--Pirlouwi

pirlouwi
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed 27 Jul 2005, 18:50

#3 Post by pirlouwi »

Now, i thing i can write this post because i have try a lot of things and it does not work.
First of all i gave up to use my 128Mb CF as primary boot partition, because 128Mb is not enough to put all uncompressed puppy bins in there, without putting all in the ramdisk. During the script hdinstall, i get no space left on device. I wonder how much is needed ... someone knows?

Secondly i have tried to install puppy on a real hd.
I had an hd with already 3 partitions: /boot as a 100Mb ext3 on /dev/hda1, / as a 20000Mb ext3 on /dev/hda2 and a swap file of 256Mb (2xRAMSIZE) on /dev/hda3.
During installation, the script told me that it did not recognized the partition id type. It proposed me to overwrite it with fdisk, putting 83 in it.
It was unsuccessful. The log proposed me to reboot, and after reboot : same thing.
I tried with cfdisk myself (on puppy) and i couldn't write the partition table (in fact it was always not re-readable).

Anyone can help me on that?

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Bancobusto
Posts: 168
Joined: Mon 13 Jun 2005, 20:52
Location: Vancouver Island

#4 Post by Bancobusto »

That d a m n install script has played that trickon me before, too.

And the weird thing was that no matter how often I tried to change the ID myself, it wouldn't let me. I believe I even tried QTParted, and same thing.

What worked for me was to ignore if, and install anyway without changing the ID.

And, low and behold, afterwards when I would run cfdisk, it would report that the partition that Puppy was on was now an ext2 filesystem.

Weird, but then again, I make no claim to understand the w h y when it comes to computers... The more I learn the less certain peculularities make sense.

So, just ignore the chance to change ID on drive, worked for me.

Hope that helps :D
Freedom isn't just a Puppy-Linux forum member!

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

Two possibilities

#5 Post by raffy »

1. The 100 MB partition 1 is too small - Puppy uses the whole of partition for its files. The how-to (that follows Barry's advice) says you should use at least 500 MB for installation.

2. The filesystem Puppy uses is ext2 (but if you already see type 83 in fdisk or cfdisk, go ahead!)
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Guest

#6 Post by Guest »

I will try again, with a bigger partition, and i will try to ignore the id error msg.
thx both of you.

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