Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Flerix]

Okay, so I am installing Puppy for the second time (was changing to a full harddrive install) and when I installed the GRUB bootloader, it only came up into a prompt screen. I know how to start up using the commands it gives, but I was under the impression that I would be able to just choose an OS from the list and boot from it... Some help here? Maybe someone can tell me how to set it up to just ask me which system I wanna start up to?

[Bruce B]

[flaran]

Okay, by now I have basically given up on the GRUB that comes with puppy, but I have NO IDEA now to make it dual boot with Windows and Linux without it. I'm unable to do a boot floppy. Any specific help?

[flamesage]

well you COULD just use your live CD and mount your linux hard-drive, but that would be sort of a hassle.

[Bruce B]

I wish so much people would not ask for help with Windows. How about Windows XP, or Windows 98SE, etc.

The differences are such that I cannot advise anyone regarding Puppy installation particulars without having this knowledge.

If by the term Windows you mean XP, there is already an excellent step-by-step how to here:

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=1058

If by the term Windows you don't mean XP or Y@K or Windows 2000 and you do mean something else please specify and I'll be more than happy to help you resolve this problem.

Please don't take offense as none is intended, but help can arrive sooner and more accurately if people would simply say Windows 95 or Windows XP.

Sorry for my little rant, it's not your fault, it's been building up for some time

---------

I presume you have some kind of Windows on a FAT file system, but I really need to know in this case, before I advise in a way that would make a mess of your computer.

[flaran]

Meh, I worked with it for a while longer and finally got it working. Actually, I meant Windows ME (uber suck), but they all suck to me. I just have to have it because it is the only OS that supports my printer.

Anyway, thanks for attempting to help; how I finally got it to go into the menu instead of going directly to the prompt was... and this is strange...

I went into the expert setup, thinking that there may be some problem in the automated; when I went into that I was able to tell it which of my partitions was which (of course it knew but I could give them my own labels). It seemed like there was no difference though... so when I rebooted, I was just expecting the same thing. Hey, you won't get let down with pessimism... Well, it came up and I was extremely happy. Any of the rest of you with this problem, atleast try that out. [/b]

[Bruce B]

Very good

[Guest]

I think Barry should just supply the Grub files and instructions on how to set it up.
There are many options you can use to set Grub up as a boot loader and I wrote simple instructions on the old Simple Forum and provided the files but as the forum is now read only with no attachments the instructions are no good without the files unless you want to get the files out of Grub yourself.

I think there is some stuff on the wiki about Grub.

[mouldy]

I recently replaced a corrupted install of win95 with Puppy 1.0.4 on my old P1 laptop. (no cdrom, so had to remove hardrive and install on desktop computer) Since I also had an old install of DSL on hardrive, I went ahead and tried Puppy's Grub installer. Worked fine, found both Puppy and DSL.

I've done GRUB before copying files from other distributions and from scratch. Never tried Dos GRUB.

[raffy]

Grub is discussed but used in different setups (ext2, WinXP) in the link below.

Edit: And I have never encountered a problem in installing Grub, even with multiple hard disks. But while there will be no problem in the Grub install, this does produce problems when actually RUNNING Grub. So the best practice still is to use only one hard disk when attempting to _install AND use_ Grub.

[Bruce B]

In Flerix's case it would have been tough, very tough to use the GRUB for DOS. Microsoft crippled DOS so bad with ME that it's tough to even use it.

I know I've had problems with Puppy's GRUB and some successes, but at a low rate.

I have not filed a bug report, because I don't know if it is something particular to a few machines.

The problem is we only hear of the people who had problems. For all I know most people are installing it successfully. I just can't tell.

I think the grub script needs work and I also think GRUB was an excellent choice for Puppy.

I just tend to validate that people wanting to boot from HD and getting stuck with the GRUB part, because I think there is a problem.

There should be ways to put various step by step how-tos together to help these people. The various OSes require different procedures for GRUB for DOS and I wouldn't even attempt to do it with ME

Typically GRUB is a Linux install, but that is a tough manual install AND you need a Linux partition. Sometimes hard drive installations are made as Option 1 and can be a FAT only drive. Which is fine, but the LInux GRUB won't install on those machines under any circumstances as far as I am aware.

The technical ability is already here. I think we need some step by step procedures for the GRUBs that failed. The XP how to seems to be done. We still need a step by step for 9x and for Linux install. But not tonight for me

[dvw86]

I have had very good luck with Grub on option 2 HD installs and using it to boot Puppy on custom (not option 2 or option 1) HD installs. It could be that it just works well with my hardware setup. I don't know, but it seems to work well for me.

[Bruce B]

[flerix]

I'll post a tutorial with screens and all soon...

[raffy]

As Lobster loves to say, welcome to the kennel !

See this, too.