(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I want to install Puppy on my old Compaq Presario laptop.
My floppy drive is dead, and i see that the install process creates a boot floppy.
Can i install without a floppy disk drive? Cd drive is OK - and a flash drive is a possibility too.

You might be able to do it by hacking the install script to comment out the floppy part but you still need a way to boot it.

The next version of Puppy has Grub as the bootloader I think so it might pay to wait for that.

Yes, Pup 1.0.2, Release Candidate 1 due out middle of the week (I went and promised by 11th or earlier, so now I have to work real hard to meet that!).
It will have the first version of the install-to-hard-drive script supporting Grub, which means a floppy boot disk becomes optional.

Ian wrote:You might be able to do it by hacking the install script to comment out the floppy part but you still need a way to boot it.

The next version of Puppy has Grub as the bootloader I think so it might pay to wait for that.

I think maybe it would be good to offer way to do type 2 hardrive install without requiring floppy or grub. Perhaps people might want to use loadlin or tiny on a separate small dos partition to boot puppy or perhaps because their computer doesnt have floppy drive, they wish to make a "boot cd" of their own design or use the generalized Gujin boot cd.

Personally as I've mentioned before, I do a hardrive install making the required boot floppy (though for it to work on my computer I have to replace tiny with loadlin) then make a copy of the install with an imaging program. Can then boot from imaging self booting cd and restore the puppy image to any hardrive with no requirements I make a boot floppy nor install grub (I like loadlin on separate tiny dos partition).

At least with the opera version of 1.0.1, now have option to force Puppy cd not to create a Pup file so dont need two partitions in order to install Puppy to hardrive style 2.

Check out this forum under announcements. Search for grub.
The zip file contains everything needed, to do a type 1 install or a native
type 2 install with installing grub as the boot manager. No floppy required!
You can also mix these installations.. meaning having for example a
hdd with 1 partition (hda1) formatted with dos and bootable to be used for a
type 1 install (just copy the cd to the partition) and a second partition (and probably third and forth.. ) to do a type 2 install. With the boot menu
presented, the last installed option is the default, however, the other options are still available...

Which this, you could have also a couple of different versions installed and ready to run! So could checkout a newer version before touching the others...

NOT for multiple OS installations! Meaning NOT setup for having windows as a parallel OS!!

(If you know grub, this can be changed)

PS

marsh wrote:I want to install Puppy on my old Compaq Presario laptop.
My floppy drive is dead, and i see that the install process creates a boot floppy. Can i install without a floppy disk drive? Cd drive is OK - and a flash drive is a possibility too.

There may be better options, but if you want to stick with 1.0.1 for now, I have a hacked script for an Option 2 only hard drive installation that has commented out everythig related to the floppy AND the CD, so it won't ask you for either. Also, it has been further hacked to only use ext3 instead of ext2.

Hacked script "install-hd2" attached. You can put it in /root and be sure to also put " installfuncs" in the same directory. I slightly hacked "installfuncs" to eliminate an error message related to the CD drive. I added enouch comments to the script install-hd2 so it should make sense to anybody who would want to modify it differently.

It will tell you this when you run the script, but you have to manually provide either a boot floppy to boot this or a boot manager, such as Lilo or Grub, or possibly use tiny.exe or loadlin.exe from another vfat partition.

Thanks for all the advice. I don't have enough confidence to try out the suggestions - I'll just wait until the safe Vn 1.0.2 of Puppy is released!

how much ram is in the laptop?
need to known - then can tell your best install.