Direct boot from hard drive?

[Fox7777]

We have the following with 1 being the most preferred:

1. Modify the boot floppy so that we can boot Puppy 1.0.2 on this older computer. We don't know where to put acpi=off (or ide=nodma apm=off noapic) in the boot floppy. We tried putting acpi=off in autoexec.bat & config.sys but it didn't seem to work How do we do this & exactly where do we put it?

2. Install grubhd.zip on our existing Puppy system where we had to install Puppy 1.0.1 on the partition & then copied image.gz, vmlinuz & usr_cram.fs from the Puppy 1.0.2 CD into the partition. Apparently we should do the install-hdgrub.sh option but despite trying many different commands as root, we haven't found the right one. In this scenario we need to have the grub menu come up when we boot the computer without having to use a boot floppy. What do we enter in the command line?

3. Create the grub floppy with grubfd01.zip. We haven't tried this yet but will keep it in mind. Thanks

[PeterSieg]

Hi Fox7777.

I had the need for the same requirement. If you get 1.0.2 to work.. fine.
If you must stick with 1.0.1.. the grubhd.zip is for you!

Option 1 install was done by me on request be a Puppy user (with grub..).
I personally think, a type 2 install is more towards a real linux installation..

What you need to do first is make a suitable partition on your hdd.
Size min. 200MB (but more doens't harm ) Use cfdisk for that..
Then start the ./install-grubhd.sh.
Here you must enter the above created partition!
The partition must not be already in use by a bootet live Puppy!!!!
If you use the strait 1.0.1 from Barry, Puppy is probably creating a pup001 file
on the first partition it founds. I have used the JohnM 50m Version, because it
has a boot menu option to NOT touch any hdd!
So either make 2 partition in the first run (ex. hda1 and hda2) and let Puppy create
the pup001 file in hda1, so you can install type 2 in hda2...
Or make sure that Puppy is not able to find any partition to use for pup001...

The created boot menu has all possibilities I have build in (hda1-4; hdb1-4).
Just the default entry will be set to the last installation.
That is compatible with type 1 and type 2 install!
So you can have multiple installations of Puppy - even mixed type 1 and/or type 2.

PS

[Fox7777]

Dang, we went through the upgrade option on ./install-hdgrub.sh (note that it is not grubhd.sh) & now there is still no grub menu at boot. When we use the usual Puppy HD boot CD, we get a kernel panic message. Not to worry- we can easily reinstall Puppy 1.0.1 but what we really want to do is to be able to boot the Puppy 1.0.2 live CD on this computer & install to the hard drive with that. We tried to boot the suggested Opera Custom CD on this computer but it still stops at the kernel & doesn't give us a chance to select the no acpi option.

What we really need is a modification to the live boot floppy that will boot the live Puppy Linux 1.0.2 CD on these older computers.

[Guest]

We have tried a couple more installs from the live CD using ./install-hdgrub.sh & although it goes through all the motions we don't see the success message at the end. On reboot we get Grub error 17. We really need future Puppy releases adapted for these older computers.

[danleff]

A grub error 17 usually means that Grub can't ID the partition type. What filesystem type is the partition are you trying to install to or boot to?

[BarryK]

Pup 1.0.3 will have a boot menu also, so you can choose not to use/create a pup001 file on h.d.

[Fox7777]

We set up another older computer with Suse 9.0 on one partiition booting with Grub. Then we installed Puppy 1.0.1 on the other partition (Puppy 1.0.2 won't boot on this computer either). To install we had to change hda3 filetype to something weird that Puppy wouldn't recognize using fdisk in Puppy as described in the install to hard drive script. The reason for this is that otherwise the Puppy live CD would use this partition and we couldn't install to it. Then we changed it back to ext2 and installed to it. Then we copied vmlinuz from the CD to / in Puppy & added Puppy to the Suse boot menu booting /vmlinuz on hda3. Now we can boot Puppy without using the floppy.

Regarding the older computers like the 1996 Dell Optiplex GMT 5166, our main concern is that they not get left behind by Puppy Linux. Not only does it keep these well built older computers functional but keeps them from ending up in landfills, etc. Apparently it is fairly easy to do the acpi=off or whatever so that we could install Puppy 1.0.2. We are still looking for a way to perhaps modify the boot floppy so we could install Puppy 1.0.2 now. The latest DSL installs on this computer no problem but we like Puppy better. Hopefully Puppy 1.0.3 will work on this computer.