Grub4DosConfig

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nooby
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#16 Post by nooby »

Thanks, I got directed to it some other way too. Thanks indeed for telling me.

Unfortunately he makes a partition which I will not do.

But most likely I can use it anyway just changing where the boot is placed. 0,0 instead of 0,1 or so.
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shinobar
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Forget BCDeditor

#17 Post by shinobar »

Funny.
Why you are so coward in replacing the MBR but dare to modify the BCD.
Modifying BCD is more dangerous than replacing MBR. Forget BCDeditor.

If your PC can boot up from CD, try Puppy Linux 4.3.1 Japanese edition live CD.
It can boot up Windows even if the MBR is broken. (The menu item 'Bootup from HDD' uses the MBR but 'Windows Vista' without the MBR of HDD.)
But it cannot if the BCD is broken.

Image

To learn what is grub4dosconfig, one way is to see what happens with 431JP and the grub4dosconfig.
Start up the Grub4DosConfig (it is pre-installed on 431JP) for a test, and get back at the final confirmation dialog.
It is harmless as long as you get back before it finishes.

Puppy Linux 4.3.1 Japanese edition is Japanese/English bilingual. so you can try it.
I recommend 4.3.1JPqs0 (Quickset version) available from here . it can easily change the language.

Be shure bootup with 'on RAM only' mode to try.

nooby
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#18 Post by nooby »

But I am not alone in suggesting EasyBCD as the more easy to use one.

But I will try to use your approach too.

It is a good think me is coward. Usually everything does broke in peaces when I even look at the thing and if I touch it then it just fail and are hard to get going again. :)

Will be away for hours but maybe give feedback in a few days.
thansk indeed for suggesting things
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JustGreg
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#19 Post by JustGreg »

Here is a suggestion for you. If you are afraid of casuing a major problem with the hard disk, then try everything first on USB thumb (flash) drive. I have found that 256 megabyte drive is more than sufficient for Puppy. I have a long suffering 128 megabyte drive that has been used since Puppy version 2.0 for experiments.

A USB thumb drive can be made to look like a hard drive. Use the Puppy Bootflash install tool under setup to first install the Puppy of your choice. Do not use Quirky at this time. Use one of the many standard releases. It will be a frugal installation. Once the installation is complete, one can reboot to make sure it works.

You can then use it with Shinobar information to try out Grub4Dos. This way the hard drive is not touched until you know how to do it and can make a working Puppy frugal installation.
Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

nooby
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#20 Post by nooby »

Greg, yes maybe that would work.

So if I get it. I use my old puppy I have on CD or DVD and tell it to make the USB into a frugal install usb.

Then I tell Puppy to place grub on it?

or is that done automatically during the install and when I start up the USB then it show a boot thing with windows Vista and Puppy on it to chose and if I edit the menu.lst then I can add frugal installs on the HDD to start up?

Hm ok. I have a 1GB pendrive free to use. formatted in Fat 32 so that would work with both puppy and to be read by Vista. That is good.

And then I can use Grub4Dos to add new entries to the usb that doesn't change the grubs on the HDD. Me learning to use it in the meantime.

Ok. I can give it a try.

But but but.

EasyBCD has NeoGrub on it and that is a regular Greb4Dos that Neosmart tech has special made to be even easier to use so why should I go the longer way around using first Puppy and then Grub4Dos if Neogrub already is same?

Then we have the problem with grub and grub2 not being the same?

which use which. Does not my one year old puppy 3 use the old grub and not the new grub needed for Vista? I know nothing I just remember vaguely something warning about grub and grub2 not the same.
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davesurrey
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#21 Post by davesurrey »

Hi nooby,
Then we have the problem with grub and grub2 not being the same?
which use which. Does not my one year old puppy 3 use the old grub and not the new grub needed for Vista? I know nothing I just remember vaguely something warning about grub and grub2 not the same.
Haven't read this whole thread so apologies if this is not relevant but..

To date all puppies use grub-legacy (the old grub.)

If you have another linux distro installed and use that one for booting then it doesn't matter if it uses grub-legacy or grub2. Both work although they are different.

AFAIK you can boot Vista using either grub2 or grub-legacy.

I believe that grub4dos is based on grub-legacy.

HTH
Dave

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shinobar
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#22 Post by shinobar »

You need not install puppy on the USB pendrive.
But need to install Grub4Dos on the USB pendrive.
means only 2 files and boot sector on the USB pendrive 250kB free.

yes 250 kiro bytes. so i recommend floppy rather than USB pendrive if your pc have a floppy drive and can bootup puppy live cd. it is the most easy and safe.

remamber puppy can boot up from live cd and run all in the ram.
anyway try 4.3.1JPqs0 available from here. it does not use grub-legacy but Grub4Dos.
Last edited by shinobar on Tue 26 Jan 2010, 13:20, edited 2 times in total.

nooby
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#23 Post by nooby »

Thanks to both of you. I kind of maybe understand what you guys say.

I simply have to try to see what happens.

Just now I fail to know how to make a folder to put puppeee on the HDD so I later can boot it with the USB with mac pup or Puppy-XP on not sure which one to use. both failed to get the wired LAN going. Just now all my different puppies fail to connect to internet. Disaster. I write from Visa now.
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nooby
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#24 Post by nooby »

Thanks to all of you.

I have both macpup and pup431jp working in frugal install now.
I used wubi for ubuntu first to get a dual boot. then I used EasyBCD and their version of grub4Dos that is named Neogrub because that was the only one I could understand. Sorry. Maybe it is very dangerous but I totally failed to get how to use the one you guys love.

so great thanks to shinobar for providing it.

I still fail to get puppeee to work but maybe the others are equal in features.

Not sure which other I should test. Maybe pupitup?
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davesurrey
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#25 Post by davesurrey »

Nooby,
I see you have been quite active here in trying to get your system to boot the way you want to do. I have to say that I have little knowledge of EasyBCD or Neogrub so I tried to setup a new install like yours on an unused PC (don't want to disturb my other systems) but unfortunately I've had some hardware problems so have not been able to set it up...yet.

Please don't take this negatively but I feel you may not fully understand some of the issues in multi-booting here...don't worry, most folk don't... and I certainly didn't a while ago....so, for starters, perhaps I can help a little in another way by answering some of the questions you have had and explaining some of the terminology.

1. grub (often called grub-legacy or grub-0.97), grub2, lilo, isolinux (usually associated with CDs), syslinux (associated with floppys and USB sticks), ntldr, bcd and many others are bootloaders that start running the OS in an intel x86 based system.
You need a boot loader to start your OS.

2. Windows Vista (and 7) use bcd whereas previous NT-based OS like Windows XP used ntldr.

3. Neither ntldr nor bcd will boot a linux OS on its own. They can be used however to point to another boot loader which loads the linux OS.

4. Thus you can use Windows Vista's bcd to point to, for example, grub-legacy or grub4dos, which in turn can be set-up to boot to linux.

[[5. Alternatively you could just use grub4dos or grub-legacy to boot to Windows and linux. But this would mean modifiying the MBR of Vista which is something apparently you don't wish to do. It's simple to restore this if things go wrong but it's your choice. ]]

6. Grub-legacy cannot reside on an ntfs partition. So, in your case it's a non starter. Grub4dos however can reside on an ntfs or fat partition.

7. You could modify the bcd file in Vista to add a pointer to grub4dos. To do this you canuse the in-built bcdEdit in Vista. But if you don't want to mess around that way then an alternative is to pay a small amount of money ($10??) for DualBootPro or use EasyBCD from a company called NeoSmart. It's free but slightly more complex.

8. Whether you use EasyBCD or DualBootpro (or even bcdEdit) this just allows you to modify the bcd file in Vista to point to grub4dos. An alternative is to use NeoGrub (again from NeoSmart) which is an editor like EasyBCD plus a modified version of grub4dos.

9. Assuming you use EasyBCD to modify the bcd file in Vista to point to grub4dos and then add grub4dos files you still need to setup the grub menu.lst file to boot to the non Windows OS.
This is not difficult and the same as if you were booting using grub-legacy.

10. I think it's ten times more difficult to write this down than to do it. Don't worry.

If I can get my hardware to work I'll do this and give you some instructions.

Lastly, to all, please note I have simplified several things here and so I hope no-one will nit-pick this as I am trying to present a beginner's version here. However if you think anything is wrong please let me know.

HTH
Dave

nooby
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#26 Post by nooby »

Dave thanks indeed for seeing things from my crude and stubborn point of view.

I barely get what you say due to my lack of knowledge and I have a running system now so what I lack is the understanding of refining it and to knowledge enough to explain to others what I did and why it was done that way and not as all the others told me how to.

I am an embarrassingly impatient guy that take any failure very hard.

I was at it 2008 but when it failed to work on my vista machine then it took me one year to recover from the blow and to try again.

2008 I had a running system on an win XP machine. several puppy and Nimblex linux and Vector soho special edition with save very unique.
But that set up did not work on the vista so I had to relearn how to do things.

I did publish my menu.lst somewhere. I have to make an easy to follow How to so others who fail to follow the real guides at least get a working system and then later them can learn to do it the recommended way when they have some experience of what makes that soo incredibly hard.

What I still want to accomplish before I write it all down is to get Linux Mint going.

I asked on their forum and as I remember they told me that due to some lack of compatibility they themselves don't know how to but that they work on a solution and will tell us later or change the distro so it become compatible.

Linux Mint was one of the five best linux live USB distros of the 40 I have tested from the http://distrowatch.com/ top list of downloads.

Puppy has gone down from 8 to 9 place now.

1. Ubuntu
2. Fedora
3. Linux Mint
4. Open Suse
5. Mandriva
6. Debian
7. Sabayon
8. Arch
9. Puppy
10. PCLinuxOS
etc

Fedora and Open Suse was too big to fit on my small USB mem pins so I don't know if they would have worked.

If I come upon a description on how to add them to my frugal install then I can test them too.

I don't know what Ubuntu using Wubi installer did change. But it allowed me to test ubuntu. I wanted to test a Swedish remix but wubi didn't want me to. so even there it totally failed but I got at least the official Ubuntu working now and I managed to download flash for youtube using the sudo apt-get install ... command on CLI. But that was more luck then really know what I did.

I tried to use Wingrub which is supposed to be the windows version if Grub4Dos but I failed to understand the gui.

So I used EasyBCD instead and tried to only do things that I trusted was fairly safe to tamper with and it worked.

But Puppeee there something did happen so some 5 hours later I skipped Puppeee and tried Macpup instead and that worked first time and then I tried Pup431JP and that one worked too so I will test many more Puppy and try to follow the development of Quirky until that one is stable release.

I think the Woof thing that Barry are working on is a must for Puppy to keep being popular outside us who already are liking Puppy.

MultiSession DVD with save is a unique product. But Puppy seldom work with wired broadband for me. Other distros just work out of the box while Puppy can take hours to get going if at all. such is sad.

sorry me so wordy.
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Frank Cox
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Grub for dos

#27 Post by Frank Cox »

Hi:

I have a few quick questions.

I setup a dualboot with Ubuntu jaunty "legacy grub" , and win xp

It worked until I blew up windows . Ubuntu still boots even though XP is dead. What I want to do is either replace Xp with a new copy or put Ubuntu 910 -Grub 2

It is possible to reformat that first partition and reinstall xp or Karmic without creating a nightmare ? I was told to always install win first but that is not possible.

Why do in need grub for frugal puppy installs? Just to save inserting the CD?

And lastly did I understand grub for dos is included in Puppy 4XX and if so how do I access it?

I have no real problem messing with mbr as fixboot will undo the changes.

Thanks-a gui bootloader sounds interesting.

nooby
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#28 Post by nooby »

I could be wrong but I trust you get more answers if you start a new question and maybe it is expected of us too. I also do like you do here but I seldom get answer that way.

But that is only my gut feeling just now. I could be wrong. I like to help but that question was too complicated for me
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mikeb
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#29 Post by mikeb »

I boot windows from grub4dos with

Code: Select all

title Windows XP
chainloader (hd0,0)/ntldr
I tried to be more complicated but failed.

There is no boot ini so it boots the windows in the default location.

So how to you blow up an Operation System?

mike

davesurrey
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#30 Post by davesurrey »

nooby:
I barely get what you say due to my lack of knowledge
I am sorry if it wasn't clear enough. The problem is that the more it get simplified the more the "not totally correct" errors creep in.
As Einstein said "Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."
What I still want to accomplish before I write it all down is to get Linux Mint going.
I guess you still want to do all this with one partition where Vista and all the Puppys are installed. Almost all Linux distros can't do this and need a separate partition. Exceptions are the later versions of Ubuntu which use Wubi (Windows-based ubuntu installer) and of course Puppy installed as a frugal.

Although Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu the release notes say
Known issues
Because of compatibility issues between wubi/mint4win and grub2, Linux Mint 8 comes without a Windows installed.
The development team is working on the issue and new ISOs will be published when it is resolved.
So you can't install the latest version of Mint the way you want to as it stands.

I'd also like to quote you what the original developer of wubi wrote before he left the project
...........However, myself I believe loop-installations are inherently flawed (which was why I left the project in the first place).......
....thus apart from simply the added convenience, Wubi-style installations are far worse than standard ones.............
Meanwhile if you'd post your menu.lst and tell us clearly what you have installed and what's not working we may be able to help you get all your Puppys booting.

Cheers
Dave

davesurrey
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#31 Post by davesurrey »

Frank
It's difficult to answer as I'm not sure what
It worked until I blew up windows
really means.
If your Windows OS is really damaged so badly that any attempt to recover it using the Windows CD is not feasable then obviously you will have to reinstall it. Windows will then take over the MBR that Ubuntu had been setup to use but it's a simple task to set up for grub to use the MBR again.

However if you mean that grub won't boot Windows anymore then that's a different issue.

If you explained more what error message you get etc we might be able to help but until then ...that's it. :-)

2. Unless you really want to get involved with grub2 then stick with grub-legacy at this stage.

3.
It is possible to reformat that first partition and reinstall xp or Karmic without creating a nightmare ? I was told to always install win first but that is not possible.
As above, if you install linux and then windows, then windows will take over the booting (and remember windows can't boot linux directly.) So windows first then linux is the prefered sequence because grub can boot windows and linux.

No idea what is on your first partition.

4.
Why do in need grub for frugal puppy installs? Just to save inserting the CD?
To boot any OS you need a boot loader. See my long post to nooby above. If you don't use grub or similar on your hard disk then you need to use a floppy or CD or usb stick, or whatever to boot Puppy. The Puppy CD can do this.

5.
And lastly did I understand grub for dos is included in Puppy 4XX and if so how do I access it?
No it isn't. Puppy 4xx to date uses grub-legacy. But I believe Barry is considering using grub4dos in the future.

HTH
Dave

nooby
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#32 Post by nooby »

Thanks,

so frugal install is better than loop mounted squash what ever?

UNetbootin allow frugal install and Puppy can do it too.

Slitaz if I remember have a kind of .iso install that is very close to frugal. you don't even have to open the iso and take out files? But that was one year ago and it could only save to usb not to the ntfs. They have changed this in later versions.

I had read the thing you quoted from Linux Mint too but fail to get why that is like they say. I just have to trust the expertese.

every linux distro should be made so it allow for frugal install on same hdd partition as the Vista or Win7. That is what I expect. But I am spoiled by Puppy.

Here is the menu.
default 0
timeout 10

title pup431jp
find --set-root /pup431jp/vmlinuz
kernel /pup431jp/vmlinuz psubdir=pup431jp
initrd /pup431jp/initrd.gz
boot

title macpup
find --set-root /macpup/vmlinuz
kernel /macpup/vmlinuz psubdir=macpup
initrd /macpup/initrd.gz
boot

title quirky005
find --set-root /quirky005/vmlinuz
kernel /quirky005/vmlinuz psubdir=quirky005
initrd /quirky005/initrd.gz
boot

title puppy431 (Puppeee431)
find --set-root /puppy431/vmlinuz
kernel /puppy431/vmlinuz
initrd /puppy431/initrd.gz
boot
all three pup431jp, macpup and quirky005 boots
while Puppeee431 says if fails to find the eee-431.sfs file.

I took down all the latest files from his repositry again and followed his description again very carefully and it still fails.

that I have no psubdir= for puppeee was suggested by the developer for it. As a test but that failed too.

So very suprising this happen.

I did put all the files on a USB stick and they worked right away.

Maybe the scrip think the eee-431.sfs should be on a usb? What file can I look in to see if that is the reason it fail to find it?
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nooby
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#33 Post by nooby »

double post it seems sorry
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shinobar
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Grub4Dos on puppy

#34 Post by shinobar »

davesurrey wrote:Puppy 4xx to date uses grub-legacy. But I believe Barry is considering using grub4dos in the future.
most of Puppy uses grub-legacy, yes.
Barry is now using Grub4Dos on Quirky.
And Puppy Linux 4.3.x Japanese editions are using Grub4Dos since last october 2009.

regarding dual boot of Windows and Linux, say Ubuntu, it is quite simple if your PC can boot up from CD.
  1. install Windows and Linux(es) in ANY order.
  2. boot up Puppy Linux 4.3.1JPqs0 from its live CD with 'on RAM only' mode.
  3. change the language to English.
  4. follow Menu > System > Grub4DosConfig
  5. the GUI will auto-detects Linux(es) you installed and adds menu for booting up windows.
well i have installed so many versions of puppy for testing...
the ubuntu(9.10) is installed via Wubi on the partition of windows 7.
Image

Puppy Linux 4.3.1JPsq0 is available from here .
Last edited by shinobar on Wed 27 Jan 2010, 14:57, edited 2 times in total.

nooby
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#35 Post by nooby »

Can it be use like this from USB too or only from CD/DVD?

And if I forgot to tell you. yes rebooting the jwm did change from Japanese to English. thanks.

Edit thanks I give feedback in some ten minutes.
Last edited by nooby on Wed 27 Jan 2010, 15:09, edited 1 time in total.
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