(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Who need this article?
You are contented with Puppy and want to give Puppy enough playground.
Or, you are an expert of Linux and want to move to Puppy.

How to do NOT
There are 3 things you must NOT do.

1. Do NOT 'FULL' install, do 'FRUGAL'.
2. Do NOT save the session to the entire partition, save the session in a file.
3. Do NOT use 'Grub config', use the Grub4DosConfig.

Why?

1. Do NOT 'Full' install
   Barry says:

   FULL install: A 'normal' Linux installation, requiring usage of the entire partition by Puppy.

   Remark 'normal' is quoted.
   Yes, it is 'normal' for traditional Linux. But NOT recommended as for Puppy.
   
   If you are an expert of Linux, you wonder why Puppy run with 'root', the privilege user.
   You are right. Puppy can easily corrupt. One of the reason comes from this issue.
   Don't worry. Puppy can easily restore the original with RAM mode, 'pfix=ram' boot option.
   
   Puppy can revive with RAM mode, Puppy can load and unload additional SFS to change its appearance.
   That is all thanks to the FRUGAL install style.
   
   'FRUGAL' never means poor. You can enrich the FRUGAL install with 512MB pupsave making use of /mnt/home and additional SFS's.
2. Do NOT save the session to the entire partition
   If you save the session to the entire partition, all the merit of the FRUGAL install disappears.
   It doesn't support RAM mode boot, not loading additional SFS and etc.
3. Do NOT use 'Grub config'
   Never do the 'Grub config' but use the 'Grub4DosConfig'.
   Because the 'Grub config' does not support the FRUGAL install.
   
   You may be unfamiliar with the FRUGAL install, and may be confused in making the boot entry for the FRUGAL install even if you are an expert of Linux.
   The 'Grub4DosConfig' automatically makes the configuration for the FRUGAL installations of Puppy for you.

How to do?
Suppose you got a new HDD or you can adapt a new partition for Puppy.
Note that you need not use the Puppy Universal Installer.Frugalinstaller is a choice, but you can do it manually. You need Grub4Dos.

1. Format the new partition with of Linux, ext3 or ext4 file system is recommended.
   If the RAM on your PC is less than 512MB, I recommend an additional swap partition, 512 MB may be enough.
2. Make a directory at the top layer, say /mnt/sdb1/puppy.
   The directory name never have special characters nor spsces.
   All lower case 'a-z', numbers '0-9' and underscore('_') or hyphen('-'), i recommend.
3. Copy all the files in the live CD, or the 3-4 files, vmlinuz, initrd.gz and *.sfs, into the directory.
4. Run the 'Grub4DosConfig'.

That's all.

See also another topics:

• Frugalinstaller
• Try the Grub4Dos and make a rescue
• Keep your savefile slim and healthy

shinobar wrote:Who need this article?
You are contented with Puppy and want to give Puppy enough playground.
You are an expert of Linux and want to move to Puppy.

Three NOT's
There are 3 things you must NOT do.

1. Do NOT 'FULL' install, do 'FRUGAL'.
2. Do NOT save the session to the entire partition, save the session in a file.
3. Do NOT use 'Grub config', use the Grub4DosConfig.

Why?

1. Do NOT 'Full' install
   Barry says:

   FULL install: A 'normal' Linux installation, requiring usage of the entire partition by Puppy.

   Remark 'normal' is quoted.
   Yes, it is 'normal' for traditional Linux. But NOT recommended as for Puppy.

A fourth not

Do not take not number one too seriously.

rjbrewer wrote:Do not take not number one (Do NOT 'Full' install) too seriously.

Thanks, rjbrewer. You are right. Puppy is flexible.
'Frugal' intsall is just a recommendation of me, and maybe of Barry.

By the way, rjbrewer, i wonder in what case full install gets success but frugal not?

Most people come to Linux by magazines.
They *all* have DVDs which require *Full installs*

Since I 've found out to *frugal* I still would do three PUPPY FULL installs, one EXTENDED partition ( watch out to round to CYLINDERS at Gparted and NOT to MiB ), and frugals to test inside their own folders ON ""/"" of the FULL INSTALLS.

Puppy GRUB 0.97 is working good to me, Grub 1.96 and 1.97 I had trouble and the buffering and the .cfg at 1.98 is NO WAY to like it better than 0.97

Grub 1.9* and grub4dos do find the frugals and Grub 1,9* only if there is no SAFE FILE already.

grub4dos sounded like GRUB FOR WIN-DOS to me but it is a normal grubloader.

the `find` command had gone at grub commandline at 1.9* and the `geometry` command.

Since I have a copy of suse 9.2 professional which is running nicely on REISERFS 3.6 I have to stuck to GRUB 0.97

even if I think the frugal detection of grub4dos is very good !

And today I accidentially encountered another savefile ruin by overloading it !

SO : FULL INSTALL 3x THE SAME for RECOVERY

and watch out for the 1024 CYLINDER BORDER to boot in the BIOS !

Karl Godt wrote:Since I have a copy of suse 9.2 professional which is running nicely on REISERFS 3.6 I have to stuck to GRUB 0.97

Have you tried Grub4Dos with making the menu.lst entry manually for the suse on reiserfs?
Or, when you have installed grub for the suse, you can use the same menu.lst for the grub4dos.

shinobar wrote:

rjbrewer wrote:Do not take not number one (Do NOT 'Full' install) too seriously.

Thanks, rjbrewer. You are right. Puppy is flexible.
'Frugal' intsall is just a recommendation of me, and maybe of Barry.

By the way, rjbrewer, i wonder in what case full install gets success but frugal not?

Yes; frugal is also recommended by Barry when running the universal
installer.

Full install was the easiest and first method I found to work 3 years
ago on a low ram Pent.2 pc.
Grub (.97 Legacy), on mbr, menu.lst on Puppy partition.
I never had to find or look at the menu.lst until 9months later when
I tried my first frugal install.
It was just as easy dual booting Windows using the same method.
I did have the Win disks available just in case of problems.

I like having partitions on my hard drives, and never worry about
save file problems.

If I were to try multibooting with other Lunux distros, Grub4dos
would definitely be my first choice to try.

Full installs do have some advantages.
From how Puppy works:

PUPMODE 2 is to install Puppy to an entire partition, (full install) which has to be a Linux partition (ext2, ext3, or reiserfs). This is recommended for developers or anyone wanting to compile applications, as it gives you lots of room.

This is the absolute simplest configuration. There is no ramdisk, the partition itself is mounted directly on the top "layer". In fact, if there are no ".sfs" extensions to load then Puppy will not use unionfs at all, so there are no layers.

Full installs put the smallest demand on ram to get Puppy booted.
Very good for low ram systems.

bigpup wrote:Full installs do have some advantages.
From how Puppy works:

PUPMODE 2 is to install Puppy to an entire partition, (full install) which has to be a Linux partition (ext2, ext3, or reiserfs). This is recommended for developers or anyone wanting to compile applications, as it gives you lots of room.

This is the absolute simplest configuration. There is no ramdisk, the partition itself is mounted directly on the top "layer". In fact, if there are no ".sfs" extensions to load then Puppy will not use unionfs at all, so there are no layers.

Full installs put the smallest demand on ram to get Puppy booted.
Very good for low ram systems.

Thanks! Now when doing a full install, is it still ok to run as root?

I run puppy or rather play with puppy on a bunch of machines from 500mhz celeron w/656mgb ram to a p-4 2.8 ghz w/ 256mgb ram and I have played with wary racy I even tried quirky but it doesn't like the older slower machines that much my question is how do I get puppy to load without ram I have a pentium mmx 200mhz and only has 65mgb ram I still have racy, wary, and precis on cd's but won't load w/out appropiate ram?? tks for all u do...srry if in wrong thread but ur low ram mention got me here

Hi shinobar
Thanks for the advice here. I have a question on grub4dos config loader you don't get the f2 puppy pfix=ram the bootloader screen is a blue screen with some options but not the repair option. This option is very useful as it has saved two or three puppies for me.

.., causes puppy to Not load instead I use the 1st Grub . I would use Grub2 , which I did one time from a borrowed Grub2 file from Mint (Katya) Puppy just will not load . The screen just sits blank with the curser blinking . I think the initializing drivers do not load . This is the 528 Lucid Puppy ver 5 . I I mount it from an established puppy , live or usb-flash it will run . Occasionally Nothing works from any of my backup puppies . Only a live install will get it o work . I use a ram install with the clean command . [size=12[/size]
b

I think you are making a point in a roundabout way, but clearly NOT doing a frugal install is like throwing away a big part of Puppy's features!