Installation problems, Grub in particular

[ChrisOfBristol]

I've already posted on this topic here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 518#669518 but it wasn't really the right place for it and I still haven't solved the problems.

Please ignore this post for a bit - I'm busy rewriting it! Now rewritten - please feel free to post.

This is mostly a comment on the difficulties I have found installing Puppy. If some of my comments appear to be nitpicking they are not - I have installed many of the popular distributions and have spent many hours trying to work out what is going on with the Puppy installation process. If I am finding it so difficult and confusing I am sure other novices will too - which is a pity because it looks excellent otherwise. If I can sort find a simpler way of doing this I'm sure it will make Puppy more easily installed and therefore usable for other novices.

I spent hours installing Puppy a while ago and eventually got it to work. I am now trying to compare the speed of the new version 5.4.2 with the previous one I had 5.2.8, and Frugal with Full, so am trying to install one after the other. I am using the whole disk for Puppy only – no Windows or any other version of Linux.

1) I started by creating just one partition on the hard disk – SDA1 flagged as 'boot'.

2) If I have left a previous version on the hard disk, I have to type *puppy pfix=ram* on startup. I think this avoids mounting the disk to merge the previous puppy file with what is on the CD as a mounted disk would cause problems for the installation. Why isn't pfix=ram the default? Surely it is rather unlikely that you would want to boot off the CD if you have a hard disk unless you are doing an installation? Having it like this adds complication.

3) The installation shortcut works very quickly and without any problems.

4) The main problem is that when I try to install Grub, the loader claims success, but I only got it to work once in 20-30 times using Grub Bootloader config. I have now found that it usually works using Grub4DOS.

For a straightforward whole disk setup couldn't the installation script include the Grub installation?

5) It is necessary not to “Save config

[L18L]

I've already posted on this topic here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 518#669518 but it wasn't really the right place for it.

Please ignore this post for a bit - I'm busy rewriting it!

just take Menu > System > Grub4Dos instead of grub.

[ChrisOfBristol]

I want to simplify the installation process for myself and other amateurs like me, mainly by removing confusing and unnecessary options. I think this would solve most of the problems in my first post.

The live CD contains a file called isolinux.cfg, what needs adding or removing from this so that it is not necessary to type "puppy pfix=ram" on boot?

Code: Select all

default puppy
display boot.msg
prompt 1
timeout 50

F1 boot.msg
F2 help.msg
F3 help2.msg

label puppy
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=cd

There is a script called 'install-cd' that does the job a lot better than the one the CD puts on the desktop, in particular it installs Grub without problems every time. How can I put it on the CD so that it replaces the standard script?

How can I stop the configuration prompts appearing during installation? They are abandoned later anyway.
How can I stop the "savefile" prompt appearing when shutting down? You are told not to save this after installation.