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How to boot a full install from a USB drive

Posted: Tue 12 Aug 2014, 23:07
by sketchman
The universal installer won't let me install to a usb drive as if it were a SATA HDD, so what I did was to create a small (1GB) partition on a real HDD in a spare PC and install Puppy to that. Then make a backup .img with dd to an external HDD via usb.

Then I wrote that .img to a flash drive partition. All went correctly till bootup. It tries, but it won't work. I get to the following point, and nothing I've tried has helped. I'm not even sure what the error means, because I've tried using hd(0,0) for the root and hd(0,1), and the same error comes up pointing to hd(0,0) either way.

Any help is appreciated. I really don't understand why Puppy won't just let me install a normal install to a USB flash drive. Other distros do.

Using Tahrpup 583. Booting with GRUB on an EXT4 partition with journaling disabled to save the flash. This is a perfectly acceptable solution with other distros, so I have no idea what to do.

Image of crash.
Image

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 10:39
by sketchman
Never mind figured it out.

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 11:13
by Sylvander
Would be nice if you told us what you figured out. :roll:

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 11:38
by sketchman
Sure. I was over-complicating it.

To get a full-ish install do the following.

Format your flash drive with ext2 with the command below.

Code: Select all

mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1 -- This is your chosen partition for install.
Then copy these files from the Puppy liveCD of choice. Again things will differ from this depending on which Puppy you are installing. Mine was tahrpup 5.8.3.

vmlinuz
initrd.gz
puppy_tahr_5.8.3.sfs
zdrv_tahr_5.8.3.sfs

Then install Grub from the legacy installer from the menu.

Image

You have to use the Expert Install and select the appropriate options. And again this is all dependent on your specific setup. Mine is below.

Image

Now when the Grub install is done, go into the partition and edit the menu.lst file to your liking, save, and you're done.

On first boot of the flash drive it will act like a typical liveCD boot, besides the fact that you'll be booting with Grub of course. Then when you go to shutdown choose save to a partition instead of to a folder or a save file.

That's it. No more super long waits on shutdown as Puppy saves to the save file. The partition has normal folders and files in it just like a full install.

WARNING: If you do not use ext2 formatting you need to disable journaling with ext4. Otherwise you will be shortening your flash drive's lifespan.

Hope that explains it well enough. If not let me know. :)

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 13:51
by Flash
What's the advantage of ext4 over ext3 or ext2 (or FAT32 for that matter) if you're going to disable journaling? I'm not saying ext4 isn't better, just asking how it is.

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 14:28
by sketchman
I don't really recall. There was some reason I found when installing another distro, but I can't remember now what it was.

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 15:05
by sketchman
I just searched again. I'm not really sure there is any benefit besides ext4 allowing deeper levels of subdirectories, and I'm talking black hole deep. So deep you'll probably never get there with a typical Puppy install.

So, short answer: you probably should just use ext2 and forget the disabling of journaling.

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/05/ext2-ext3-ext4/

So then it's even simpler. Good. :)

I just found it weird because plenty of other distros will let you install a normal looking install to a flash drive. OpenELEC does it and so does Ubuntu off the top of my head. Even Quirky creates a semi-full install when you put it on a flash drive. Why no option to just install full off the bat with other Pups? IDK.

But this is a good workaround.

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 22:05
by tlchost
sketchman wrote: "In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
Of course using the dreaded Windows there are several apps that allow making bootable USB drives....no confusion, no geeky things to do, no confusion.

Posted: Wed 13 Aug 2014, 22:29
by sketchman
tlchost wrote:
sketchman wrote: "In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
Of course using the dreaded Windows there are several apps that allow making bootable USB drives....no confusion, no geeky things to do, no confusion.
Yeah, but........:D

If I wanted an idiot proof OS I'd use Ubuntu, not Windows. :)