Puppy on SD card experiment

[ozsouth]

SD card experiment, UEFI system - Frugal Puppy on a small cheap laptop (HP stream etc) via SD card.

WARNING - EXPERIMENTAL - DO NOT TRY ON A MISSION CRITICAL PC. USE AT OWN RISK.

Some very cheap laptops are available & I wanted to run Puppy without trashing
windows on my Lenovo Ideapad 110S (celeron N3060, 2Gb ram, 32Gb eMMC storage, also
has a microSDXC slot). I got a microSDHC 32Gb class 10 card with adaptor for $7 AUD.

On my main PC, I downloaded bootx64.efi from here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/toh3iith ... 4.efi/file
Need a fairly recent puppy .iso - I used ScPup64-20.06+2.iso. Bionic/Fossa probably ok.
I made a text file with the following entries & saved it as grub.cfg
NOTE1: If you have 4Gb ram or more, can remove ,nocopy from grub.cfg
NOTE2: Can have windows as default by setting default="1" in grub.cfg

Code: Select all

set default="0"
set timeout=5

menuentry "scp64-20062 frug" {	
    linux /EFI/BOOT/puppy/vmlinuz psubdir=puppy pfix=fsck,nocopy pdrv=060421a rootwait ro
    initrd /EFI/BOOT/puppy/initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Windows 10" {
    insmod part_gpt
    insmod chain
    chainloader /EFI-w/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

I inserted the microSDHC card (in adaptor) & via gparted, I formatted it as ntfs
& added a unique label (i.e. 060421a - must be same as pdrv entry in grub.cfg).
Then I mounted the SDHC card, made a folder named puppy on it, then mounted
ScPup64-20.06+2.iso & copied into folder puppy on the card, all .sfs, then
initrd.gz & vmlinuz & then bootx64.efi & grub.cfg & then unmounted the card.

If you ever intend to use laptop's windows, before next step must start it & set it
up - ensure control panel/hardware/power buttons has fast startup off, then shutdown.

I then booted the laptop with a bootable usb stick, going to bios first to change
the boot order to allow usb booting first & eMMC second & legacy support enabled.
When puppy had booted up, I inserted the microSDHC & mounted it.

Then I mounted the eMMC system (boot) partition, renamed folder EFI to EFI-w, then
made a folder EFI, & inside it a folder BOOT, & inside that a folder puppy.
I moved grub.cfg to the eMMC partition, then moved bootx64.efi into /EFI/BOOT,
then moved initrd.gz & vmlinuz into /EFI/BOOT/puppy, unmounted SDHC & rebooted,
removing usb stick once reboot began.

Booted to a working Puppy, for which a savefile (not savefolder) can be made. (ext3/4 allows savefolder).

NOTE3: Can select windows or puppy during boot (at menu, arrow up/down & press enter).
NOTE4: Windows updates will break the bootloader (resets windows as default). Must boot
with bootable usb stick & reset. Even bios boot order needs checking.

[bigpup]

It is much easier than this if you use Frugalpup Installer to do the install to the SD card.
http://www.fishprogs.software/puppy/fru ... index.html

I have a HP stream laptop with similar specs to yours.
Used Frugalpup Installer to install several Puppies to a SD card.

This is how to do it.
Written for USB install, but steps are the same for a SD card.
viewtopic.php?p=1887#p1887

This setup gives you a partition formatted in a ext format, that allows putting a save folder on it.

On my laptop and probably yours.
When I press F11 key, just as it starts. ( your laptop may be esc key, F6, F12, F7, etc....)
A boot device selection list pops up.
Select SD card and it boots from the SD card.
Or in the UEFI setup, make the SD card the first boot device, so the computer boots from it, when started.
Frugalpup Installer is suppose to put a Windows entry, in the Grub boot loader menu, on the SD card.

Note:
1GB or more of memory, is all that Puppy needs to be able to load into RAM, and still have some free RAM available to use.
A normal boot works, with no problem.
The amount of RAM, is going to limit how many programs, you can have running, at one time.