Create USB with Grub4dos

[PipzDex]

I share my experience doing my installation of any version of puppy in USB in Frugal mode, using Grub4dos using any version of puppy

First of all
1.-I open Gparted and format the USB as EXT4 (or another type of EXT?) and enable flag like "boot"
2.- I mount the USB and I'm going to copy the puppy (s) files that I want
3.- copy the essential files of the ISO (SFS, vmlinux and initrd) you can do it within folders and with several distros at the same time, the other files do not use it
4.- I opened Grub4dos and within its normal menu, I select the USB drive
5.- I select the option to search only within this device
6.- When I am in the list step of detected operating systems, in the pmedia option it appears as usbfllash, change it to "usbhd" leaving the entry like this in menu.lst

Code: Select all

 
    title Puppy precisely 5.8 (sdc1/precisely-5.8)
    find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /precisely-5.8/initrd.gz
    kernel /precisely-5.8/vmlinuz psubdir=/precisely-5.8 pmedia=usbhd pfix=nocopy
    initrd /precisely-5.8/initrd.gz 
 

And that's it...
You reboot, select the usb to start and woof! works!

You will notice that in the pfix option I have a condition as "nocopy", in my case I usually have good performance between devices so I don't need to copy the sfs to memory, in any other case it can be as you wish ...

Using this method and with the type of partition used, the USB does not need to be backed up every so often since it does it live as the HDD works and when saving the session it does so with the savefolder inside the usb and in the folder of the puppy what are you using ...

Well this is my experience, in fact I am using the puppy installed in USB as I mentioned as proof that it works
I attach you screen

Screenshot.png (86.6 KiB) Viewed 1637 times

I hope this option is useful for some other user who, like me, suffers a lot and sometimes resorting to another PC with "that" other S.O.

If something of the process that I share does not work for some strange reason, tell me and I am sure we will find the solution

Cheers!

[bigpup]

Grub4dos boot loader works OK for booting a computer that has legacy bios.
It will not boot a UEFI computer in normal UEFI setup.

Grub4dos should work with UEFI.
If you setup UEFI to work like legacy bios.
Disable secure boot, enable legacy boot, enable CSM. (settings depend on version of UEFI)

If it is too new a UEFI version.
It may need to see a small first boot partition, formatted fat32, flagged boot, with Grub4dos boot loader files on it.

Grub4dos will not work on a drive using a GPT partition table.
No place to put the Grub4dos MBR.
It needs to be a msdos partition table.

[bigpup]

Using pmedia=usbhd, puts the save process into the update save automatically mode, as you do stuff.
There is no delay to updating the save.
It updates, as you do something, that is stored in the save.

[PipzDex]

Hi @bigpup
thanks for the extra information added about this post

Very true, I forgot to comment on this warning

Grub4dos should work with UEFI.
If you setup UEFI to work like legacy bios.
Disable secure boot, enable legacy boot, enable CSM. (settings depend on version of UEFI)

And thanks for commenting on this extra option

Grub4dos should work with UEFI.
If you setup UEFI to work like legacy bios.
Disable secure boot, enable legacy boot, enable CSM. (settings depend on version of UEFI)

The other information I did not have knowledge so thank you very much for sharing this information

And about using pmedia=usbhd tha'ts the idea of works like HD (no savefile button), but finally this is only an option

Cheers!!

[LateAdopter]

An update to billtoo's comments...

Grub4DOS 0.4.6a is still developed by yaya and a1ive but discussions are generally in chinese and there are no released versions for a long time.

My understanding is that it has had GPT support for about 5 years. yaya said that it loads above 32k or to the partition boot sector. The included versions of bootlace and grubinst support this.

There has recently appeared a Grub4DOS-UEFI which was even more mysterious. I tested the 2021/2/10 version and it works very well.
It comes as BOOTX64.EFI and BOOTIA32.EFI. You put the appropriate file in /EFI/BOOT and you put menu.lst and unifont.hex.gz in /EFI/grub. The required menu.lst entries are the same as they would be for the normal Grub4DOS installed to the same partition.
The input side is straight EFI and the output side is native Grub4DOS so it should boot Puppy from FAT* ext* NTFS or exFAT, but I only tested FAT32.

The UEFI specification mandates support for FAT12 FAT16 and FAT32 on removable media. I created a 3MB partition, on an SD Card, formatted FAT16 and used that for booting with Grub4DOS and Grub4DOS-UEFI. I had Fatdog811, Bionicpup64 and Libreelec still on the original FAT32 partition, and can boot them.

[PipzDex]

reading the old post on murga linux, I found that this process of creating USB had already been posted / commented by Mike Walsh, it is curious for me since I learned to do this process by experimenting on my own, without having read the aforementioned post

Now I already understood why it is better to use the EXT3 format over EXT2 or EXT4

I share the link of the post since it has a lot of very interesting information and with the comments of experienced users which I extend a greeting and my respect

What file system for booting Puppy From USB flash drive?

Cheers for all!!