Simplest way to make a uefi/bios Puppy thumbdrive from Windows

[Jafadmin]

Without turning the USB device into a read only fake CD.

Download 'dd' for Windows here: http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.5.zip

Download a Fossapup64 '.img' file (zipped) here: (no longer available)
(400M zip file). Unzip the '.img' file in a desktop working directory or whatever is handy.

Read this Windows dd HowTo, here: https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how- ... otable-usb

If you follow the directions well, and all goes well, you will wind up with a bootable thumbdrive
with fossapup64 9.5 on it that will boot on either a BIOS box or a UEFI box. Once booted, and
before making a savefile, use GPartEd to expand the ext3 partition2 to a more desirable size.
DO NOT MOVE IT or it won't boot any more.
(Edit: In addition to the above warning, don't resize it to the exact end of the flash drive. Leave 10meg or so blank on the end of the drive. Otherwise the resize operation may fail if the end of the drive doesn't happen to fall on a block boundary.)

You now have a bootable r/w puppy on a usb made from windows. From there on, use the puppy usb
to do any further puppy install work. You have just broken out of the Windows jail.

[williwaw]

Is fossapup64_9.5-BIOS+UEFI-600M.img.zip basically a remaster of fossapup? Created for folks who do not yet have a linux installed?

an easy access to linux tools?

[Jafadmin]

Is fossapup64_9.5-BIOS+UEFI-600M.img.zip basically a remaster of fossapup? Created for folks who do not yet have a linux installed?

an easy access to linux tools?

It isn't remastered, just repackaged. It is a fully functional fossapup64 already installed on a BIOS/UEFI thumbdrive image. It is a disk image containing a small fat32 partition for UEFI, and an ext3 partition that has grub2 and puppy installed.

usb-image.png (25.87 KiB) Viewed 7069 times

From Windows, burn the '.img' file to a USB flash drive using DD for Windows. That USB flashdrive will then be a fully functional, cross-bootable Fossapup64 USB.

This is only of use to Windows users who might just have the single Windows PC, but want to try puppy. It creates a native linux boot USB from Windows.

[joet12345]

I tried to do one earlier and when I did this

"ren dd.exe dd-removeable.exe"

the next step to do dd --list did not work because dd.exe got renamed to dd-removeable.exe....

the common sense just made me type dd-removeable --list and it showed my hard drive partitions but not my USB stick...

after that I chickened out and just used rufus and it worked.... I did format the stick as described in first step, maybe that helped rufus

[Jafadmin]

I tried to do one earlier and when I did this

"ren dd.exe dd-removeable.exe"

the next step to do dd --list did not work because dd.exe got renamed to dd-removeable.exe....

the common sense just made me type dd-removeable --list and it showed my hard drive partitions but not my USB stick...

after that I chickened out and just used rufus and it worked.... I did format the stick as described in first step, maybe that helped rufus

Right. You can't skip that step on windows. You have to format it to a MS native filesystem type before it will show up as a disk. MS weirdism. That will hang it on a "drive letter", and you can do stuff with it.

[mikeslr]

There's a simpler way. I didn't discover it. Someone on the Forum mentioned it but at the time I only made a mental note and was otherwise preoccupied. Today, having a couple minutes before I had to go out I decided to test it, and my sometimes flaky memory.
We've known about Rufus for a couple of years; about as long as UEFI has been around to cause night-mares. Rufus has continued to work. But like other methods of deploying Puppys from Windows what was created was Puppy installed to a USB-Stick which could NOT make use of SaveFiles/Folders.
The Tip ran contrary to the prior thinking which was "Don't create 'persistence' as Puppy has its own method". The tip was 'create persistence on which Puppy can place it's SaveFile/Folder'.
If you know who mentioned it, don't hesitate to provide attribution. Credit should go where credit is do.
So, the recipe now is:
1. Install rufus into Windows or use the portable edition. Edit June 26, 2022. Obtain version 3.17 from here, https://www.fosshub.com/Rufus-old.html*. Edit, the current version, 3.21, from here, https://rufus.ie/en/ is also OK. It seems there was only a problem with version 3.18 (and maybe 3.19). Thanks, snail for testing. Edit: The recent, 4.1 version, is also good. Haven't tried 4.3 yet.
2. Plug in a USB-Key of KNOWN reasonable size --further explained in Step 6.
3. Start rufus. You'll see a GUI something like this

rufus-persistence.png (58.38 KiB) Viewed 6744 times

4. Under Device select your USB-Key.
4a. (Edit) Under Partition Scheme select MBR.
5. Under Boot Selection scroll to and select your Puppy's ISO.
6. Under Persistence use the slider to have rufus create a persistent partition of the entire drive less about 2 Gbs. OOTB puppys probably won't need that much. But if later you create an adrv.sfs or a ydrv.sfs --or other READ-ONLY SFSes which will automatically be used on boot-up-- those SFSes may require some space. [Using the Save2SFS module of nicOS Utility Suite, viewtopic.php?p=12983#p12983 to replace my SaveFolder, I have one which is about 900 Mbs].
Caution: Do NOT check the box which directs rufus to check for bad sectors. It may hang while doing so, requiring it to be shut down; leaving the USB-Key in a state which prevented it from being used as a boot-able key despite reformatting to Fat32 by both Windows and Linux.
7. Click Start at the bottom -- not shown in the graphic.
That's it. Rufus creates 2 partition on the USB-Key. It will deploy your Puppy to the first of those partitions. The second partition is formatted Linux Ext3. When you've booted into your Puppy, made your settings and shutdown for the first time you can select the 2nd partition as the location for either a SaveFile or a SaveFolder. Puppy will write a "SAVEMARK" to the first partition telling Puppy on subsequent boot-ups where to find the SaveFile/Folder.
The 2nd partition will be Puppy's HOME partition. It, not the 1st partition, will be mounted on boot-up. It is the partition on which to locate SFSes you want to have immediately available on boot-up; and the place to locate portables and AppImages.
[After deploying Fossapup as above, I booted into another Puppy and replaced the core Fossapup SFS with my remastered version and added my 900Mb ydrv.sfs].
FYI, used as above Rufus formats the 1st USB-partition as Fat32, hence, also WRITE-able.
Edit Aug04, 22, see posts below: There is one variation you may want to consider. OOTB Windows can not read Linux Formatted partitions. If you intent to use the USB-Key to transfer to a Windows system files you create or download using Puppy you can also BEFORE YOUR FIRST SHUTDOWN/REBOOT use Menu>System>gparted to resize/shrink the 2nd partition creating a 2nd Fat32 partition leaving the balance --the now 3rd partition-- as Linux Ext3. You'd then locate the SaveFile/Folder on that 3rd partition.

-=-=--=-
* See wizards post here, viewtopic.php?p=49885&sid=9d3ecdf6db09d ... 399#p49885. He has discovered an issue with version 3.18, viewtopic.php?p=60661#p60661
I can't find the post, nor recall who originally did the examinations of several Rufus version in order to write it (sorry & thanks) but this lead me to try newer versions of Rufus. Versions 3.2 and above --and so the current 3.21-- worked properly.

[Snail]

At the very bottom of his very useful post (Nov 01, 2021) on using Rufus to prepare a bootable USB Puppy,

There is one variation you may want to consider. OOTB Windows can not read Linux Formatted partitions. If you intent to use the USB-Key to transfer to a Windows system files you create or download using Puppy you can also BEFORE YOUR FIRST SHUTDOWN/REBOOT use Menu>System>gparted to resize/shrink the 2nd partition creating a 2nd Fat32 partition leaving the balance --the now 3rd partition-- as Linux Ext3. You'd then locate the SaveFile/Folder on that 3rd partition.

This appears erroneous, which is surprising, as Mikesir is usually spot on with his comments. Hence, I make this post with some trepidation but here goes anyway.

Firstly, no Windows version earlier than Windows 10 will be able to see the second Fat partition, unless extra software is loaded. Secondly, Linux in general and Puppies in particular have had the ability to read from and write to NTFS volumes for a long time. I used to do this all the time in years gone by, from various Puppies, including Slacko. I never noticed any problems in doing so. I became wary of this later, when I found some comments on the web that this might corrupt NTFS. However, I now believe that this might have been a reference to the early implementation of NTFS in older Linux kernels, which was not very good. By the time I was using Slacko, at least, the NTFS-3G userspace driver, using Fuse, was in the newer Puppies. Apparently NTFS-3G is reliable but slow. Now however, there is a still newer NTFS3 implementation in Linux kernels from version 5.15 onward, which has passed Linus's scrutiny. I imagine that it is now safe for us to read/write NTFS volumes directly from Fossapup, since it has a newer kernel.

Mikesir, could you look and consider whether you should edit your post please? I don't mind being corrected if I'm wrong, which is entirely possible.

[mikeslr]

Sorry, snail. I* don't have a Windows 10 computer. My exploration was using a Window 7. As noted, it could read Fat32 partitions, but not if those followed a Linux formatted one. Can rufus create ntfs partitions?

--=-=---
* My wife has a Windows 10 computer. But several years ago (when she had a Window 7) I made the mistake of trying to install Puppy to her hard drive which locked her out of Windows 7 until I installed Ubuntu just to use its bootloader. She never since let me play with it, unless something has gone wrong and she expects me to fix it.

[Snail]

Hi Mikesir,

My wife is as difficult about letting her husband fiddle with anything she uses as yours! I don't even think that I have screwed up any computer by my fiddling (yet).

Rufus can and did make a persistent partition as ext3. As per your advice, I used GParted during my first run Fossapup session to shrink the persistent partition and put in a Fat32 partition. I did this by moving the start point of the persistent partition, hence the order of the partitions is now: Fat32 boot - new Fat32 -ext3. If I re-enter GParted just to have a look at the USB, this is the order I see. (However, the puppy loads the new partition as /dev/sdb3 and the persistent one as /dev/sdb2, I'm not sure about what effect that would have.) So my Windows 7 installation not seeing the new partition on the USB is apparently not a matter of the ext3 partition blocking access to the new FAT32 one.

Are you sure that you were able to access a further partition from Windows 7? I looked at a number of sites on the web, including this forum, and they were unanimous in saying that no version of Windows earlier than 10 is able to do so. Certainly Windows 7 Pro on this machine cannot. There are additional programs you can find on the web that can allow you to do it. (I remember using one in Windows 95 that even enabled me to access the numerous ext2 partitions I had set up during my first experience of Linux.)

If, as it appears to me, it is now safe to access Windows NTFS partitions from Linux, do we even need to have an extra Fat32 "transfer" partition at all? If someone more knowledgeable than me confirm that it is truly safe to read and write on your Windows NTFS partions from a newer Linux distro I'd be very grateful.

[mikeslr]

Hi Snail,

I guess you are right. I just booted into Windows 7 Pro --actually posting from it now-- and plugged in a USB-Key which has 3 partitions, the 1st two being formatted Fat32. Both Explorer and xplorer only see the 1st partition.

I have a sort-of recollection of accessing a 2nd Fat32 partition from Windows. Maybe it was wishful thinking? Maybe it was something lost in the 'up-grade' from XP to Windows 7?

I've stricken out the suggestion in my original post.

[Snail]

Hi Mikesir,

Not at all often that you are wrong. I am glad I gathered up the courage to challenge you in this one case, hopefully this will save some users a bit of time and wasted USB space.

Can you suggest anywhere I could get a definitive answer on direct accessing Windows NTFS from Puppy? As I said, I think it should be OK but am a bit reluctant to risk it (The wife you know!). I also don't want to risk putting others at risk by suggesting it, they might have wives like ours too. (Years of watching the Puppy forums have convinced me that wives in general tend to be less than adventurous when it comes to letting their husbands play with the family computers, often with good reason.)

[wizard]

@Snail

it is truly safe to read and write on your Windows NTFS partions from a newer Linux distro I'd be very grateful.

I can confirm it is safe, having done it for several years without issue.

wizard

[mouldy]

There's a simpler way. I didn't discover it. Someone on the Forum mentioned it but at the time I only made a mental note and was otherwise preoccupied. Today, having a couple minutes before I had to go out I decided to test it, and my sometimes flaky memory.
We've known about Rufus for a couple of years; about as long as UEFI has been around to cause night-mares. Rufus has continued to work. But like other methods of deploying Puppys from Windows what was created was Puppy installed to a USB-Stick which could NOT make use of SaveFiles/Folders.
The Tip ran contrary to the prior thinking which was "Don't create 'persistence' as Puppy has its own method". The tip was 'create persistence on which Puppy can place it's SaveFile/Folder'.
If you know who mentioned it, don't hesitate to provide attribution. Credit should go where credit is do.
So, the recipe now is:
1. Install rufus into Windows or use the portable edition. Edit June 26, 2022. Obtain version 3.17 from here, https://www.fosshub.com/Rufus-old.html*
2. Plug in a USB-Key of KNOWN reasonable size --further explained in Step 6.
3. Start rufus. You'll see a GUI something like this
rufus-persistence.png
4. Under Device select your USB-Key.
5. Under Boot Selection scroll to and select your Puppy's ISO.
6. Under Persistence use the slider to have rufus create a persistent partition of the entire drive less about 2 Gbs. OOTB puppys probably won't need that much. But if later you create an adrv.sfs or a ydrv.sfs --or other READ-ONLY SFSes which will automatically be used on boot-up-- those SFSes may require some space. [Using the Save2SFS module of nicOS Utility Suite, https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 983#p12983 to replace my SaveFolder, I have one which is about 900 Mbs].
Caution: Do NOT check the box which directs rufus to check for bad sectors. It may hang while doing so, requiring it to be shut down; leaving the USB-Key in a state which prevented it from being used as a boot-able key despite reformatting to Fat32 by both Windows and Linux.
7. Click Start at the bottom -- not shown in the graphic.[/url]

This is an interesting trick. And forced me to boot windows to run Rufus. I got new thumb drive and wanted to boot DebianDog on thumbdrive for UEFI-only converted chromebook. It works. I am sure probably some downsides, but its the stupid simple way to make it work. Props to the Rufus folk for this option.