How to use BionicPup64 in flash drives larger than 4GB? (Solved)

[bigpup]

Where the Bionicpup iso is located is not an issue.
However, best if it is on a different drive from the one being installed on.
Takes time to read from the drive and than write to the same drive.

I formatted a 16GB Scan Disc Cruzer Fit flash drive using Gparted.
Partition 1; Fat 32 300MB and set flag as boot.
Partition 2 Fat 32, rest of flash drive.

Partition 2 should be formatted in a Linux format. (ext 3 or 4)
Well, fat is Ok, but you will still have the max size limit 4GB problem.
Ext formats have no 4GB file size limit, and the save can be made into a save folder not a file.
Save folder acts like a folder and uses free space as needed. No set size.

Make sure you are running the main Frugalpup installer program.
You need to do two things with it.
Install Bionicpup to 2nd partition.
Install both boot loaders on 1st partition.

Carefully follow my directions.
I know, Frugalpup Installer is confusing at first.



run menu->Setup->FrugalPup flexible frugal installer.

This is a program that requires you to make choices, just go slowly and read the provided info.

On main widow select the Puppy button.
This will go thru the install process.
Install Puppy version to the 2nd partition.
It will provide a way to make a directory(folder) to put the frugal install in.
Do that. Best if you name it the name of the Puppy version or similar.
Carefully read that pages information. Pressing OK does not make the directory. Pressing enter key does.
Complete install.

Back at main window.
Select boot button.
This will install the boot loader.
Choose to install to the first partition.
You can choose UEFI or legacy or both.
Both will install both types of boot loaders, so both will provide for UEFI and legacy booting.

When complete you should have Puppy version as a frugal install on the 2nd partition.
The Grub2 and Grub4dos boot loaders on the first partition.

Note:
On a normally setup UEFI (secure boot enabled) it will require installing the Puppy security key.
When you boot.
The Puppy security key install will run and walk you through installing the security key.

[mikewalsh]

@Jarrett :-

Sorry for any perceived 'insult'. No offence was intended. My apologies. The last thing I want is people leaving the community in a huff due to any 'bad behaviour' on MY part....

It's true; being semi-retired, and a full-time carer as well, means I do have a lot of spare time on my hands. And in addition, as I've said on many occasions (both here, and on the old forum), ever since my 'cardiac episode' 3½ years ago, I have odd days when I just get all 'bloody-minded' for no real reason.....and should really refrain from posting AT ALL. Sometimes, I post things I almost immediately regret, yet don't always get around to editing those comments as promptly as I could.

(Of course, if I employed a wee bit of forethought prior to posting, I wouldn't NEED to keep apologizing, would I? D'oh! )

--------------------------------------------

With regard to your comments about certain parts of the installer 'set-up' perhaps being broken, or not functioning as it should, it's one thing we've had a lot of discussion about in recent years. Several new versions of installers have been produced, though personally I don't use them, since I use the quick'n'dirty manual method for installing any new Pups. It's the one area of Puppy that does, of course, colour folk's impressions of our favourite canine almost from the word go.....though there will ALWAYS be 'awkward' hardware that gives everybody 'issues'.

I have a nasty feeling the Intel NICs may fall into this category where Linux in general is concerned. Certainly, they seem to crop up quite a bit more often than they should on various Linux fora, especially with regard to hardware functionality.

(*shrug*)

But when all's said & done, thank you for bearing with us. We'll try our very best to get this going for you, IF we can.


Mike.

[Jarrett]

Where the Bionicpup iso is located is not an issue.
However, best if it is on a different drive from the one being installed on.
Takes time to read from the drive and than write to the same drive.

I formatted a 16GB Scan Disc Cruzer Fit flash drive using Gparted.
Partition 1; Fat 32 300MB and set flag as boot.
Partition 2 Fat 32, rest of flash drive.

Partition 2 should be formatted in a Linux format. (ext 3 or 4)
Well, fat is Ok, but you will still have the max size limit 4GB problem.
Ext formats have no 4GB file size limit, and the save can be made into a save folder not a file.
Save folder acts like a folder and uses free space as needed. No set size.

Make sure you are running the main Frugalpup installer program.
You need to do two things with it.
Install Bionicpup to 2nd partition.
Install both boot loaders on 1st partition.

Carefully follow my directions.
I know, Frugalpup Installer is confusing at first.



run menu->Setup->FrugalPup flexible frugal installer.

This is a program that requires you to make choices, just go slowly and read the provided info.

On main widow select the Puppy button.
This will go thru the install process.
Install Puppy version to the 2nd partition.
It will provide a way to make a directory(folder) to put the frugal install in.
Do that. Best if you name it the name of the Puppy version or similar.
Carefully read that pages information. Pressing OK does not make the directory. Pressing enter key does.
Complete install.

Back at main window.
Select boot button.
This will install the boot loader.
Choose to install to the first partition.
You can choose UEFI or legacy or both.
Both will install both types of boot loaders, so both will provide for UEFI and legacy booting.

When complete you should have Puppy version as a frugal install on the 2nd partition.
The Grub2 and Grub4dos boot loaders on the first partition.

Note:
On a normally setup UEFI (secure boot enabled) it will require installing the Puppy security key.
When you boot.
The Puppy security key install will run and walk you through installing the security key.

No worky!

At boot the puppy options menu shows; something like puppy pup, then Bionic pup and then Bionic pup 8.
If I select any of them I get the message.
Can't find Initrd.gz
then
Can't find vmlinuz,
then something like need to load kernel first.

Just to make it clear to myself and anyone else that may read this thread; the UEFI Install to flash drive option (separate menu option to the main installer doesn't work then?)

[Jarrett]

Okay, I have at least got a bootable installation of Bionic Pup 64.
Given the post above it seems that my machine (details in a few posts above) won't read Ext partitions at boot so won't find puppy itself, just the boot stuff in the Fat partition.
So, I formatted the flash disk all Fat 32 and sent everything there during the installation.
This boots and I've got a puppy but I know if I go to save stuff (the menu forces one to use Ext partitions it won't boot next time. I wonder if two Fat partitions might be the answer. Then perhaps I/we can figure out a way of enlarging it or saving in another fashion.

[Jarrett]

Right...
I booted up my newly installed Bionic Pup 64 bit. Boots fine.
I then used Gparted to shrink the Fat32 partition down to 2 GB. It may be possible to shrink it even smaller. I'll look into this.
I then made a new primary partition in the remaining space and formatted to Ex 4.
At shutdown I pick the Ext 4 option to save to and made a folder.
This is working on this machine. I'll see if it fires up on other machines after I've fed the chickens. Chickens are much more important.
I can put the 4.8 gb file I use for my lectures in the Ext 4 which is what I was after.

The next step, maybe later, is to see if this installation method works on the 64 Gig eMMC drive in the machine.
Linux Mint Xcfe is a good distribution. It seems stable, reasonably attractive and comes with some useful applications, most notably the flash installer.
There are a few problems with it for a lightweight machine (N33 mini PC) for the uses I want an OS for.
It's big compared to Puppy and 10 Gigs of the meagre 64 gigs on the eMMC, once updated and a couple of preferred applications are installed.
It's much much slower than Puppy, particularly when asked to mount and display a one terabyte external hard drive.
One other problem that I doubt will concern many but is of importance to me is it comes with Pulse Audio which is still a mess if you are interested in streaming flac files to a usb dac. Puppy in the past has managed this using alsa without a hitch.

[mikewalsh]

@Jarrett :-

Two points (if I may?)

First; a question. What are you actually using to boot Bionicpup64 (and, for that matter, Mint)? Are you using Puppy's Grub4DOS bootloader, or are you using Mint's GRUB2 (an item I absolutely loathe) with a modified boot entry for Puppy? I wasn't clear on this point, I'm afraid. Or are you booting Puppy separately from the flash drive by selecting it at power-on?

Second; with regard to the DAC + .flac files, I recall we had somebody else wanting to know how to utilise this exact same set-up in Puppy. IIRC, the issue WAS satisfactorily resolved, but try as I might, I can't find the thread in question. I think it was on the 'old' forum, which is now archived for posterity, though I've a nasty feeling that, as is so often the case, the individual in question didn't start a separate thread for this, but instead asked the question in the middle of another one.....meaning the subject matter is buried away under a different title where you would never dream of looking for it!

I'm pretty certain we can definitely assist with that one.


Mike.

[Jarrett]

@mikewalsh

I may not have made myself clear it seems.
I started off with Linux Mint on the eMMC machine main hard drive and an unaltered copy of Bionic Pup installed (not ISO) on one of the flash drives. This was unpacked and 'burnt' to the flash drive using the application in Linux Mint.

It's this unaltered flash drive unpack that I updated and used to retrive the Bionic Pup ISO from thhe Linux Mint on the eMMC hard drive.
I used the flash drive Bionic Pup to install onto the second flash drive that I formatted as one complete Fat32 primary partition with flag set to boot.
So, all instructions in the install process to the second flash drive were initiated by Bionic Pup. Linux Mint played no futher part.

Regarding streaming flac files.
Again I may not have made myself clear. It is Linux Mint that has Pulse Audio as the primary sound file handler, not Bionic Pup.
So, there is, afaik, no problem with Bionic Pup and streaminng flac files to my Dac. The problem was on Linux Mint.

[mikewalsh]

@Jarrett :-

No worries.

I don't think there IS a way to effectively disable PulseAudio in the "mainstream" distros, for the simple reason that systemd, Wayland, PulseAudio, Xorg, etc, are all so tightly integrated together nowadays.

It's almost as bad as the way in which Internet Exploder & the Windoze File Explorer were tightly woven together back in the days of XP..... You simply can't remove one component without affecting the way in which everything else works.

At least you've GOT a functioning Bionicpup64 on a USB stick now. That's the major hurdle out of the way. The way in which you've achieved it may not be to the purist's liking, but hey! you're the way who's using it, and as long as she's now doing what you want her to, it's hardly anybody else's concern, is it?

Puppy is so versatile in its set-up and run options that I'm betting she's being run in a multitude of different ways across the user-base. And you wouldn't believe some of the ancient hardware in use by Puppians, even now.....

Welcome to the community.


Mike.

[bigpup]

At boot the puppy options menu shows; something like puppy pup, then Bionic pup and then Bionic pup 8.
If I select any of them I get the message.
Can't find Initrd.gz
then
Can't find vmlinuz,
then something like need to load kernel first.

Using Frugalpup Installer, the way I said to use it, should have given you a working USB.
I am typing this running Puppy from a USB setup the way I told you.

I would be curious to see exactly what you got put on both partitions of the USB.

But You did a different setup that you did get working.
It is a computer.
Who knows why they do the stuff they do sometimes

I have to work on computers in a room with no windows.
I cannot afford the cost of a new window every few days!!!!

[bigpup]

Just to make it clear to myself and anyone else that may read this thread; the UEFI Install to flash drive option (separate menu option to the main installer doesn't work then?)

Not totally sure what USB installer program it is.
But if it is a menu entry, it should work.

Maybe not on your computer.
This computer seems to have specific issues booting from an OS on a USB.

Is Bionicpup64 8.0 fully updated by using Quickpet->Info->Bionicpup updates
And completely rebooted and saved, so the new changes are being used.

I am not seeing a menu entry that specifically says UEFI Install to flash drive in my install of Bionicpup64 8.0

Note:
The standard, basic, simple way to install to a USB is to have the complete USB drive one partition formatted fat32, flagged boot.
A lot of USB installers use that setup only.
All computers see USB drives formatted fat32, because that is the accepted standard config for a USB drive.
All USB flash drives come already formatted fat32 by manufactures.

[wiak]

I don't think there IS a way to effectively disable PulseAudio in the "mainstream" distros, for the simple reason that systemd, Wayland, PulseAudio, Xorg, etc, are all so tightly integrated together nowadays

Pulseaudio is a just a service. You don't need to start it if you don't want it. Nowadays, it is often started up as a user service via systemd, but you don't need to use that mechanism (even if you are otherwise using systemd). You can simply disable the pulseaudio service, and, if you wish start it up via a simple startup script (not involving systemd), or don't use it at all and try to get direct alsa working...

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... udio-start

To kill PulseAudio
To stop the PulseAudio process and have it not immediately launch a new instance, use systemctl --user stop:

$ systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
To disable PulseAudio
If you do not wish PulseAudio to start automatically upon login, you can disable it like so:

$ systemctl --user disable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
(By the way, even with it disabled, you can still start PulseAudio when you want it by using systemctl --user start.)

The above link gives much more detail. The way systemd is used to start pulseaudio nowadays has changed a bit, so the part I quoted above is probably most relevant currently. More detail can be found in that linked thread. Personally, I find systemd service handling wonderful; perfectly possible to mess it up of course, and I've certainly managed that, but that's my fault/ignorance rather than a flaw in systemd itself. Naturally I know some people refuse to use systemd (or pulseaudio for that matter) though I can't say I understand their arguments against either, but anyway, if a person hardly ever uses any major facility, such as systemd and/or pulseaudio, they will never really have the expertise to talk about it in any meaningful way and negative criticism is irrelevant if made from a perspective of little practical experience. 'Trying it once or twice or 'reading tech notes about it' is not 'experience' with it. If a person wants more Linux expertise I'd therefore recommend not being negatively biased against any major Linux resource (whether it has some bad characteristics or not) - the more we become experienced with all that is available the more helpful to others we can be overall. I'd certainly advocate against any narrow/limiting/rejecting viewpoint approach to technology more generally. Of course, I've also much more experience with old SysVinit and thus more 'comfortable' with it - but that doesn't mean that it is better. Runit is nice, systemd is similar to use (no doubt more powerful if only I knew more of its capability) and SysVinit is a mess of shell scripts, which you need to wade through if trying to figure out what is going on (and little if any consistency between SysVinit distro implementations and no guarantee of any consistent individual service control mechanism even within same distro). At least with systemd it is all pretty standardized and simple: stop, start, restart, enable, disable - really simple and standardized service unit files - just a matter of learning the format. Neat.

wiak

[Jarrett]

@Jarrett :-

Sorry for any perceived 'insult'. No offence was intended. My apologies. The last thing I want is people leaving the community in a huff due to any 'bad behaviour' on MY part....

It's true; being semi-retired, and a full-time carer as well, means I do have a lot of spare time on my hands. And in addition, as I've said on many occasions (both here, and on the old forum), ever since my 'cardiac episode' 3½ years ago, I have odd days when I just get all 'bloody-minded' for no real reason.....and should really refrain from posting AT ALL. Sometimes, I post things I almost immediately regret, yet don't always get around to editing those comments as promptly as I could.

(Of course, if I employed a wee bit of forethought prior to posting, I wouldn't NEED to keep apologizing, would I? D'oh! )

--------------------------------------------

With regard to your comments about certain parts of the installer 'set-up' perhaps being broken, or not functioning as it should, it's one thing we've had a lot of discussion about in recent years. Several new versions of installers have been produced, though personally I don't use them, since I use the quick'n'dirty manual method for installing any new Pups. It's the one area of Puppy that does, of course, colour folk's impressions of our favourite canine almost from the word go.....though there will ALWAYS be 'awkward' hardware that gives everybody 'issues'.

I have a nasty feeling the Intel NICs may fall into this category where Linux in general is concerned. Certainly, they seem to crop up quite more often than they should on various Linux fora, especially with regard to hardware functionality.

(*shrug*)

But when all's said & done, thank you for bearing with us. We'll try our very best to get this going for you, IF we can.


Mike.

No need for any appologies.
I think in my case it's just a difficult machine. However, I think such problems will increase as UEFI, in it's various implementations, takes over from Legacy.

[Jarrett]

@bigpup
I've tried out my odd installation on a few machines now and so far it's worked on all.
I was/am so pleased to have puppy working that I decided to install it on the eMMC card in the N33 Mini PC.
I tried the installation process you advised in the posts above and it worked.
One interesting thing. At the point where one gets offered to install for both Legacy and UEFI boot, only UEFI was presented as an option despite the BIOS having a Legacy option.
Anyway, it's on there now and it runs well. A major improvement in speed compared to Linux Mint and of course I have about 10 gb extra room.
I haven't yet checked out whether Blue Tooth, or WiFi work, but I don't use them so it's not a priority.
I must add that I'm very impressed with this tiny little box (N33). The burst mode (the processor is only 1.1 ghz in normal mode but will go to 2.4ghz for a short period) works well. How the N33 performs in the long term will be interesting, but at the price, one could afford to replace on an annual basis with improvements I expect.
While it won't play games or manage large picture projects for day to day stuff it performs as well if not better than my Dell Optiplex with an i5 processor and identical RAM.

[mikewalsh]

@Jarrett :-

Mm-hm. I have to agree with your previous reply. Everyone and everything that's been built/coded/developed with & for the older 'legacy' MBR way of doing things is facing an awkward next few years. Either you make your software/OS compatible with what is fast becoming an industry standard, or you fall by the wayside.

RedHat were early adopters. Where RedHat lead, in time everyone else follows.....as inevitably as the sun rising & setting.

I don't see Puppy falling by the wayside. It's too popular with many folks that don't fit comfortably into the 'mainstream' pigeon-hole.....and we're lucky to have a LOT of very clever lads'n'lasses in the community, who between them have, historically, always been able to figure out ways to deal with any issues that can (and frequently do) crop up.


Mike.

[mikewalsh]

@wiak :-

Mm. Fair comment.

My main 'beef' with PulseAudio is the sheer number of extra clicks it takes to achieve anything. With ALSA, via Retrovol, it takes one click to bring the volume control up, and a quick scroll to get it where I want it.

With PulseAudio;

• First click brings up a 'menu'

• Second click to select the Volume Control

• A third click to select the relevant tab, followed by

• ...finally being able to actually make the adjustment I want.

Just seems very 'long-winded', that's all...

I guess I must be turning into an old "fuddy-duddy"!


Mike.

[bigpup]

One interesting thing. At the point where one gets offered to install for both Legacy and UEFI boot, only UEFI was presented as an option despite the BIOS having a Legacy option.

When installing to the internal drive of a UEFI computer.
If Frugalpup Installer detects that the computer has a UEFI bios.
It will only offer to install the UEFI boot loader.
That is the only boot loader needed.

Installing to an external drive.
Well, that drive could be used on any computer.
So, the boot loader install will offer UEFI, legacy, or both boot loaders.
These will be installed on the external drive.

How a UEFI computer boots from external drives and internal drives is a little different.

[bigpup]

with this tiny little box (N33). The burst mode (the processor is only 1.1 ghz in normal mode but will go to 2.4ghz for a short period) works well.

I assume this is using an Intel processor.

Check the setting in menu->System->CPU frequency scaling tool
The Intel_pstate driver has two governor settings. Performance and powersave.
You can select others, but it depends on the driver being used, which ones will work.
Powersave does the same thing ondemand does.

I have my low powered Intel processors set at performance.
Seem to just run best always set to max MHZ.
Power usage seems to be OK along with OK temp readings.

I have tried using other drivers, that provide some of the other governor settings.
Intel_pstate driver just seems to work best.
Well, it is the official Intel provided driver for Intel processors.