Partition And Setup Advice to dual-boot 2 Puppies?

[Sub Woofer]

Hi everyone another rookie question around partition and setup advice from a longtime Windoze user that is new to Linux. After testing and digging through the multitude of different Distros out there, I stumbled onto Puppy Linux which is perfect for my needs.

To cut a long story short my main PC which I used for music has officially gone to electrical heaven and in the current climate and state of affairs, I really can't justify spending a wad of cash on building a new rig. So I've found my old 2011 laptop and decided to recycle it (I had some ram and a Sata hard drive laying about which I've upgraded.

My PC specs are the following:

Compaq Presario CQ57
AMD E-450 1.65 GHz Dual Core Processor With Integrated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6320M
8GB Crucial DDR3 PC3-12800 SODIMM Ram (2x 4GB Sticks)
1TB Western Digital Blue Sata HDD

I'm looking to boot a dual puppy setup from a Phillips snow USB 3.0 64GB flash drive that I have into the following:

Boot Partition
Puppy 1) A stripped out puppy version for just music production (running Reaper DAW, Audacity and WINE for some plugins)
Puppy 2) BionicPup64 for my daily ride (I'll probably end up with more then one daily ride )

So the question I have are:

1) Would you advise me to create a separate 1GB boot partition for the bootloader or not worry about it and just install Grub4DOS inside each frugal install partition?
2)What would you advise regarding partition size? As programs and plugins are just under 2GB I was thinking around 12-16GB for Puppy 1 and for the daily ride around 4GB for Puppy 2. Is that too small?
3)Regarding the HDD I was thinking off just using it as a mountable storage device to access between the different pups or am I better off using it for the frugal installs? I was going the USB route for portability more than anything to be honest.

Any help and support would be much appreciated

[puddlemoon]

hi, welcome to puppy...

You can install grub4dos in either of the ways you mentioned, the extra partition is not needed, it's up to how you like to"housekeep". I have installs with both... you can also frugal install many puppies on the same partition and one grub4dos install will see them all. ( the final install of grub4dos will see them all that is... you can overwrite it each time you install a new puppy).
you could also install to the hdd in the same way to see which boots faster.

As far as the audio goes... I have just been finishing up a remaster of fossapup that is a dedicated audio pup. Lots of linux audio goodies. You may be interested... I have not posted it yet but could any moment I guess.

[JASpup]

Hello,

I'm a beginner too using Puppy on older hardware.

I use to dabble (can write songs but not a musician) on a Windows sequencer and for the new DAW learning curve and comfort intend to keep 32-bit Windows alive for as long as I care about MIDI. Minimally there has to be staff notation with audio.

Otherwise it's Linux amap, and Puppy is worth commitment (I came here from Mint).

Beginner 2-cents:

1) Use external boot media until you can answer the question for yourself. Create a 'setup' when you know what you want.

I'm booting live sessions with YUMI (no save file) until I know exactly how I want them to run, when I intend to remaster the .iso's and keep booting custom live sessions.

Otherwise frugal + G4D have high reported use and success/satisfaction.

2) goes with #1

3) I do the prior, HDD for mountable storage. It's great for on-the-fly app installation and survivable document storage (best to have all your documents outside a pupsave).

[baldronicus]

Hi @Sub Woofer . I would probably wait for responses from others more versed in these things. (As usual, I am too verbose and take so long to write things, I think you might be getting some).
The Pups, Fatdog, and the Dogs (I suspect) are very flexible, so there are a lot of options.

a) I don't know if this might be jumping ahead too quickly, but I wonder if you might have an empty "test" USB drive available to try a new option that has become available in Fatdog64-811? If it is to your liking you could then use it for your "main" USB (if you haven't already set anything up). In Fatdog64-811 (it has to be 811, not an earlier version), in the Fatdog Help section, there is an entry describing a way to setup up a USB drive so that it will boot in both UEFI and Legacy/CSM modes (of course, I have forgotten the title, but it is directly under the listings for installing Fatdog to UEFI setups). If you were interested in this option then there would be a need for exercising care, as copying the image to the USB drive will destroy any existing data, and getting the destination device for the 'dd' command wrong could wipe out data etc. on the wrong device (maybe even destroy the device if I have read things correctly). I only mention this option as I have started using it and it does present many advantages.

Otherwise,
b) I guess the first thing to ask is whether you might have already begun setting up the Philips USB drive?

c) If you were waiting for advice first then
you would not need so large a boot partition, nor would you need to install Grub4DOS in each partition (unless you wanted to be chain loading for some reason).

If you are intending to use Grub4DOS to boot the USB drive then it is probably best to use GParted from a Puppy/Fatdog etc. to set up the partitions. The reason for this is that Grub4DOS is 32 bit and doesn't support the newer 64 bit extensions to ext4 filesystems. From what Bigpup has posted elsewhere, the GParted implementations in the Pups etc. will generate ext4 filesystems that are supported, and therefore can be booted using Grub4DOS.

I personally tend to like to label the partitions as well, but, naturally, that is up to you.

Here I am a bit rusty, as I have tended to just do things manually, so if something doesn't gel, it's probably my memory messing things up, or that I am out of touch with things.

The usual method of setting up a Pup is to use a frugal installation. I have have presumed that would be the case in what follows. If you intend to use another method then the partitioning setup would need to be modified accordingly.

For USB drive installations I have tended (and it is just my preference) to set up an 8 Mb ext2 (or 3) partition with the boot flag active (if I don't forget, otherwise the Grub4DOS installer reminds me ). Then another partition, or partitions for the Puppy/Fatdog etc. files. These files are placed in folders/directories in the partition. For example, the second partition might have something like a folder named "BionicPup64-USB (or version number etc- it is only a name). If you use the Universal Installer it is likely to generate a name that you can then accept, or modify. Silly me. Using the Universal Installer in the first instance would probably be the best approach as it would set up the directory and copy the files as required, and you can use that set up as a template if you decide to do things manually from there. After the Universal Installer has done it's stuff it may come up with a dialog box with the Legacy and Grub4DOS boot parameters. You can then invoke the Grub4DOS installer and after it has finished, modify the menu.lst entries, if necessary.

It should be noted that I have probably been fortunate with the hardware that I have.
From some posts I have seen, I suspect that Bigpup might prefer to set up a 512(?-I think) MB Fat32 boot partition rather than the smaller ext2 type mentioned above (along of course, with a separate linux partition for the Puppy files). Bigpup has a wider experience both with hardware, and with helping others with hardware boot issues, so you might want to go with that approach.

There are a multitude of options and all of us have our preferences. As pointed out by Puddlemoon you don't need a separate boot partition. However, there could be a case for the separation if you decide to follow the approach that I think Bigpup might suggest. The reason is that Fat32 might be more compatible with some BIOS's, but Linux filesystems give you more flexibility when saving etc.

As indicated by Puddlemoon, you can have a number of Pups on the one partition, the files for each in their own directory/folder.

Along with Puddlemoon's suggestion of checking the speed of an installation on the hard drive, there is the consideration of where to place the save file/folder for each pup, or which option you might prefer to use. When you exit a Puppy (if a save file/folder, or multi-session set-up is not in use) it will ask if you want to save the session.

The save file/folder (or multi-session files) hold the changes you make. For the larger set-up you describe it might be best to use a save folder (a save file is of a set size- it can be adjusted, but a folder is probably easier).

The directory/folder that holds the related Puppy files is likely to be the default folder selected for placement of the save file/folder, but you can adjust it.

The decision regarding where to place the save file/folder rests with you. What level of portability do you want? If the save file/folder is on the USB then you have the changes with you, but they may include machine specific things as well (I could be wrong but I think this might be the case). Hence it may not be best using the USB key on another device. If you decide the saves should go on the hard drive then there would be an advantage in setting up a partition with a linux filesystem on the hard drive (you might already have this if you decided to make frugal installs to the hard drive). Save folders (should you want to take advantage of the flexibility regarding size etc.) are only available when using a Linux filesystem. It is my understanding that save files might not be restricted in this way.
Of course, if you decide to place the saves on the hard drive, while booting from the USB drive, then the save file/folder should normally be found when using the USB drive on that machine. If however, you use the USB drive to boot another machine, the base Puppy files will load without any modifications (i.e. without the changes you have made).

Apologies. There is a lot to this and I tend to be really verbose.

Thanks.

[baldronicus]

Hi again. I missed some stuff.

If you were inclined to have a look at Fatdog (out of curiosity, or as another daily ride option), but using Grub4DOS, then there would be a case for using the Grub4DOS from Fatdog. It has support for the large initrd that Fatdog uses by default. I only mention this as you might otherwise encounter an error.

I forgot about the hard drive. Like JASpup, I like to separate data from the operating system. You do have the option of partitioning the hard drive for both the Puppy files and the data, if you are so inclined. If you end up with a data partition that you automatically want to mount, then modifications can be made to etc/rc.d/rc.local. If you are interested in more info regarding this then let us know. As usual I have forgotten things and would need to check.

Thanks again.

[bigpup]

Partitioning is really up to you with Puppy Linux.
All kinds of ways it can be done and work.

What does work best if the Puppy frugal installs are placed in a partition formatted in a Linux format (ext 3 or 4)
That allows the ability to make the Puppy save a save folder, that will self adjust in size as needed.

To get a Puppy version on a USB and be able to run it is more about what operating system you are doing it in.
Easy way is to do it using one of these programs:
viewtopic.php?p=528#p528
After you get a Puppy version running from a USB.
Use the programs in Puppy to get your custum USB setup.

This is how I setup a USB for Puppy.
Use Gparted program.
Make a new partition table choose msdos for type.
Make two partitions.
1st one small 500MB, format fat32, flagg boot. (boot partition)
2nd the rest of the drive formatted ext 3 or 4.

Do the frugal installs of Puppy versions to the 2nd partition. Each one in its own directory.
Use Grub4dos Bootloader Config.
Select the usb as device to install on.
Select search within only this device.
Change no other settings.
OK.
OK.
Done.
It will put the Grub4dos files on the 1st partition and the mbr of the drive.

If you do another frugal install on the 2nd partition.
Re-run Grub4dos Config and it will find and add the new Puppy to the boot menu.

Why the small fat32 boot partition.
All USB drives come already formatted fat32. That is accepted as a bootable USB by all computers.
So the fat32 formatted 1st partition is seen by all computers as a good bootable USB drive.
Most computer bios look for boot loaders on the first partition and want to see it flagged boot, which tells them this is where the boot loader is.

If you want to put Puppy on the internal 1TB hard drive.
Same partition setup works OK.
However, I suggest making several partitions to not have just one big 2nd partition.
I have a 1TB drive with 7 partitions.
The 1st small fat32 boot partition and 6 other ones formatted in Linux formats and 100 - 200 GB in size.
Easier to work with smaller partitions. If one goes bad, you do not loose the complete drive.

Just some ideas to consider.

[Sub Woofer]

Firstly thanks for the warm welcome guys and secondly thanks for all the replies, plenty of great insight and information to digest and soak up like a sponge. As the old saying goes it looks like "there are many ways to skin a cat" so the only way is too get my feet wet and start messing around trying and testing different partition methods

As far as the audio goes... I have just been finishing up a remaster of fossapup that is a dedicated audio pup. Lots of linux audio goodies. You may be interested... I have not posted it yet but could any moment I guess.

Thanks Puddlemoon, that sounds right up my street. I'm very interested if you need someone to give it a test drive then I'm happy to give it a good run out and report back any issues and feedback.

I use to dabble (can write songs but not a musician) on a Windows sequencer and for the new DAW learning curve and comfort intend to keep 32-bit Windows alive for as long as I care about MIDI. Minimally there has to be staff notation with audio.

Otherwise it's Linux amap, and Puppy is worth commitment (I came here from Mint).

I'm the opposite I do the majority off my music on hardware samplers then if I need to touch it up, add effects etc then I use software and plugins. I have tried to use just software only in the past but I enjoy producing more on hardware and shutting myself away from modern technology, its nice to take a break from computers as our lives are seeming to rely more and more on computers and smartphones.

I don't know if this might be jumping ahead too quickly, but I wonder if you might have an empty "test" USB drive available to try a new option that has become available in Fatdog64-811? If it is to your liking you could then use it for your "main" USB (if you haven't already set anything up). In Fatdog64-811 (it has to be 811, not an earlier version), in the Fatdog Help section, there is an entry describing a way to setup up a USB drive so that it will boot in both UEFI and Legacy/CSM modes (of course, I have forgotten the title, but it is directly under the listings for installing Fatdog to UEFI setups). If you were interested in this option then there would be a need for exercising care, as copying the image to the USB drive will destroy any existing data, and getting the destination device for the 'dd' command wrong could wipe out data etc. on the wrong device (maybe even destroy the device if I have read things correctly). I only mention this option as I have started using it and it does present many advantages.

Not at all Baldronicus, there isn't any harm in testing and finding out if it's too my taste or not. I have several old USB flash drives laying around that I can use as for testing, thank you for putting me onto Fatdog64

To get a Puppy version on a USB and be able to run it is more about what operating system you are doing it in.
Easy way is to do it using one of these programs:
viewtopic.php?p=528#p528
After you get a Puppy version running from a USB.
Use the programs in Puppy to get your custum USB setup

Many thanks Bigpup I will check the thread link out and look at the programs recommend

[puddlemoon]

Thanks Puddlemoon, that sounds right up my street. I'm very interested if you need someone to give it a test drive then I'm happy to give it a good run out and report back any issues and feedback.

It's up for grabs now in the remasters section. You were the final prod to put it out there....
If you are wanting to connect multiple usb audio devices to your patchbay, there is a cli app included for that. I will write up some info on the other thread.

Thanks for the groovy tunes!

[Sub Woofer]

Oh wicked stuff, I will head over there now and check it out Puddlemoon

No worries glad you enjoyed the beats

[JASpup]

I'm the opposite I do the majority off my music on hardware samplers then if I need to touch it up, add effects etc then I use software and plugins. I have tried to use just software only in the past but I enjoy producing more on hardware and shutting myself away from modern technology, its nice to take a break from computers as our lives are seeming to rely more and more on computers and smartphones.

Wasn't that Radiohead who said, "OK" in 1997?

Funny I only added my music bit for social commiseration, the proverbial: What else to we have in common?

If you mean hardware samplers like that gear that runs in racks I wouldn't consider you the opposite.

You would be the opposite if you preferred piano rolls and analog step sequencers and you didn't care about 'organic' sounding instrumentation (even though my favorite songwriter is Martin Gore). Are beats more important than a chord progression? etc. (I like both but oriented more towards chords)

But I think I know what you mean - triggering unaffected samples through contemporary DAW software effects. I'd do that.

I've found it difficult to work with software synths and multi-timbral hardware synths, the prior for quality and an awkward feel, the latter for control. That's probably why I'm not a musician. lol

I've also found the more sophisticated something is, the more bogged down and less productive I feel.

Overall just like computers I believe we need to find what works for our needs and learning is constant.

[Sub Woofer]

Wasn't that Radiohead who said, "OK" in 1997?

Funny I only added my music bit for social commiseration, the proverbial: What else to we have in common?

If you mean hardware samplers like that gear that runs in racks I wouldn't consider you the opposite.

You would be the opposite if you preferred piano rolls and analog step sequencers and you didn't care about 'organic' sounding instrumentation (even though my favorite songwriter is Martin Gore). Are beats more important than a chord progression? etc. (I like both but oriented more towards chords)

But I think I know what you mean - triggering unaffected samples through contemporary DAW software effects. I'd do that.

I've found it difficult to work with software synths and multi-timbral hardware synths, the prior for quality and an awkward feel, the latter for control. That's probably why I'm not a musician. lol

I've also found the more sophisticated something is, the more bogged down and less productive I feel.

Overall just like computers I believe we need to find what works for our needs and learning is constant.

They might of entitled their album “Ok Computer” but in they never did actually say “Ok” in any of the tracks from it.

You could of replied with your two cents on the topic bish, bash, bosh, done but you chose too add as you put it “the proverbial: What else do we have in common? about how you do music. To be honest and quite frank I only replied back about with a extremely short and super quick segment about my general workflow out of respect and common courtesy. I feel you didn't really needed to overthink and break it down in detail but as Redman said in 96 “Whateva Man”.

But at the end of the day it’s all cool, as the saying goes it’s time to draw a line in the sand and get back to as EPMD said in 88 “Strictly Business”.

[JASpup]

They might of entitled their album “Ok Computer” but in they never did actually say “Ok” in any of the tracks from it.

You could of replied with your two cents on the topic bish, bash, bosh, done but you chose too add as you put it “the proverbial: What else do we have in common? about how you do music. To be honest and quite frank I only replied back about with a extremely short and super quick segment about my general workflow out of respect and common courtesy. I feel you didn't really needed to overthink and break it down in detail but as Redman said in 96 “Whateva Man”.

But at the end of the day it’s all cool, as the saying goes it’s time to draw a line in the sand and get back to as EPMD said in 88 “Strictly Business”.

Yeah, I can't control others' expression and common electronic communication amounts to either fluff or contention, and for that what I see on this forum is a big improvement. But I'm new so who knows!

People work so hard and it creates wealth, but how do we use the tools created?

I take "Ok Computer" implicitly in the honed use of Speak & Spell. Take a forebearer band like New Order, they were regularly naming their songs outside the lyrics.

Breaking-it-down goes on here for good. I'll try to remember to ignore you if you're just being courteous.

[Sub Woofer]

I'll try to remember to ignore you

“Strictly Business”.

[user1111]

Small partition for boot and Puppy's, perhaps 10GB. Another partition for data. Personally I prefer ext3 for both as that can act like a ext2 or a ext4. With ext4 some other systems (BSD for instance) might only be able to mount that read only whilst ext3 will be read/writeable i.e. ext3 is the more flexible.

Grub4dos in the root, each Puppy in its own sub-folder. Separate partitions so that the boot/system(s) partition and sub-folder(s) can have appropriate folder permissions set.

A single filesystem for 'data' has benefits such as hard links. Linux filesystems basically comprise of directory entries that store the names, inodes that store the data block pointers, data blocks that store the actual file contents/data. File/folder name stored in the directory area points to inode(s) that in turn point to data blocks where the content is stored. If say you have a 10GB music file that you hard link to within another folder under the same filesystem, then just by creating another inode (as the system does) that points to the same data, under a different name, i.e. that copy doesn't involve copying 10GB of data but instead is just bytes of inode entries (and directory table update). So 'copies' much much quicker (near instant) than if the file was being copied over to another filesystem (partition).

Try it for fun. ln bigfile copyofbigfile and ls -l will then show a 2 after the permissions and before the owner and group. ln copyofbigfile anothercopy ... and ls -l will show 3, i.e. the same data known by different filenames, edit any one and the others are also updated with those edits. Whilst instead of consuming three x 10GB of data space, just a little over 10GB will be used instead. Not immediately obvious why you might want to do that sort of thing until you're more familiar with security/data separation. You don't for instance want the userid used for browsing the web to have direct read access to you save (or boot/system) files, as then they could be copied to a hackers server for inspection at their leisure, which could include userids, passwords ...etc. Similarly the browser userid having access to your data/personal folders isn't good as they could corrupt them (ransomware) ...etc. If you use root to drop in whatever files you are happy to expose to userid "spot" to at the time, then hard linking is quicker/better for that (ln /root/bigfile /home/spot/bigfile, and where bigfile has r access to all, but /root access is barred to userid spot). That all said and core Puppy's aren't real multi-user, you need to be using something like Fatdog for that. Many Puppy users seem content to not worry about separation/security as that just adds complexities/layers. If you've a good disconnected backup policy and your data content security isn't a great concern then moving files out of a secure area into a work area and then later back in again type practices, along with switching between userids etc., can be just a unwanted inconvenience to some/many. But bear in mind that 'simplicity' could also entail anyone/anywhere potentially having access to your data at any time (opened up by browsing around the web), or access to other files such as ssh keys and host userid's/ip's that facilitate easy access to those other systems for anyone obtaining copies of the .ssh folder content. i.e. don't use Puppy at work or within corporate networks as you could end up being hung for having opened up their network/systems to hackers.