14 questions about Fossapup I have not yet found answers to

[Governor]

So, how do I prevent Puppy from loading files on the harddrive on CD boot?
Thanks!

Don't put savefiles on the hard drive.

Think about it. A CD iso is designed to boot a complete system from a CD, but there are no pupsave files on the CD, so the boot routine as defined in the stanzas of the grub menu look for a savefile to load. If it finds one I believe it will automatically load it. But if there are two, it should give you a choice.

If your goal is to boot from USB, then there is no reason to install to the hard drive. Instead install to USB. If your goal is to boot from the hard drive, then install to the hard drive. You can install to both, and the bios boot order will come into play, but depending on the stanzas in grub, it may find save files in more than one drive. In fact grub on a USB thumb drive can be configured to boot pups from any other drive, and many of us use that technique to dual boot with windows.

The easiest way to run a puppy is install it to the target drive and save the pupsave on the same partition, same directory as the install. It will find the pupsave every time that way.

I was going to step you through booting from a clean CD, setting up an install on the internal hard drive, and creating a save folder. From that point you could do all kinds of other installation simply by plugging in drives.

I would like to both have a USB boot and a harddrive boot. I installed Puppy to the harddrive using Frugal Install. I tried using GRUB, but it says "no supported files systems found"
It is no problem for me, if you can give me specific instruction, I can follow, please do. Did I do something wrong by using Frugal install?

[geo_c]

I would like to both have a USB boot and a harddrive boot. I installed Puppy to the harddrive using Frugal Install. I tried using GRUB, but it says "no supported files systems found"
It is no problem for me, if you can give me specific instruction, I can follow, please do. Did I do something wrong by using Frugal install?

MY RATIONALE:

Well, the reason I wanted to start from a CD boot with nothing on the hard drive is so that we could be sure you are not mounted to the drive and could run gparted and get it formatted and flagged correctly.

So for that reason, I would think you would have an easier time focusing on an internal hard drive install. Then installing to USB from there.

[geo_c]

1) Boot the fossapup CD, run gparted. (If you are mounted to the internal drive because of a pupsave or some other reason, you may have to erase the hard drive again using whatever you did last time, and then boot fossa from the CD and run gparted.)

2) Open gparted to the internal hard drive. Choose the "Device" menu and use the option "Create Partition Table".

3) Choose "msdos" for the partition table type.

4) If writing a new partition table is successful (It doesn't confirm if successful), then create an ext3 or ext4 partition on the drive. I always use ext4, but ext3 might be more universal.

5) Flag the partition with the simple "boot" flag.

[geo_c]

The next step is installing. But we have to be on the same page about one thing. I'm giving you a method to use "legacy boot." So you'll need to make sure that's how your bios is set. Not efi.

1) Run the puppy installer. Choose the third method labeled simply "Installer - Currently doesn't support UEFI."

2) On the next screen choose "Internal hard drive / SSD

3) If there is another internal drive you may get a choice on the next screen. and after choosing your SSD drive you'll get a new screen "Info about the chosen drive." On the right is a puppy icon to install to the chosen drive. Click it.

4) After you click OK to confirm, it will ask to install the bootloader. Click install bootloader.

5) Then it asks if you want to wipe the disc first. If you reformatted using gparted, then that isn't necessary, but you have to choose either "Wipe" or "Don't wipe." If there's nothing on it, it won't hurt to choose "wipe."

6) A message will say "copying files to [your drive]" and then disappear.

You should be ready now to try and boot it. So just do a shutdown and take out the CD drive and reboot. Hopefully all goes well.

note: I did an install to a USB thuymb drive as I typed just to make sure I covered everything, it took about 5 minutes to format a drive in gparted and run the installer. Once you get it, it's got to be the simplest install of just about any OS out there.

[Governor]

The next step is installing. But we have to be on the same page about one thing. I'm giving you a method to use "legacy boot." So you'll need to make sure that's how your bios is set. Not efi.

1) Run the puppy installer. Choose the third method labeled simply "Installer - Currently doesn't support UEFI."

2) On the next screen choose "Internal hard drive / SSD

3) If there is another internal drive you may get a choice on the next screen. and after choosing your SSD drive you'll get a new screen "Info about the chosen drive." On the right is a puppy icon to install to the chosen drive. Click it.

4) After you click OK to confirm, it will ask to install the bootloader. Click install bootloader.

I got to number 4. When I try to install the GRUB bootloader, it says: "No supported filesystems found".

[rcrsn51]

I got to number 4. When I try to install the GRUB bootloader, it says: "No supported filesystems found".

I wonder if this installer tool is unable to detect your nvme drive.

[Governor]

@geo_c

I got to number 4. When I try to install the GRUB bootloader, it says: "No supported filesystems found".

I wonder if this installer tool is unable to detect your nvme drive.

Actually, the OS installation came first, and then GRUB which failed.
I now have this directory which contains the OS files: /mnt/nvme0n1p1/fossapup649.5frugal
And the partition is formatted to ext4. Yet I am unable to install GRUB.

I used the same procedure with a thumb drive and it was successful. I can boot from the thumb drive. I included the harddrive in the boot menu. However, when I try and boot from the harddrive it says: "Cannot find GRLDR". I am guessing that is because GRUB failed.

[geo_c]

@geo_c

I got to number 4. When I try to install the GRUB bootloader, it says: "No supported filesystems found".

I wonder if this installer tool is unable to detect your nvme drive.

Actually, the OS installation came first, and then GRUB which failed.
I now have this directory which contains the OS files: /mnt/nvme0n1p1/fossapup649.5frugal
And the partition is formatted to ext4. Yet I am unable to install GRUB.

I used the same procedure with a thumb drive and it was successful. I can boot from the thumb drive. I included the harddrive in the boot menu. However, when I try and boot from the harddrive it says: "Cannot find GRLDR". I am guessing that is because GRUB failed.

Okay, that's major progress, because now you have a thumb drive install, and that install should put your pupsaves on the thumb drive. I recommend using a save folder and not a savefile. The folder can grow to the limits of the partition size. You can also run pupsave backup and have a backup pupsave, or eventually configure different systems and have pupsaves for each.

It appears that grub4dos can't recognize the nvme drive. So the nvme is going to need a different boot tool.

Let's start a new topic titled with the question:
Grub4dos doesn't recognize nvme, what tool should I use?
I could create the topic, but it would be better for you to do it.

SUGGESTED TOPIC TEXT:

After installing fossapup64.9.5 to my internal nvme SSD drive formatted to one ext4 partition using the pup installer non-efi, grub4dos reports "no supported file systems found."

I can see the fossapup files on the drive, but grub4dos can't see the file system.

What bootloader should work in this situation?

My install procedure can be found here: viewtopic.php?p=75155#p75155 and here: viewtopic.php?p=75156#p75156

[geo_c]

You know @Governor, I seem to remember someone mentioning recently that grub4dos might not be suitable for ext4 (actually it was earlier in this thread: viewtopic.php?p=74516#p74516), but I have never had an issue with it. All of my drives are ext4 and I always use grub4dos which sees and installs everytime. However, there is the possibility that if you format the nvme drive ext3 that grub4dos might be able to see it and install. No guarantee. I would still start the new topic as mentioned above, and get a second or third set of eyes on the problem.