Easiest way to multiboot Pups w/ Windows or other OS's??

[trawglodyte]

EDIT - Although I was able to shave this method down to 7 very easy steps to get a Puppy or two installed alongside Windows, there is some issues that have come up later concerning adding more Pups. I'm going to re-evaluate.

Original post -
I made two roughly 20 min videos, If I didn't yap so much they could have been 5 minutes each.
This is for installing and booting the Pups from a USB, but it's about the same for frugal installs on a hard drive partition.
You need EFI, and I do it w/ secure boot disabled. Not sure if doing w/ secure boot changes anything.
The first Pup you install must be BookwormPup64_10.0.4 or BookwormPup64_10.0.3 as far as I know.

The first video is making a Ventoy USB and putting BookwormPup64_10.0.4.iso and gparted.iso on it. Then formatting a blank USB for Pups.
If you know how to do that, skip it. https://odysee.com/@trawg:3/Project1-a:d

The second video is from first boot-up of BookwormPup64_10.0.4,
https://odysee.com/@trawg:3/project1-b:e The steps are
Frugal Installer - do Settings, Puppy, and Boot.
then from terminal

Code: Select all

apt update
apt install refind
refind-install

If you know how to do that, you don't have to watch the video. You're done, when you reboot you'll get rEFInd screen to go to Puppy grub, Windows Boot Manager, other Linux OS's, your Ventoy USB if it's plugged in, etc...
If you add more pups, I'd recommend go back to BookwormPup64_10.0.4 and do the Frugal Installer "Boot" procedure again, leave it for partition rather than individual folder to add all pups to the Pup grub.

You can unplug the Puppy USB, rEFInd is still in the EFI and will show everything else.

Sometimes rEFInd shows multiple entries. Just highlight the extras and press delete, they'll be in a menu below if you ever want to bring them back.

[trawglodyte]

I made a third video, and once again I managed to turn a simple 5 minute video into 20 minutes of jibber-jabber.

This video is how to install additional Puppy's to your USB or hard drive partition after you install BookwormPup64_10.0.4
https://odysee.com/@trawg:3/AddaPup:6

The jist of it is that once again you will put the iso on your Ventoy, boot your Ventoy (this time it is in the rEFInd screen, you don't have to go into BIOS)
You use FrugalPup Installer once again, but this time you only do Settings and Puppy.
DO NOT DO BOOT option in FrugalPup Installer for additional Pups. Also do not try to install rEFInd again. Just Settings and Puppy options.
Then you reboot, go back to BookwormPup64_10.0.4 and do FrugalPup Installer>Boot from there. This is what will update your grub menu and add the other Pup so that you can launch it at startup or reboot.
If you know how to do that, you don't have to watch the video.

One of the reasons I insist the first Pup you install be BookwormPup64_10.0.4 or BookwormPup64_10.0.3 is they can update the EFI in a non-destructive manner, many Pups can't.
Also, I know BookwormPup's grub will play nice with rEFInd so it's there with whatever other OS's you have installed when you startup or reboot, making going into BIOS and changing boot order unnecessary.
But doing it this way will add those other Pups to the grub menu so you can launch them. (fingers crossed) So you always want BookwormPup controlling the puppy grub menu.

[bigpup]

Thanks for your efforts to provide the videos

They should help others.

In Linux there are about 10 different ways to do about anything.

So what you offer is one of those ways.

Just something to consider to tweak your information.

All Puppy versions come with Gparted.
If you get the Puppy version running the computer.
Gparted is already there to use.

However, the Gparted live ISO does have some utility programs that Puppy versions do not have.
So having it available to use is not a bad idea.

Yes booting with the computers UEFI bios set to secure boot enabled does require more to be able to have Puppy boot the computer.
For the computer to be able to boot.
A puppy security key has to be installed in the computer with the other security keys.
Not all Puppy ISO's have the needed software to install the puppy security key.
Most newer or newest versions have the needed software as part of the boot loader files that are in the Puppy ISO.

But booting with secure boot disabled is no big issue, really.
that is the simplest way to boot and not have a complicated boot loader menu entry.
I have one computer that will not boot from USB if secure boot is enabled.
At one time in the development of UEFI that was suppose to be a security thing.
Not allowing someone to try and boot the computer with an unknown USB drive.
You would have the computers UEFI bios setup access password protected and you only know the password.
So only you could disable secure boot.

[trawglodyte]

A puppy security key has to be installed in the computer with the other security keys.
Not all Puppy ISO's have the needed software to install the puppy security key.
Most newer or newest versions have the needed software as part of the boot loader files that are in the Puppy ISO.

I didn't exactly know that. However, part of the method I'm explaining insists on installing BookwormPup64_10.0.4 or BookwormPup64_10.0.3 FIRST (for several reasons). The additional Pups you add do not write to the EFI, you skip that part of frugal installer, return to BookwormPup and do the BOOT part of Frugal Installer from BookwormPup, only updating the config file. I think if you follow this method exactly as I described you will always be able to install other Pups who don't have the cert and get them in your grub menu to boot.

Making sure BookwormPup64 always controls the Puppy grub is very KEY to this method.

I will admit that I'm now past what I've experimented with and proven. I don't know what issues will come up. My hope is that you can install any Pup with a vmlinuz and initrd.gz and boot 'em. I didn't necessarily pick BookwormPup64_10.0.4 first because it's my fav (although it is great) I chose it because I think it is suited to allow people to install whatever Pup they want thereafter and keep a nice screen on startup that they can boot to anything with, whether they have other Linux OS's, Windows, or any combination thereof. I also did it with USB (although hard drive partition is almost exactly the same process) because I want someone who only has Windows and doesn't want to change their hard drive to be able to do it.

Also, I made one more follow up vid, just if anyone needs a bit more redundancy.
https://odysee.com/@trawg:3/Project1-d:2

[Clarity]

@trawglodyte I like the videos you are producing!

Multimedia directions are very-very good for users to be able to start-stop as needed.

[trawglodyte]

@Clarity Thank you. I enjoy A/V production and have picked up some things about the technical side of it. I just wish I was a better presenter, but I'm just not much of an in-front-of-the-camera person. I'll do my best to get some good info documented.

[Clarity]

Hello @trawglodyte. This ability will become extremely useful to this forum in 2024, I foresee.

The forum distros modernization is underway speeding up in 2023. We appreciate people with talent like yours to create this content. It is attractive to today internet audiences and users of this community.

Looking forward and THANKS for the efforts you are investigating, as you continue your evaluations.

The media presentation is great example of explaining the ongoing modernization of things here in Puppyland.

[wiak]

One of the reasons I insist the first Pup you install be BookwormPup64_10.0.4 or BookwormPup64_10.0.3 is they can update the EFI in a non-destructive manner, many Pups can't.

Yes, that is a key statement. There being so many hundreds of Pups over the years it is generally necessary to accept them for whatever they provided. What is indeed very important is to identify new characteristics that should be carefully maintained in all future Pups; not doing so would be a disaster since Bookworm will sooner or later also need replaced as Linux technology continually develops and matures. Of course, these kind of system-installation-usage 'essentials' are not always the most fun to play with from developer's point of view, can be difficult, technical, boring to work with - who doesn't prefer developing eye-candy and so on, but if the underlying system is incomplete in some way then that needs to be prioritised before anything else really.

Another example, is making sure Pups and other distros here can in fact be successfully booted via convenience mechanisms such as Ventoy - again that is not a trivial matter to arrange from the developer's perspective, particularly if persistence is also wanted, but once it works it seems important to me to maintain the ability for future releases. Of course it could instead be decided that getting Puppy or any other distro here to work with Ventoy (including persistence handling) is more trouble than it is worth, in which case it should be declared that the distro designs do not support Ventoy use; better I think if they can though, and that such support is maintained and not forgotten about thereafter.

[spiritwild]

I'll check out the video. I have about 6 of the same HP computers from 2012.
The things are like $20 on the internet but I got them from work

My main consists of 4 partitions. one for windows and 3 for Linux.
I have one with a minimal install ,one of Peebees lxpups I believe, just to run save folder backups
I have a seperate ssd for backups and that syncs to a server in the basement I call "P1" for "paranoia 1"
I never had windows installed for years but finally put it on the partition.
I ran a windows 10 img from qemu before that but it lagged a bit.
I rarely run windows ever at home.

Only way I ever knew "on this pc" was to install windows, boot my usb drive and run grub to re write the MBR.
Boot back into my main puppy and change the menu.lst order a bit. Only glitch I ever had was the partition numbers got mixed around
by the windows install but that was easy enough to solve. That only happened once though.

Never veered to far from what worked on this pc but I'll check out your video and maybe learn something.

[rockedge]

On 2 systems, one 32 bit the other 64 bit I have WIndows 10 and many Puppy Linux's and Kennel Linux's residing and are able to boot from a Grub4Dos menu.lst any one of them.

To a Linux system it looks like 4 partitions ->
/mnt/sda1 NTFS 100 M

screenshot(4).jpg (26 KiB) Viewed 1313 times

/mnt/sda2 NTFS 300 G

screenshot(1).jpg (39.66 KiB) Viewed 1316 times

/mnt/sda3 NTFS 750 M

screenshot(2).jpg (14.58 KiB) Viewed 1316 times

/mnt/sda4 ext4 165 G

screenshot(3).jpg (62.07 KiB) Viewed 1316 times

sda1 has the boot flag set, Puppy Linux and Kennel Linux are on /sda4, Windows 10 on /sda2, WIndows 10 recovery on /sda3

This is the menu.lst for the Grub4Dos set up.

Code: Select all

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.9.3
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
#splashimage=/splash.xpm
timeout 10
default 0

# Frugal installed Puppy

# Windows
# this entry searches Windows on the HDD and boot it up
title Windows\nBoot up Windows if installed
  errorcheck off
  find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd  /bootmgr
  chainloader /bootmgr
  find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd  /ntldr
  chainloader /ntldr
  find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd   /io.sys
  chainloader /io.sys
  errorcheck on

title Bionic64-v8 (sda4)
  find --set-root uuid () acc8a5ba-3340-43e8-9d4c-b09ef6b299d1
  kernel /F96-CE /vmlinuz  pdrv=acc8a5ba-3340-43e8-9d4c-b09ef6b299d1  psubdir=/F96-CE  pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck net.ifnames=0
  initrd /F96-CE /initrd.gz 

title F96-CE (sda4)
  find --set-root uuid () acc8a5ba-3340-43e8-9d4c-b09ef6b299d1
  kernel /Bionic64-v8/vmlinuz  pdrv=acc8a5ba-3340-43e8-9d4c-b09ef6b299d1  psubdir=/Bionic64-v8 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck net.ifnames=0
  initrd /Bionic64-v8/initrd.gz 

title Bionic32-RE (sda4/Bionic32-RE)
  find --set-root uuid () acc8a5ba-3340-43e8-9d4c-b09ef6b299d1
  kernel /Bionic32-RE/vmlinuz  pdrv=acc8a5ba-3340-43e8-9d4c-b09ef6b299d1  psubdir=/Bionic32-RE pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck net.ifnames=0
  initrd /Bionic32-RE/initrd.gz
  

Windows 10 selection is first because when using Win10 there is always the inevitable updates that require a reboot, done many times at Win10's leisure so WIndows can follow through on the reboot without me standing there.

[trawglodyte]

What is indeed very important is to identify new characteristics that should be carefully maintained in all future Pups; not doing so would be a disaster since Bookworm will sooner or later also need replaced as Linux technology continually develops and matures. Of course, these kind of system-installation-usage 'essentials' are not always the most fun to play with from developer's point of view, can be difficult, technical, boring to work with

My idea was so long as you install BookwormPup64 first, who can write to the EFI, can easily download rEFInd, and can give you a grub rEFInd will find. Well, then it doesn't matter that much if subsequent pups you add can do that stuff or not. Bookworm just needs to put them in grub.cfg and point to their vmlinuz and initrd.gz.

When you add additional pups you don't even try to write to the EFI. You just make a folder for them on your Puppy partition and get their files in the folder. FrugalPup installer is one way to do that with the "Settings" and "Puppy" buttons. Then you need to update grub.cfg on the EFI. One way to do that is reboot, go to BookwormPup and do FrugalPup installer>Boot> selecting update config only.

But I'm not sure if I'm right about that though. What I was hoping was by keeping Bookworm in charge of the grub menu I could install other pups to take a look at that maybe don't have some of those things developed so well. Who knows, maybe for someone building a pup they could leave out quite a bit with the idea that it gets installed under Bookworm?