Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

No need to Frugal again. No need to write a CD/DVD again. Users do NOTHING except download their Puppy ISO files to a "BOOTISOS" folder that a user creates somewhere on his permanent or removable media. Just keep all your ISOs to that folder. There is no need to worry about contiguous files; thus your filesystem where your folder resides can be any MAC/MS/Linux filesystem!

Seems all new 64bit PUPs & PeeBee's PUPs boot via SuperGRUB2 directly. Again, Users do NOTHING.

There is ONLY 1 single requirement done ONLY once!

• You, only once, create the bootable SuperGRUB2 (SG2D) disc/disk from its 15MB ISO for CD/DVD or its IMG for USBs.

• Whenever you boot the SG2D USB/DVD/CD that you created, SG2D will list the ISOs it finds in /BOOTISOS for you. From that list, choose one. Your PC will boot the one you chose.

SuperGRUB2 (SG2D) is found here.

STEPs explaining Howto:
Your single requirement is to make EITHER a SG2D disc or make a SG2D USB:

1. Steps for CD/DVD disc

   1. Download a SuperGRUB2 ISO

   2. Burn the ISO to CD/DVD

   3. Create a folder, "/BOOTISOS", on any drive you have

   4. Put any modern PUP or DOG ISOs in that folder

   5. Shutdown your PC

   6. Boot the PC, selecting the DVD as the boot device

   7. Hit the Enter key when SuperGRUB2 opens

   8. Wait...wait...for the screen output’s menu with your ISOs listed

   9. Scroll to the bottom of the screen output’s menu

   10. Select an ISO

   11. Your selection will boot

   .

2. Steps for USB sticks

   1. Download a SuperGRUB2 IMG

   2. Burn the IMG to USB

   3. Open the 2nd partition of the USB created: Notice the /BOOTISOS folder

   4. Put any modern PUP or DOG ISOs in that folder. (See bottom of this post for an important "Note" on the USB 2nd partition's size)

   5. Shutdown your PC

   6. Boot the PC, selecting the USB as the boot device

   7. Hit the Enter key when SuperGRUB2 opens

   8. Wait...wait...for the screen output’s menu with your ISOs listedhttps://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?f=156&t=387

   9. Scroll to the bottom of the screen output’s menu

   10. Select an ISO

   11. Your selection will boot

More info was found from this Puppy Developer here.

Again, Users do NOTHING except download their ISOs to a BOOTISOS folder. SuperGRUB2 is open source with a developer who appears to respond. Users do NOTHING, SG2D does all the heavy lifting.

Happy booting! Boot your PUPs.

Edit1: When your PC boots SG2D you will arrive at a list of bootable ISOs it finds in your /BOOTISOS folder. My list looks like this:

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Edit2: There is an "elegant" guide by @ETP found here

Note:
The 2nd partition is not large enough for modern Puppy Linux ISOs. You will need to expand it. GParted, available in all Linux, is excellent for doing this. You can manipulate the 2nd partition in one of two ways:

1. Just resize it leaving the filesystem format as it is. Add your ISO files to the /BOOTISOS folder.

2. OR, resize it and change its filesystem by reformatting it.
   Changing its FAT32 format to a Linux format, ext2/ext3/ext4, when you exit your Puppy Linux session, Puppy will offer to save into a "Folder" vs only offering to save to a file. Reformatting will delete everything on this 2nd partition. So you must manually recreate a /BOOTISOS folder.

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Complex & bloated for what it does

smokey01 wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2020 9:11 pm A little while ago I wrote a little scrip using gtkdialog to install Fatdog64 to a USB Flash drive. There are quite a few of these available but I wanted something that was fast, easy to use and non destructive. IOW I wanted to be able to install an OS to an existing flash drive without destroying the existing data on it. This is not designed for multiple distros but with some manual work it's easy to accomplish. It works very well but could do with a bit of tidying up.
The process is: select the ISO then the drive and click on go. It provides a drop down list of available USB drives and only USB drives. You still need to be careful when choosing the drive. By default it will not format a drive but I have included this option for versatility. You may want to use ext? format so you can have a save directory instead of a save file.
It will only work if the ISO is booting with isolinux so most puppies will work. ISO files where the boot files are not at top level and in a directory will not.
Happy to share if anyone is interested.

mikewalsh wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:01 am Well, now....

SuperGRUB2 appears to work fine.....so long as you're running a mainstream derivative from recent years.
...

It all appears to centre around the need for something called the "loopback.cfg" file; if this is not present, you're on a hiding to nothing. So despite Clarity's claims to the contrary, SuperGRUB2 will not boot older releases without some additional work on the user's part.

There are instructions for how to create one of these on the SuperGRUB site, although it takes a bit of "digging" to find it.....and even then, you need to be au fait with the convoluted, multi-file nature of GRUB2. Personally, I have always found GRUB2 to be overly-complex & bloated for what it does; to my mind, it's been coded by people who seem to love complexity for its own sake.

Mike.

Does it mean that you need a UEFI machine to run SuperGrub2?

Steps for USB sticks

Download a SuperGRUB2 ISO
Burn the ISO to USB

sudo dd bs=1M if=super_grub2_disk_hybrid_2.02s9.iso of=/dev/sdg
sudo sync

Does it mean that you need a UEFI machine to run SuperGrub2?

bigpup wrote:Super grub2 boots OK, but the complete USB stick is formatted iso9660 a closed read only format

dd bs=1M if=supergrub2-2.04s2-beta2-multiarch-USB.img of=/dev/sdx

menuentry "Puppy Tahr in tpup" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
    linux /tpup/vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash psubdir=tpup pfix=fsck
    initrd /tpup/initrd.gz
}

Clarity wrote: Tue Sep 01, 2020 11:33 pm

Does it mean that you need a UEFI machine to run SuperGrub2?

NO! Look at the site provided above.

If you choose to download the ISO, its only 15MB. And if you create it on a CD/DVD, it boots in 6 seconds on a old BIOS PC.

If you have a folder on your system, preferably on the root of a drive that has a name /boot-isos and it has any 2020 WoofCE PUPs in that folder, when the CD-DVD boots and after you hit the Enter key, they will be found. Then you'll click to boot any ISOs that are there in that folder. All of @Peebee ISOs, for example, work fine. FossaPUP, too.

EVERYTHING you have come to expect in booted PUPs work as always.
....
Hope this is clear, userful and helpful
Here's my list of bootables foundMy ISOs found.jpg

@Michel804 wrote:I also need to do some reading as well.

• Wait sometimes a minute, and all boot options found by SG2D will be presented for your selection.

williams2 wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:37 pmAll the bootloader does is copy vmlinuz and initrd.gz to ram.
It can do other things, like hide partitions, but mostly all that any bootloader does, is to copy vmlinuz and initrd.gz to ram and start vmlinuz executing.

I have some puppies installed as frugals together with Windows XP on an older BIOS computer via Grub4dos. I have tested SuperGRUB2 and are quite enticed about the ability to test newer puppies directly from the iso without a lot of fuzz. To spare me to have to put in a cd or an usb stick to boot SuperGRUB2 I would like to be able to boot it just like the puppies. Can it be installed at the same place, how to do it, or can a Puppy be made of it?

I was thinking of giving this a try to - yet again! - get HaikuOS running. Some of you may be aware, others not, that this is based on the abandoned BeOS operating system from the late 90s/early 'noughties'. Running from USB is the recommended method for trying it out.

I've never had any luck getting this to boot before. I eventually ended up using the "dd" command to write the ISO direct to a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer 'Fit'. At long last.....success!

Posting this from the HaikuOS 'WebPositive' browser, right now.

Mike.

dellus wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 11:26 pm

I have some puppies installed as frugals together with Windows XP on an older BIOS computer via Grub4dos. I have tested SuperGRUB2 and are quite enticed about the ability to test newer puppies directly from the iso without a lot of fuzz. To spare me to have to put in a cd or an usb stick to boot SuperGRUB2 I would like to be able to boot it just like the puppies. Can it be installed at the same place, how to do it, or can a Puppy be made of it?

I use a different approach to booting iso's. I have a minimal 'puppy' (Fatdog cli based kernel/busybox, built specifically for my hardware, so very small (5MB)), that includes kvm/qemu options. So with that booted I can qemu boot whatever iso's I have stored - potentially multiple instances (Puppy's) running at the same time.

My qemu boot line is

QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=alsa qemu-system-x86_64 -soundhw ac97 \
-vnc :10 -monitor pty -k en-gb -smp 2 -boot d \
-net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
-machine type=pc,accel=kvm -cpu host -enable-kvm -m 2000 \
-usbdevice tablet \
-cdrom $ISO &

i.e. that ISO parameter is set to point the the .iso to be booted.

By default I'm using user-mode network qemu as that provides good separation/isolation albeit at some performance cost. Each of the family can run in separate 'guest wifi' areas (their own dedicated SSID) so by default firewalled/isolated from each other, excepting whatever sharing might be set up such as sshfs mounting of folders ...etc. Or log into the same SSID and share the same 'desktop' view/control (two laptops can for instance 'fight' over control of the mouse/keyboard ).

@rufwoof: I am not a coder, that qemu stuff is way beyond my horizon, but thanks anyway for your answer. I have managed to make a bootable usb of supergrub2 using easydd on Barry's Easypup and will leave it this way. I have made and used a cd before which was a familiar procedure for me. USB booting feels quicker.

This looks excellent for later puppies, but I wanted to try 4.3 on an old bit of kit, so without the loopback.cfg nothing was listed, found bill's isobooter and it works well, once the usb stick is prepared, for me its simply a matter of replacing the iso on the stick and rename it to linux.iso, now have puppy 4.3 frugal installed, which is a lot faster than wary, at least on my ancient compaq tablet.
Puppy is fantastic for keeping old hardware running, but still requires a fair amount of trial and error to match the hardware to the kernel to get a reasonably quick system, It would be wonderful if a script could interrogate and suggest a suitable kernel, maybe a big ask though.

Hi @johnrpm

The PUP developers have put together an outstanding boot mechanism which has proven itself for over a year. The methods that ship with the 2020-2021 PUPs should work on either BIOS or UEFI PCs. The loopback.cfg they put there is a part of the GRUB2-EFI boot system and it works, either in standalone mode, frugal mode, or via SG2D.

This thread provides steps in its opening post that work. With it, you should see all of the PUP ISO in the /boot-isos folder that YOU created and added ISOs to it.

Question
Did you have problem with it not working for you? If so, would you post what happened, please.

Thanks in advance of your sharing what problem(s) you ran into. You should not need to modify any of the 2020-21 PUP's boot process to boot those ISOs found in your folder.

Here is a link to isobooter for those interested, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=67235

I think my problem was due to the age of the hardware, 2005-2007 era, I do not have it with me at present so can not get specs, I took it out of the scrap bin many years ago but is well made and just keeps working, can not bring myself to throw it away.

I created the usb OK and the bootisos folders in various places but non of the iso files were found, this hardware predates uefi with bios only, I really wanted to try
4.31 as it has a good reputation, It is more than possible that I did not do things properly and may well be my fault that it did not work.