Installation advice needed: Tahrpup in Acer laptop with Win7

[vtpup]

You'd think I'd know how by now, but things change so much over the years, so I'm going to ask about Puppy installation for my wife's computer.

It's an Acer laptop similar to mine in the sig. It has UEFI and Win7 installed on sda3. She had been using it with Tahrpup32 for a few years with a CD boot, and the pupsave and Tahrpup sfs located on the sda3 NTFS partition. I had added a new ext4 partition just after that one, but never got around to installing Tahrpup properly in it. Bios had been switched to Legacy mode already. But as you can imagine with constant use in just booting, eventually the CDROM drive failed (like yesterday). and I've been thinking now I should do a proper install. Later I'll, update her OS to Fossa64.

I'd like to maintain the present set of partitions as-is, and retain Win 7. I will copy Tahrpup.sfs, initrd.gz and vmlinuz and her Tahrsave over to a Tahrpup subdirectory in the ext4 partition as a first step. No problems there. I also do know how to add stanzas to menu.lst in old grub to get the frugal going

What I'm not sure about is how to alter the present factory boot into Win. That's where I'd like advice. I need to be able to dual boot but don't don't want to wipe anything existing, or alter partitions, or even install a puppy. I just want allow booting to the ext4 partition.

There seem to be a million Puppy installers these days, and they sometimes do things automatically that I don't want to have happen with this existing installation. I've lost data in the past. So my question is which program should I use to alter the boot ONLY, not install Puppy or do anything else? Also I will need to run it from a USB drive, since the CD is now defunct.

Thanks for your help!

[Phoenix]

You'd think I'd know how by now, but things change so much over the years, so I'm going to ask about Puppy installation for my wife's computer.

It's an Acer laptop similar to mine in the sig. It has UEFI and Win7 installed on sda3. She had been using it with Tahrpup32 for a few years with a CD boot, and the pupsave and Tahrpup sfs located on the sda3 NTFS partition. I had added a new ext4 partition just after that one, but never got around to installing Tahrpup properly in it. Bios had been switched to Legacy mode already. But as you can imagine with constant use in just booting, eventually the CDROM drive failed (like yesterday). and I've been thinking now I should do a proper install. Later I'll, update her OS to Fossa64.

I'd like to maintain the present set of partitions as-is, and retain Win 7. I will copy Tahrpup.sfs, initrd.gz and vmlinuz and her Tahrsave over to a Tahrpup subdirectory in the ext4 partition as a first step. No problems there. I also do know how to add stanzas to menu.lst in old grub to get the frugal going

What I'm not sure about is how to alter the present factory boot into Win. That's where I'd like advice. I need to be able to dual boot but don't don't want to wipe anything existing, or alter partitions, or even install a puppy. I just want allow booting to the ext4 partition.

There seem to be a million Puppy installers these days, and they sometimes do things automatically that I don't want to have happen with this existing installation. I've lost data in the past. So my question is which program should I use to alter the boot ONLY, not install Puppy or do anything else? Also I will need to run it from a USB drive, since the CD is now defunct.

Thanks for your help!

If you wish to maintain legacy boot, you're already set. Access the BIOS via F2, ESC, F1, or any function key possibly and reorder it so the USB is on top. If you wish to use UEFI, you'll need to use GRUB.

[bigpup]

If you want to keep Windows 7 and and put Puppy on the internal drive, keeping partitions as they now are.

Lick installer is the easy way to do it.
https://github.com/noryb009/lick

Here is the forum topic on Lick.
viewtopic.php?t=336

It is a program you run in Windows and it installs Puppy Linux alongside Windows, usually on drive c.
This is default to put Puppy on drive C, because it does not expect there to be a ext formatted partition.
Not sure if you can choose another location.

It will modify the normal Widows boot menu, with an entry to select the Puppy installed, to boot.
Boot and you can select to boot Windows or Puppy Linux.

when you make a save for Puppy Linux. It should offer to put the save on the ext formatted partition.

[vtpup]

Thanks Phoenix and Bigpup.

Bigpup, question, saving puppy to drive C; in Win would be saving the puppy sfs to the ntfs partition (sda3 to linux). I think you're saying that the pupsave file could be located on the ext4 partition, but all Puppy frugals would still need to be on the ntfs partition in order to get booted..

But isn't there a way to put BOTH the puppy frugals and the pupsaves on the ext4 partition and boot directly to them? Well I know there is, because that's how the computer I'm typing on is set up. I just don't remember how that was accomplished.

I gotta look at my boot partition.......

Okay, I'm seeing in sda1 menu.lst and the first line in it says: "menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.9.3" So that must be how I did it.

[bigpup]

It's an Acer laptop similar to mine in the sig. It has UEFI and Win7 installed on sda3.

If in the UEFI bios setup, it is set to work in legacy mode.
If the internal drive is using the msdos (MBR) partition table setup.
Note:
Gparted can tell you what partition table it is setup to use.
Gparted -> View -> Device Information

Grub4dos boot loader should work on it.

Note:
Grub4dos will not install on a drive using the GPT partition table setup.

So yes, you should be able to do a frugal install on the ext4 partition and run Grub4dos config to install a boot loader.
When computer boots it should show the Grub4dos menu, having entries to boot the Puppy frugal install or Windows 7.

[vtpup]

Thanks Bigpup. I checked the gparted info and it was a GPT table (screenshot attached). So I didn't use grub4dos, instead I downloaded Shinoobar's grub2config-2.0.1.pet and ran that. Well first I made a copy of the old GPT with dd, then ran grub2config.

Unfortunately, the computer still boots into Windows immediately. Not sure why.

I've attached a screenshot of the resulting sda1/boot directory tree.

and here is the contents of grub.cfg on the top level of that tree. It looks okay to me....? For some reason boot up is not transferring grub2 but just jumping to windows boot manager, I think. Any ideas?

(as previously mentioned, Bios is in Legacy Mode)

Code: Select all

# grub.cfg produced by grub2config 2.0.1
set default=0
set timeout=10
set menu_color_normal=white/blue
set menu_color_highlight=black/yellow

loadfont $prefix/fonts/DejaVuSansMono18.pf2
set gfxmode=auto
insmod all_video
insmod gfxterm
terminal_output gfxterm

# Puppy Linux

menuentry 'Tahr 6.0 (sda5/tahrpup)'{
  search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid 7f794d83-f54e-42d4-8f9c-515c36bc9e20
  linux /tahrpup/vmlinuz    psubdir=/tahrpup pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
  initrd /tahrpup/initrd.gz
}

menuentry 'Tahr 6.0 (sda5/tahrpup) RAM mode'{
  search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid 7f794d83-f54e-42d4-8f9c-515c36bc9e20
  linux /tahrpup/vmlinuz    psubdir=/tahrpup pfix=ram
  initrd /tahrpup/initrd.gz
}

menuentry 'Windows uefi boot'{
	search --no-floppy --set=root --file   /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
	chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

if [ $grub_platform = "efi" ] ; then
menuentry 'UEFI Firmware Settings'{
	fwsetup
}
fi

	# custom menu
	if [ -f /custom.cfg ] ;then source /custom.cfg ;fi

menuentry 'Previous  menu'{
	configfile /grub-prev.cfg
}

[williams2]

he computer still boots into Windows immediately. Not sure why

My HP computer always boots Windows using UEFI,
unless I press F9 when it boots, which is the boot menu.

If Legacy is not enabled, it will not show any legacy drives.
A legacy drive has a MBR which can be copied to ram then executed.
The MBR (Master Boot Record) is the first block of data on the drive.
The UEFI uses configuration files in a dir named boot
UEFI understands files and file systems.
Legacy does not understand files and file systems, at all.

If I boot in Legacy or UEFI, it will always boot MS Windows using UEFI.
The only way to boot anything other than Windows,
is to press F9 when it boots, which is the boot menu.

If Legacy is not enabled, the F9 boot manager
will only show UEFI devices (config files in /boot)
With Legacy enabled, the boot manager
will show all the UEFI devices (config files in /boot),
and also the Legacy devices, cd, dvd, USB drives etc

To boot Puppy on my machine,
I plug in the USb flash drive,
then I press the power button,
then I wait a few seconds,
then I press F9
then I select the USB flash drive,
then I press <enter>
then I see the syslinux menu
then I press <enter> to boot the default Puppy in the list
then I wait a few seconds
then I pull out the USB drive because I don't need it anymore, all the Puppy files are on my hard drive.
then Puppy starts running.

AFAIK, Windows always boots by default, unless I press F9 to get the boot manager.
There seems to be no way to change this.
The UEFI bios will allow me to change the order in the boot manager,
but the default is allways to Windows.
To boot any other device, I need to press F9
to run the boot manager.

is not transferring grub2 but just jumping to windows boot manager, I think. Any ideas?

On my machine I must press F9 to not run Windows
then I select my usb drive to get the syslinux boot loader.
AFAIK, I can not configure the UEFI to boot by default, anything other than Windows.
(maybe if I messed with the files in /boot on the first (fat32) partition.)

[vtpup]

I think that confuses my question.

1.)The machine is in legacy Bios mode.
2.) It does nott require pressing f9 to boot from a USB key, as either frugal or ISO
3.) It has a GPT organization, not MBR
4.) I've run Shinobar's grub2config in order to boot from HD, not USB

grub2config is supposed to be the modern replacement for grub4dos that works with GPT organized disks.
It isn't working for me, though it seems to have deposited grub2 components in /sda1.
The question is why isn't it working?

[bigpup]

Have you looked in the Grub2config topic, for any post about this issue, others had?
viewtopic.php?t=3360
.
Maybe posting in that topic, about your issue, will get some info from the developer of Grub2config

I do not have time right now to look in the topic, but it is suppose to do what you are wanting to do.

Now you know why I suggested using Lick installer.
Which is coded for specifically installing Puppy alongside Windows.

[bigpup]

What is in that Microsoft directory on sda1?

you are not seeing any boot loader menu, when computer boots?
Not even for a few seconds?

I wonder if, the grub.cfg has the Windows entry, as default to boot
But it should still show the menu, for a few seconds, before booting the default entry.

[vtpup]

Bigpup, thanks for replying.

1.)I did read the entire Shinobar thread before I tried grub2config.
2.) I gave a screenshot of the Microsoft boot folder on /sda1 in my post before last. In fact the entire folder tree showing the sub-folder contents inside that folder.
The red arrows point to the contents of each folder that the arrow starts at.
3.) I also included the grub.cfg code in that post. The top lines are:

Code: Select all

# grub.cfg produced by grub2config 2.0.1
set default=0
set timeout=10
set menu_color_normal=white/blue
set menu_color_highlight=black/yellow
 

4.) Nope, I don't see a menu on boot up (the lines above indicate it should be visible for 10 seconds, I believe.
5.) The computer boots immediately to Windows 7 with no delay.

[bigpup]

For some reason the grub2 grub.cfg file is never getting used.

Something to try.

On /mnt/sda1 is the grub.cfg
In /mnt/sda1/EFI
Copy this grub.cfg into the EFI directory

[vtpup]

Thanks Bigpup. I just tried it and, sorry, no difference.

I think I'll move this issue over to the grub2config thread, as you suggested, because it's become so specific to that boot loader.

viewtopic.php?p=64662#p64662