How to boot Bionicpup32 from USB?

[maoo]

hi people.
ive an old desktop pc. I used to have lubuntu installed there, due to some stupid actions from myself, ive deleted everything. I wanted to install bionicpup32 and windows xp (f***k windows, but i use it sometimes for some things ... opening corel draw files for example, or when inkscape bugs makes me nervous, etc...) So... the thing is that this pc wont boot from usb stick, dont know why, so i used to boot from usb stick from grub2 command line, you know:

set root=(hda3)
chainloader +1
boot

now ive installed puppy to a ide hd throw a SATA CD drive... The thing is that i only have one sata cable and i want to install windows and bionicpup32 to my SATA hard drive not the IDE one. So ive installed puppy to my ide hd thinking that grub2 will be installed, but it came with grub4dos and i cant find a way to boot from usb. The plan was installing from cd to ide drive, then plugin out the drive and plug in the hd drive, boot the usb stick and install my OS to my sata drive... wow,,, its a mess. but its what happened.

Another idea was creating a booteable installation hd whit both windows and puppy on it... but i just cant do it... any ideas? thanks people. cheers

pd. the most easy answer is "dont be so stingy buy another sata cable"... please avoid this answer. My economy doesnt allow me to do so, plus im in the fields away from everything and the situation in argentina with all these corona virus crap is hard. I cant buy another cable...if i could it would take a while for it to get here by mail, and the most probable thing is that the mail guy get lost searching my house... so... no another sata cable option. Jajajajaja, really, only one sata cable... any idea. cheers and thanx

[rcrsn51]

now ive installed puppy to a ide hd throw a SATA CD drive..

Please explain how you did that.

Is the machine capable of booting from the IDE hard drive?

[dogFellow]

first #blkid
to get the uuid
then

Code: Select all

title Puppy bionicpup64-8.0 (sdb1/bionicpup64-8.0)
  uuid 1e42e39f-df5b-433a-b06d-2702afe4c3f9
  kernel /bionicpup64-8.0/vmlinuz    psubdir=/bionicpup64-8.0  pfix=fsck
  initrd /bionicpup64-8.0/initrd.gz
 
 

boots the manual frugal on usb at sdb1 from the menu.lst on sda1
perhaps this helps

[bigpup]

If you are dealing with a old computer that has legacy bios and Windows XP.
Whatever you put Puppy on that the computer can boot from.
You should be able to install Grub4dos boot loader on the drive and have it boot whatever is on the drive.
When you run Grub4dos Config
Select to install to that drive.
Select to search only within this device.
It should put the boot loader on that drive.
When you boot with the drive.
Grub4dos boot menu should pop up listing every OS on the drive.

I am booting from an external USB hard drive with a bunch of Puppy versions on it and Grub4dos boot loader installed to this drive.
It boots on all my different computers.
Old style bios.
UEFI (if secure boot is disabled and legacy boot enabled)

If Windows XP and Puppy are going to be on the same drive.
Let Windows XP do it's install and setup.
Then Install Puppy and GRub4dos boot loader.
The Grub4dos boot loader should setup entries to boot Puppy and Windows XP.

NOTE:
Grub4dos will only work on a drive using the msdos partition table setup.
So using Gparted, make sure the drive is setup using msdos partition table.
If there is more than one partition on drive.
Format the first one a Windows format (fat32 or maybe ntfs).
If you did Windows XP install. It may have already done this.

If Puppy is all that is going to be on the drive.
Make two partitions.
First one a small 300MB formatted fat 32 flagged boot. (boot partition)
Rest of drive one or more partitions formatted Linux formats. (ext 3, or 4)
Grub4dos will install on first partition.
Install Puppy on one of the other partitions.

If you installed Windows XP to the drive.
It probably already setup the drive partitions.
So just Do Frugal install of Puppy and run Grub4dos Config.
Grub4dos Config should install the boot loader on the first partition.

[taersh]

If this computer doesn't have capability to boot from USB drives but has a CD drive, you could use plop boot manager. Booting plop boot manager from CD will give a menu where to choose to successfully boot from USB. I have used plop boot manager for some time on a very old computer not being able to boot from USB itself.

[rcrsn51]

No reply?

I guess it wasn't really that important.

[maoo]

now ive installed puppy to a ide hd throw a SATA CD drive..

Please explain how you did that.

Is the machine capable of booting from the IDE hard drive?

hi, scuse my lag, i really would like too but im not fully dedicated to this project, so ill reply at night if my energy allows me after my hard working day. So, again excuse me.

I just put a puppy cd on the cd drive and boot it. after that ive installed it to the IDE Hard drive, thinking that GRUB2 would be installed, because my plan was after that, unplugging the SATA cddrive, plug the SATA Hard drive, and install win XP and puppylinux to that drive, booting the USB stick from grub2... but puppy uses grub4dos. So...

After i wrote the post, i could make a booteable usb stick from puppy linux native usb creator and boot it... and i was very happy, but, i would like to install windoz to that drive too...

I dont use windows very often, so i though i could install linux to my sata drive and windows to my ide drive... but when the sata hd and the ide hd are connected, everything works ok,,, everything except for my wireless card, that connects to internet but after a while just drops the connection... So... i was thinking, rob a bank buy a brand new computer and stop suffering... but not enough courage.. so...
It would be really uncomfortable to unplug and plug drives each time i wanna use corel draw for something. And i would like to take advantage of those 160Gb of my IDE hd...

[maoo]

If this computer doesn't have capability to boot from USB drives but has a CD drive, you could use plop boot manager. Booting plop boot manager from CD will give a menu where to choose to successfully boot from USB. I have used plop boot manager for some time on a very old computer not being able to boot from USB itself.

That would be a good idea,thanks for that. i know that utility, i had used once in the past... but in this oportunity the cd drive and the sata drive cant be plugged at the same time.. so no plop boot manager solution this time. Thanx anyway

[maoo]

first #blkid
to get the uuid
then

Code: Select all

title Puppy bionicpup64-8.0 (sdb1/bionicpup64-8.0)
  uuid 1e42e39f-df5b-433a-b06d-2702afe4c3f9
  kernel /bionicpup64-8.0/vmlinuz    psubdir=/bionicpup64-8.0  pfix=fsck
  initrd /bionicpup64-8.0/initrd.gz
 
 

boots the manual frugal on usb at sdb1 from the menu.lst on sda1
perhaps this helps

Nice,thanx, but what i wanna do is to boot usb so that i can install win xp and then puppy, not just puppy... thats why i was wondering how can i usb boot from grub2dos, because in grub2 its so simple. Thanks a lot anyway

[taersh]

Hi.

Why not using a multiple USB hub with power supply?

[maoo]

Hi.

Why not using a multiple USB hub with power supply?

Because i have not. anyway, i dont know if that could work, i think not. Thanks for the idea anyway.

[maoo]

Well after some meditation, I was thinking to go to town (its far away and walking, thats why i was avoiding this option) buy a blank CD. Burning a lubuntu/ubuntu or some distribution that uses grub2 into that cd, booting and installing it to the IDE drive, then using grub2 to boot from the usb stick and installing WXP and Bionicpup32 to the sata HD... This could be the less practical way. But as i dont know how to remove grub4dos and install grub2, and i either know how to boot usb from grub4dos, and somehow my bios is not booting windows usb stick (dont know why, because it did boot my puppy usb maded with the native puppy utility -not working with lilo, unetbooting, yumi, etc- )

The newbie path to knowledge is tricky and full of headaches and adventure.

Thanks for your time. If any suggestions comes to your mind, please let me know, im fully open to more practicals ways, im all ears. Cheers

[bigpup]

because it did boot my puppy usb maded with the native puppy utility

So the computer will boot this USB stick.
So the Puppy usb can boot and be used to install Puppy.

Your problem is getting Windows XP installed.
You say you have a Windows XP USB stick but it will not boot.
Are you sure this is a Windows XP installer package on a USB?
If yes.
What is on the USB stick?

Do you know how to change the boot device order in the computers bios?

[nic007]

now ive installed puppy to a ide hd throw a SATA CD drive..

Please explain how you did that.

Is the machine capable of booting from the IDE hard drive?

hi, scuse my lag, i really would like too but im not fully dedicated to this project, so ill reply at night if my energy allows me after my hard working day. So, again excuse me.

I just put a puppy cd on the cd drive and boot it. after that ive installed it to the IDE Hard drive, thinking that GRUB2 would be installed, because my plan was after that, unplugging the SATA cddrive, plug the SATA Hard drive, and install win XP and puppylinux to that drive, booting the USB stick from grub2... but puppy uses grub4dos. So...

After i wrote the post, i could make a booteable usb stick from puppy linux native usb creator and boot it... and i was very happy, but, i would like to install windoz to that drive too...

I dont use windows very often, so i though i could install linux to my sata drive and windows to my ide drive... but when the sata hd and the ide hd are connected, everything works ok,,, everything except for my wireless card, that connects to internet but after a while just drops the connection... So... i was thinking, rob a bank buy a brand new computer and stop suffering... but not enough courage.. so...
It would be really uncomfortable to unplug and plug drives each time i wanna use corel draw for something. And i would like to take advantage of those 160Gb of my IDE hd...

Install both Windows XP and Puppy to the IDE drive for a dual-boot system. This is exactly the setup I have. You have a puppy cd which makes things easy. This is what I would do:
1. First install Windows with the normal Windows installer. Let the Windows installer format the drive and create a ntfs partition of about 8GB and install Windows to that partition.
2. Windows is installed now. Put in the Puppy CD and boot from CD. Run gparted from the menu to add more partitions. In my case I added another large ntfs partition (to store my data) and an ext3 partition of about 5GB for my Puppys.
3. Do a manual install of Bionic to the Puppy partition. Create a folder for Bionic on the Puppy partition and copy the big base sfs, the fdrv, the zdrv, vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the cd to the folder you have created.
4. Run Grub4Dos bootloader config from menu to install Grub to the first (Windows) partition. This should automatically configure your bootup.
5. Remove CD and reboot your dual-boot system from HDD (change boot media in BIOS if needed).

[cobaka]

@bigpup Woof!

On this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=739&start=10
You wrote:

(1) If [you wish to install] Windows XP and Puppy on the same drive [then]
(2) Let Windows XP do it's install and setup.
(3) Then Install Puppy and GRub4dos boot loader.
(4) The Grub4dos boot loader should setup entries to boot Puppy and Windows XP.

My "Q" is about point (3) - install Puppy and Grub4DOS bootloader.
Is the order here - Puppy first, bootloader second - important or can I install the bootloader before Puppy?

Just curious to know the answer to this "Q".

Tnx

cobaka

[mikewalsh]

@cobaka :-

@ Les:-

Not to put too fine a point on it, but.....where would be the point in attempting to install Grub4DOS before Puppy itself, when it has nothing except the Windoze install (in the given example) to 'point' itself at?

Windoze boots just fine from its own bootloader, and I don't know if there's a Windows port of Grub4DOS that could be 'installed' from there. Unless you were wanting to install Grub4DOS from a Live Puppy, but I fail to see the point in doing so?

Maybe I'm missing something here....


Mike.

[mikeslr]

"My "Q" is about point (3) - install Puppy and Grub4DOS bootloader."

Hi. I'm jumping into the pool not having read any warning signs. But here goes:

Not sure how you are installing either Puppy or Grub4dos bootloader. My way is to manually install Puppy using a running Puppy. Just create a folder on the partition where you want Puppy to boot from, give it a unique name, e.g. puppy. Mount the Puppy ISO and copy the following files into that folder: initrd.(gz*), vmlinuz, Puppy_Version_VersionNumber.sfs and every other SFS.
initrd is usually compressed "gz", sometimes "xz" and occasionally not at all. Puppy_Version_VersionNumber.sfs contains the file-manager, window-manager, and the applications which the Puppy dev thought most people would want. zdrv.sfs holds hardware drivers specific to the kernel (vmlinuz) and usually firmware files. firmware files are not kernel specific so some devs package them as an fdrv.sfs. No reason to keep downloading them. adrv.sfs and/or ydrv.sfs contain additional applications some may want. Optionally, you can choose not to copy those. If the Puppy you are running is also the Puppy you want to install, no reason to mount an ISO: you can just copy the running Puppy's files into the folder. But not the Puppy_version_Save (sfs or folder). You can, but copying a Save file/folder while it's in use can generate errors. Better to boot into the new Puppy and then copy it. The reason I highlighted "running" above is to emphasis not to do the foregoing under Windows. Linux files are case sensitive. Windows is known to convert Lower-case to Upper-case when doing a copy.

Now to answer your question. Once you've copied the Puppy files into the folder. run grub4dos. During the installation grub4dos will examine all the drives and partitions and each folder one-layer from the top of every drive and partition. It will automatically generate a menu.lst providing a listing of operating systems: Windows, and every Puppy it finds and almost every Linux Distribution. A couple of years ago, it failed to recognize manjaro as an operating system. grub4dos hasn't changed; maybe manjaro has.

You already know that grub4dos can't be used to boot Windows if Windows requires booting via UEFI. Grub4dos will generate a listing for Windows even if it doesn't exist on your computer. After grub4dos creates the menu.lst it will ask if you want to edit it. When i've frugally installed Puppy on a hard-drive I always take this opportunity. grub4dos will automatically write the following argument to the 'kernel' line of every Puppy on a hard-drive: pmedia=atahd. So written, Puppy will execute an automative save to your SaveFile/Folder every 30 minutes and/or on shutdown/reboot. You can change the interval but not eliminate it entirely. I edit that argument to read: pmedia=ataflash. With that change, you can use Menu>sytem>Puppy Event Manager, Save Sessions Tab, change the interval to 0/zero, and put a check in the "Ask at Shutdown" box. Puppy will then act as if it were on a USB-Key: a Save Icon will appear on your desktop for when you want to manually Save and you'll be asked at shutdown/reboot. But, if there's no reason to Save, you can just shutdown/reboot. The GUI will have highlighted Save so you can just press the Enter Key. But, if you do nothing Puppy will shutdown without Saving in IIRC 60 seconds.

[bigpup]

If you already have Windows XP installed on the internal drive.

You can do the install Puppy and then Grub4dos boot loader to boot both.
As long as the computer is not UEFI bios.

However, to make it as easy as can be to duel install Windows and Puppy on the internal drive.
Get Windows installed and working.

Program Lick.
https://github.com/noryb009/lick
Download from:
https://github.com/noryb009/lick/releases/tag/v1.3.3

Lick is a Windows exe single file.
Download to someplace you can find it.
Booted into a Running Windows on the computer.
Click on lick.exe to run it.

Lick is a program that runs in Windows to install any Puppy alongside Windows and setup the boot loader to offer menu entry to boot which one you select.
All you have to do is provide a specific Puppy versions iso file.
Lick does a frugal install of Puppy.
Modifies the boot loader with a entry to boot the Puppy you installed.
When you boot.
You select Windows or Puppy to boot.