Last Edited: 01 May 2008 by superuser
Importered from old WiKi -- 30/04-08 17:04.
Contents
    install
      Hard Drive Install / Hard Disk Install
      Update for 2.xx Universal Installer Bug
   
Last edited by Wosh

install
1. Use Gparted from the Control Panel menu to create an ext3 and linux swap partition. Maximum size of the swap partition should be 2 x RAM.
2. Use the Puppy Universal Installer from the Setup menu to perform a NORMAL install.
3. When prompted, put Grub's boot loader in the MBR of the hard drive. The other Grub files will be placed in a /boot directory on the ext3 partition

A laptop with 128Mb RAM or more would best be served by a FRUGAL install. After Step 1 above:

1. Copy vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_212.sfs and zdrv_212.sfs to the / directory of the hard drive.
2. Use the Grub bootloader config program from the Control Panel menu to install.
3. Edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to read
Quote:
title PuppyLinux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /initrd.gz

Note: the .sfs files have to be in the / directory, but the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files can also be copied to another directory e.g. /puppy212;
in this case the grub entries need to be changed accordingly to show the path to these files like:

kernel /puppy212/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /puppy212/initrd.gz

This is needed when installing multiple versions of puppy, where for each version the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files have to be copied to their own directory since these names do not change with the version (but all .sfs files for all versions in the / directory).

Hard Drive Install / Hard Disk Install BOOTABLE

Update for 2.xx Universal Installer Bug

1) boot LiveCD;
2) run gparted from concole and create 2 partitions

  1. One(1) 0.5GB plus Primary ext3 (1.5Gb to 2.5Gb should be plenty for most users);
  2. One(1) 2 x RAM (max 0.5Gb) Primary linux-swap;

3) run Univ.Installer, pick IDE (ATA) internal Drive installation
4) install onto the ext3 partition you created
5) follow the onscreen direction from this point
6) when prompted, install the Grub bootloader to MBR of the drive.

2 partitions to choose from straightens out the script, and you'll want a swap area of some type anyway.

See also Installing Puppy Linux to Your Hard Drive

How to make a bootable hard drive that is dedicated to Puppy Linux.
For Linux Newbies.

Why would you want to do this?
Because you want to experiment with reconfiguring Puppy. (And maybe all the other wonderful Puppy features for saving configuration info are not quite working for you yet.)

Is this easy?

NO. If you have a hard drive that you are prepared to dedicate completely to Puppy, it should be easy, but if you are new to Linux it is not. Yet. You cannot just press a button and have Puppy take over the hard drive.

Why isn't it easy?

Mostly, because no one has done the work yet to make it easy. (Maybe you will fix this? Someday.)
The available Puppy hard disk install process is too timid. It wants to coexist with other uses of the hard disk. This means in most cases using a boot floppy to get Puppy started from the hard disk. Maybe that is what you want. But if you want to take over the hard drive and have Puppy be bootable and self contained, read on.

How BIG of a Hard Drive do I need?

A minimal hard drive install seems to use about 100MB. So 200MB might be a minimum. 500MB to 1GB should be plenty for most experimental purposes. You might need more for heavy-duty re-compiling re-mastering etc. So, most any old scavenged hard drive that is not defective should be plenty big. And you might want to avoid drives over 8GB if you want to experiment with transplants into older computers, which can have problems with larger drives.

The rest of this assumes that you will be choosing OPTION-2 in the install procedure.

In order to have a bootable hard drive, four steps have to succeed:
1) PARTITION (Pdisk, fdisk, cfdisk)
2) FORMAT (mkfs, mke2fs?)
3) LOAD PUPPY SOFTWARE (Option-2)
4) MAKE BOOTABLE (Grub, MBR)

The OPTION-2 script handles most of this OK -- except unfortunately for Step 1 - Partition. Partitioning and Formatting are actually somewhat separate and potentially rather complex matters. The script is likely to need you to take care of Step 1 manually.
Steps 2-4 the script should be able to walk you through and it should do most of the hard work. (Even if your goal is a bootable hard drive, it will encourage you to make a boot floppy, too. Not much harm in having one for back-up, but it does add another tedious step to the process, and you can choose to skip it.)

IF you are trying this with Puppy 1.0.5, there is a bug in the process; you may end up with a hard drive that partially runs, but cannot start X (the windows-graphics interface) up. You may be able to cure this by booting from a CD and copying /usr to the hard drive. Or by patching 1.0.5. Or by researching more about the bug, in the forums. But the easiest cure is to use 1.0.6.

IF you have an existing FAT (Fat12/Fat16) MS-DOS type partition, OPTION-2 will try to convert it, but will probably fail. You might as well delete the partition. You can do this by fiddling with PDISK, or use other tools if you are more familiar/comfortable with them.

IF you have an existing partition of just the type that Puppy wants (perhaps you are updating Puppy) you will probably be in trouble! Because Puppy probably already mounted the partition during your last boot, in order to use it. Because it is mounted, the update process will refuse to change it! You will have to find a trick to boot from the CD without using/mounting that partition. One way to do this is use PDISK to delete the partition. Fortunately, PDISK is too dumb to realize that it should not allow you to delete a partition that you are using! So you can just delete the partition (this just removes the MBR partition entry), then reboot.

IF you have no partitions on the hard drive, OPTION-2 will fail. You will need to use PDISK or some other method to create a partition. Then at long last you may actually be able to successfully run OPTION-2 and make a hard drive that can boot itself with GRUB.

(What we really need is a new OPTION-3: NUKE THE HARD DRIVE, IGNORE ANY EXISTING CONTENTS, WRITE ZEROES TO SECTOR 0, AND MAKE A BOOTABLE PUPPY HARD DRIVE.)

-k 18nov05

Pdisk

What if this isn't working for me?

First, make sure that you can actually boot from that hard drive in that computer. Do this by using some tool to wipe the hard drive clean and installing a bootable test system on it, like a simple minimal MS-DOS 6.22.

If that works, be aware that left over data on the hard drive could be confusing things. Changing partitioning and formatting are actually separate and quite confusing matters. The better you wipe the drive to all zeroes, the less potential for confusion. In most cases just zeroing the first sector (the MBR) should give you a fresh start, but if things aren't working try zeroing out the whole volume. Look into making sure the drive is not only properly partitioned, but also FORMATTED if necessary.
You could try avoiding fdisk and using cfdisk instead, since it has a better reputation.

See Sector0 for details on the Hard Disk Drive boot.

See Also:

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=3665∞
Post subject: HD install routine
Apologies if someone has already sussed this, but installing Puppy to HD can be very problematic...

HardDriveInstallBruce

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