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HOW TO INSTALL PUPPY IN MS-DOS WITHOUT A CD-ROM OR FLOPPY DRIVE∞

A step by step tutorial

INTRODUCTION

The Purpose of this little HOWTO is to explain how to install Puppy on an MS-DOS machine without needing to use or even have a CD-ROM or floppy disk.

I hope this will help solve some installation problems users may have due to factors such as not having a bootable CD-ROM, floppy disk drives and etc.

BASIC CONCEPT

The basic concept is to download the the Puppy.iso file to your computer (or copy it to your hard drive somehow), boot the computer to MS-DOS, mount the .ISO file to gain access to the files inside, extract the necessary files for what is called a 'type 1' install, then boot Puppy from DOS using GRUB for DOS.

ABOUT THE ATTACHED FILE "DOSPUPPY.ZIP"

Attached to with post is (see here∞ in the forum) a file called dospuppy.zip which contains the following DOS files (all freeware).

SHSUCDHD.EXE - software for mounting puppy???.iso
SHSUCDX.COM - software for mounting puppy???.iso
SHSUCDHD.TXT
SHSUCDX.TXT

GRUB.EXE - DOS version of GRUB for MS-DOS
MENU.LST - menu for GRUB
DOSPUPPY.TXT - a copy of this post

Original file sources:

GRUB.EXE from ftp.ibibilio.org under micro in the freedos section

SHSU utilities by Jason Hood also from ftp.ibiblio.org in the micro freedos section

MENU.LST AND DOSPUPPY.TXT written by Puppy user Bruce B on May 28, 2005

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

* MS-DOS : the preferred (necessary?) version is 7.10 which is the DOS that comes with Windows95b or Windows 98. It is (unfortunately) essential that you have MS-DOS because the GRUB.EXE file requires MS-DOS to run.

* YOURSELF : must have fair aptitude for working in DOS mode, not much, but some.

* HARD DRIVE : FAT32 partition with enough free space to install Puppy. I think about 350 MB is sufficient.

* PHYSICAL RAM : I don't know the 'bare minimum' necessary to run Puppy from hard drive with a type 1 installation. Check with the web pages, wikis and user forums if you think you may not have enough RAM and/or NEED a swap file.

* SWAP FILE FOR PUPPY : My personal opinion is I like having a swap file for Puppy, but it is not necessarily required. If you don't have much RAM you will probably need one. Again, check other sources because this subject is not covered in this how-to.

PREPARING MS-DOS

1) You will probably want to have your computer boot directly into DOS as opposed to Windows. In order to prevent Windows from booting automatically edit the BootGui= line in C:\MSDOS.SYS to a value of 0

After booting DOS you will type GRUB at the prompt to run Puppy. Type WIN to run Windows. (Of course you probably won't want to run Windows much after you get Puppy installed, but that's another story.)

2) Alternately you could have a CONFIG.SYS menu system. Here is a template for you to use:

[menu]
menuitem=puppy, Puppy
menuitem=windows, Windows
menucolor=7,0
menudefault=puppy,10

[puppy]
; note the semi-colons are used as comments

install=c:\boot\grub\grub.exe
;or you can use the shell command
;shell=c:\boot\grub\grub.exe

[windows]
;place your usual config.sys commands here such as:
;DOS=HIGH
;LASTDRIVE=Z
;DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS

When you computer boots you will be presented a menu to choose which OS to run. In this setup you could run windows with MSDOS.SYS BootGui=1

INSTALLING GRUB FOR DOS

1) make a directory C:\BOOT\GRUB (it MUST be in exact directory location)

2) copy all files from DOSPUPPY.ZIP to this C:\BOOT\GRUB

3) add C:\BOOT\GRUB to you path in autoexec.bat. you could use the following command:

SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\BOOT\GRUB

4) Before running Puppy you will want to edit C:\BOOT\GRUB\MENU.LST to have the correct booting drive and partition, Linux file locations, pup file name and size

The 'default' menu.lst included with the zip package has the follow instructions:

timeout 0
default 0

title Puppy RAM

This is as simple a menu.lst file as you will find. Please free to make it more complex, as you wish.

GRUB seems to be the best loader I've found in my testing for booting Puppy. It hasn't even made difference if I had lots of DOS TSRs and devices loaded when I issue the command GRUB - Puppy just boots without problems.

INSTALLING THE PUPPY FILES

At the DOS prompt issue the following commands where C:\PUPPYxyx.ISO is the actual name of you Puppy .ISO file.

SHSUCDHD /F:C:\PUPPYxyz.ISO
SHSUCDX

Note: Do this without any CD-ROM drivers installed

After running these commands your Puppy ISO file will (should) be mounted as a virtual file system on the next available drive letter. You will need to copy three files from the mounted ISO. Typically you would copy them to C:\, but it could be any other DOS FAT32 partition with sufficient space.

List of files to copy (about 60 MB):

* vmlinux
* usr_cram.fs
* image.gz

YOU ARE DONE!

You can reboot the computer. If you made a CONFIG.SYS menu system as I outlined, you can select Puppy. If you boot to the DOS prompt then just type GRUB when you want to run Puppy.

Note: Don't run GRUB with Windows running. I don't know what will happen because I don't have Windows installed. I just don't think you should try it. Make sure you are in REAL DOS mode when you run GRUB.

In my experience, GRUB doesn't seem to need a 'clean boot', for this reason I think you could boot out of Windows into REAL DOS and then run GRUB if you want.

If you are using another DOS you can still use this 'basic' procedure but you will need to find another program to load Puppy.

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