How to Setup and Configure Puppy

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Tips:

Networking: WiFi | PCMCIA | Modems and Dial-up

Running Programs at bootup

As detailed in this∞ thread, there are two main places to edit. For graphical programs you should add them to /root/.xinitrc right before the window manager starts. For any non-graphical commands you can add them to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Installing Additional Programs

There are two different ways to install extra programs for Puppy, PetGets and DotPups. DotPups can be downloaded here (wiki) and here here (dotpupsde)∞

Installing Puppy to hard disk drive since version 2.10

If you're running a newer puppy, greater than version 2.10 at least. You should first try the universal installer (start / setup / universal installer) and follow it's directions.

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Installing Puppy 1 series to hard disk drive

Hard disk installs for Puppy 1.05, 1.04 and 1.03∞

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Installing Puppy 0 series to hard disk drive

' Warning' this sections only goes up to section 6 (as that is as far as I know)

It is not possible with version 0.9.9 to install automatically to a hard disk.
Best bet is booting from a CD allowing Puppy to store its configuration details on any available HD


# Creating live-CD Puppy by download the latest "puppy-xxxx.iso" file, which is a complete CD image, and burn it to CD or order from Barry - only $10
# Change your bios setting to boot from CD
# Prepare your hard disk
: If the hard disk is vfat (FAT16 and FAT32) - (not NTFS) - that is older versions of Windows this is OK and Puppy will create a file on these disks. Vfat and NTFS are the way your hard disk stores data - known as formatting. Linux users should be using ext2 ext3 or Resier(?)
: If you are using a new or unformatted disk - which I am just about to try then you must use fdisk (or similar) to create a partition and format it - this requires some DOS knowledge
: The install script is very cautious. It does not alter any partitions on your hard drive, nor does it touch the MBR (Master Boot Record). It creates a boot floppy disk. It does copy image.gz (Puppy himself) (and also file usr_cram.fs if it exists) onto a partition, but they are just files, so the partitions are not messed around with at all.
* To prepare the hard disk I used Knoppix to boot up and qtparted to partition
remember to commit (create) and format the partitions


# Boot from puppy
# Go to Start / Set up / Install to Hard Drive
# You will be given two options - we will be using option 2

2. Give Puppy his own partition. There are a few ways this can be
done, but this script requires that you have a spare partition
that Puppy can take over entirely. This option is recommended for
anyone interested in developing applications for Puppy, as it
gives the most flexibility. With this option, Puppy does NOT run
in a ramdisk, and /usr folder is read-write.
Option 2 requires a pre-existing spare partition. Puppy will
convert it to ext2 filesystem. PARTITION WILL BE ERASED!

Got as far as Step 6 of the script

This message came up:

"Now creating ext2 filesystem on /dev/hda1/ etc . . .

mkfs:ext2:bad blocks count - ExtFs

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Alternative HD Install Method

Configure LILO for hard-Puppy

WMCreate contributed this to the old forum:

From: WMCreator (WMCreator AT collegeclub.com)
Date: 07/26/2004

I'd had some difficulty getting Puppy Linux to work happily with Lilo on a hard drive. And, from searching the 'net and this forum, I see that I'm not alone.

So, what follows is the solution that I came up with.
YMMV.

Using Partition Magic 8.0, I created a 600MB primary FAT32 partition. (I tried using a logical/extended partition but things wouldn't work right). In my case, it became partition #4 (hdd).

If you don't have Partition Magic, you can use QtParted on the bootable SystemRescueCD (http://www.sysresccd.org)∞. And, if you can't boot CD's, you can use the Smart Boot
Manager floppy disk (http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/∞) to change that.

Note: If you use QtParted to make a FAT32 partition, you should use a Win98SE boot floppy to format the partition (no system files). I couldn't get QtParted to format a partition for me - something that Partition Magic does with ease. Also, I've had problems using the FreeDOS (http://www.freedos.org∞) (more on that to come) format command, so I recommend using the format command from a Windoze or DOS boot diskette (or using Partition Magic to format).

I now had:
hda=Win98SE FAT32 10GB
hbb=Linux EXT3 8GB
hdc=Linux SWAP 1.4GB
hdd=FreeDOS FAT32 0.6GB

I then booted from a FreeDOS boot diskette and did 'sys D:' - you might have to replace the 'D:' with some other drive letter.

I copied vmlinuz & image.gz (from the Puppy Linux CD), and tiny.exe & autoexec.bat (from the Puppy Linux startup diskette) to the FreeDOS drive.

I then modified the autoexec.bat to show PHOME=hda4.

And, I modified my lilo.conf to include the new FreeDOS partition. To get FreeDOS booting correctly, I have to hide the Windoze partition and unhide the FreeDOS partition (OK, honestly, I never have to un/hide the FreeDOS partition, but why bother Windoze with its existence?).

other=/dev/hda1
label=Win98SE
table=/dev/hda
change
partition=/dev/hda1
activate
set=dos16_big_normal
partition=/dev/hda4
deactivate
set=dos16_big_hidden
other=/dev/hda4
label=Puppy
table=/dev/hda
change
partition=/dev/hda1
deactivate
set=dos16_big_hidden
partition=/dev/hda4
activate
set=dos16_big_normal

If you don't have any FAT partitions except for FreeDOS, you can probably do this:

other=/dev/hda4 # location of non-Linux OS, in this case FreeDOS
label=Puppy # prompt label
table=/dev/hda # partition table pass-through to the OS (might not need this).

When all was said and done, I had a Puppy Linux hard disk install that only messed around inside of its own partition (that is, it creates its 500MB pup1 file inside the FreeDOS partition), and was bootable by LILO and ran itself inside RAM. Nice.



Reply #1
From: WMCreator (wmcreator AT collegeclub.com)
Date: 07/26/2004

Oops, I just noticed that some of the above comments spilled
over. Read it as:

other=/dev/hda4 # location of non-Linux...
label=Puppy # prompt label...
table=/dev/hda # partition table...

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Option-1 install using Grub bootloader

temp . . . more to follow as I av a go

1. Install vmlinuz and image.gz

When you boot up live-Puppy from a CD, mount the CD using "Puppy driver mounter" (see the menu, under Start > File managers), and copy vmlinuz and image.gz to the hard drive (and also usr_cram.fs if it exists). let's use the Windows partition, the C: drive -- it will probably already be mounted, at /mnt/cdrive, so use ROX to copy those two files across. Place them in the top level "C:\" directory.

2. Edit the boot manager

So far I have only had experience with the Grub bootloader. Mount the partition that has the /boot/grub directory. Right-click over the file grub.conf and open it in a text editor. It will look something like as follows, and you need to add the lines that I have shown in bold:


An important thing to understand here is that "(hd0,0)" refers to hda1, "(hd0,4)" is hda5 and "(hd0,2)" is hda3.

Apart from editing grub.conf, nothing else is required, as the bootloader will automatically look at that file during booting. Some other bootloaders may need an extra step to install the changes.

3. Reboot

That's it, Puppy should start

When you get Puppy installed in this very cautious way, you might like to read further down this page to the "take two" instructions, to see how to configure a boot manager.

Puppy v0.9.0 added an extra option to the install-to-hard-drive script. "Option 2" is to install Puppy such that no ramdisk is used. This requires that Puppy take over an entire partition. It is up to you to have such a spare partition. The script will convert it into an ext2 filesystem, if it wasn't before.
Option 2 is good for developers, as the /usr folder is not compressed and is read/write.

Puppy v0.9.8 added an "upgrade" option to the install script, if you are upgrading from a previous installation. All you do is download the latest live-CD ISO file, burn it to CD, boot up on it, then run the install-to-hard-drive script and when it asks whether you are doing a new installation or upgrade, you answer appropriately.


Simple Grub

This is a simple intro to Grub for people who have Puppy installed as the only operating system on a hard drive in a ext2fs.
If other filesystems are used I can post the stage1_5 files required.
If you dont like this or find it confusing please post a reply as this is a tentative attempt to supply some information.

Ian.

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/sforum/simpleforum_files/attachments/pup-grub.tar.gz∞


Simple Grub Win/Puppy Boot CD

This is a simple HowTo on creating a Grub boot CD to boot Puppy if you have it installed in a Win fat32 partition.
Just download the file to my-applications, open rxvt, cd to my-applications and type in :


tar zxvf simplegrub_cdboot.tar.gz

This will open the file and you can take it from there.

If you don't understand or find the instructions confusing please post a reply.

Ian.

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No Floppy/No CDROM Hard Drive Boot Strategy

(I've used this with puppy 1.0.1 and 1.0.2RC)

To boot puppy straight from hard disk under FAT32 partition Win98SE I used the following:

linld.com download for linld.com∞
puppy.lin (extract shown below - kernel parameter file)
vmlinuz (in C:\) (from puppy iso)
image.gz (in C:\) ( from puppy iso)
usr_cram.fs (in C:\) (from puppy iso)

Then I can just shutdown to MS-DOS mode and run
linld.com image=c:\vmlinuz initrd=c:\image.gz cl=@puppy.lin

Voila! One happy puppy.

My puppy.lin contains:

I used isobuster to extract the files from the puppy live cd iso.

Why do it this way?
Because when you want to add extra parameters you can't using tiny.exe (used by the puppy floppy boot disk) as the DOS command line has a limited number of characters. loadlin version 1.6c isn't reliable it seems - it puppy didn't get the complete image.gz filesystem loaded (the kernel load showed ext2fs errors on the initial RAMDISK). Thank goodness for linld.com!

Any corrections or suggestions on the above are most welcome.

WiseOwl

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