PuppyLinux: Installing Puppy

Installing Puppy

Puppy is made to primarily be run as a livecd. But there are still several ways to Install Puppy. There are two options for intstalling, frugal install (option 1) and full-install (option 2).

Preparing to Install Puppy

First you need to download puppy.
Then you need to burn the cd.

Do I need to Install Puppy to the Hard drive?

Barrys page on installing to hard drive∞

You don't have to, and many of the devs use a frugal install. If you want to follow Puppy development but remain fairly casually involved, it is easier to bootup from the CD or use a frugal install. When you boot Puppy from the CD (or frugal install), upon shutdown Puppy will ask you to create a pup_save.2fs file on your hard drive and will use this for storing all your personal data. Then, next time you bootup, all your personal settings and data, such as email, is still there.

And when a new version of Puppy is released, just burn it to CD and when you bootup, puppy will be upgraded to the new version. All your personal data will still be there. In this way, you can follow Puppy development with the absolute least hassles. If you wish, use a CD-RW (ReWritable) so as not to waste CDs.

Doing a frugal install (option 1, also know as a poor man's install)

Frugal installs are normally done to a usb stick or a hard drive. To install simply go to menu -> setup -> puppy universal installer and simply follow the directions there, choosing frugal install if it is asked. (note it is often more complicated than this but instructions have not been written for this yet)

Doing a full Install of Puppy (option 2)

Another guide, One more
note: in order to do a full install of Puppy, the partition needs to be formated as a linux type (e.g. ext2, ext3, reiserfs, NOT fat32 or ntfs)

make a directory (folder) on hda1 called boot

make a directory in /boot called grub

make a file in /boot/grub called menu.lst (that's LST,not one-st)

put something like this in menu.lst:

title Puppy
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd
initrd /initrd.gz

your Grub boot loader is now configured

if you boot Windows too, you also would want to put this in the menu.lst file:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

you can install Grub by copying the files in /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc to the /boot/grub directory ... /boot/grub will probably be in /mnt/home ... you actually only need the stage1 and stage2 files, and the stage1_5 file for the file system that /boot/grub is on ... but you might as well copy them all ... though stage2_eltorito is definitely not needed

now, to actually install the Grub boot loader to the mbr (first sector of the hard drive) you would type this in an rxvt console window:

grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

Grub (Grand Unified Boot loader) should now be installed and configured

so basically, to install Puppy to the hard drive, you copy 4 files from the cd to the hard drive

to install Grub, you copy a few files from the cd to the hard drive and make a text file telling Grub how to boot Puppy ... to install the Grub program, you run grub and type setup

and that's about it

if for some reason, the hard drive doesn't boot properly, you should still be able to boot Puppy from the CD