Puppy Hard Drive Install Instructions

Anyone using these instructions does so at their own risk. No guarantees are offered or implied.

Introduction

• This page will decribe how to install Puppy Linux to your hard drive, so it boots from your hard drive.
• This approach will use all of your hard drive. So if you need to keep Windows or some other OS around, do NOT follow these instructions!
• This approach expects that your hard disk is the only drive in the machine, and is an EIDE (parallel ATA) one. If you have a SATA or SCSI hard drive, or have multiple hard drives of any kind, do NOT follow these instructions either!

Note: If you care about any data on your hard disk at all, please BACK IT UP before proceeding!

This setup creates two partitions, a swap partition of 1GB and a Linux ext2 filesystem partition taking up the rest of the disk.

Partitioning

• Boot Puppy from CD
• Choose Option 4 from the boot menu, so it runs entirely in RAM
• When you have configured things, click on the "console" icon to start up a shell.
• At the shell prompt (#) type in
  fdisk /dev/hda
  and press Enter. You will now see Command (m for help) :
• To see what partitions you already have, type p and then press Enter
• Delete each one in turn by typing in d, Enter, 1 Enter, and repeat using 2, then 3, and so on, until when you type p Enter you do not see any partitions displayed.
• Type in n, Enter.
• When asked for Command Action, type in p, Enter
• When asked for a Partition Number, type in 1, Enter
• Press Enter when asked for First Cylinder
• When asked for Last cylinder or +size, type in +1024M and press Enter
• Do this again, but use 2 for the Partition Number and just press Enter when asked for the Last Cylinder or +size
• Type in t, Enter, 1, Enter, 82, Enter (This sets the first partition to be a swap partition)
• Type in a, Enter, 2, Enter (This sets the second partion as active, and is not always needed, but doesn't hurt, so do it)

• Take a deep breath -- you are about to DESTROY the data on this disk. Make sure you don't have any need for it!
• Type in w and press Enter.
• Back at the shell (#) prompt, type in
  reboot
  and press Enter.
• The computer will reboot

Creating Filesystems

• Boot back into Puppy from CD again.
• Choose option 4 again.
• Configure things (again).
• Click on the "console icon" (again!) to start up a shell.
• Type in
  mkswap /dev/hda1
  and press Enter. This turns the first partition into swap space.
• Now type in
  mke2fs /dev/hda2
  and press Enter. This puts a Linux ext2 filesystem on the second partition. The Puppy installer may actually do this again for you later, but it doesn't hurt to do it here, so do it.

Installing Puppy to HD

• Click on the Start button, then Setup, then "Install Puppy Hard Drive"
• You want the second option, Option 2, full install.
• You are doing a new install
• The full name of the partition to install to is /dev/hda2
• You do not want to create a boot floppy.
• You do want to install GRUB
• Make sure you install it on the MBR. No other place will work.

You should be all done. Remove your CD from the drive, and click Start -> Shutdown -> Reboot. If all goes well, you will boot into a new Puppy installation from your hard drive.

CategoryDocumentation

JonathanMarsden