If the target is a FAT or EXT hard drive partition, a generic version of the boot CD will do. However, GRUB cannot see an NTFS partition or a USB flash drive because it has no native support for these devices. We can solve this problem by putting the first two Puppy files, vmlinuz and initrd.gz, on the boot CD itself. Once the kernel is loaded, Puppy's own hardware detection can take over and locate the remaining files on the target.
This technique should resolve two issues - running Puppy from a flash drive when the system BIOS does not support USB booting, or installing Puppy on a hard drive without having to change the Windows boot mechanism.
Warning! If you copy the Puppy files off the CD using Windows, they may be given upper case names. You must rename them to their lower case versions.
The 'multiboot' attachment below contains a template and script for building your own bootable ISO. Extract the package to /root. It includes a readme file with detailed instructions. The package also has a script for burning your ISO.
The 'pupboot' attachment is a ready-made ISO that boots Puppy off a selection of hard drive partitions.
The 'grub-install' attachment is a tutorial for setting up GRUB on a hard drive in situations where you need manual control over the procedure.
If you are booting your computer through GRUB, you may also want a menu option that can launch a Live CD. Download the 'boot-cd' attachment and follow the enclosed instructions.
The 'grubflop' attachment contains an image of a bootable diskette that serves two purposes.
1. It can launch the Puppy CD (or any other Live CD) on machines where the optical drive is not bootable.
2. It can boot a frugal install of Puppy off the hard drive.
Extract it and burn the diskette with the command: dd if=grubflop.img of=/dev/fd0
If working from Windows, use the enclosed program rawrite2.exe
The 'fixmbr' attachment contains an ISO image of a bootable CD based on FreeDOS. You can use it to restore a Windows MBR that has been overwritten by a Linux bootloader.
Burn the image and boot your machine off it.
At the A> prompt, type the command: fdisk /mbr
Remove the CD and reboot.
Update. New Puppies have a command that can restore a WinXP MBR in one step.
Code: Select all
ms-sys --mbr --write /dev/sda