HOWTO install Puppy on HDD without GRUB - interesting way

[Stoil89]

If you want to keep Puppy Linux on your hard disk drive (HDD) and this OS to be the only one on the desired drive, you can omit the difficulties around GRUB.
What do I have in mind? Perform a frugal install!
Here are some steps in details:

1.Boot Puppy from another media (USB flash, CD or other HDD)
2.Modify the partitions of the desired HDD (for example, /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, dev/sda, dev/sdb, etc.) Refer to Puppy Drive Mounter about the devices or the given sizes (if you remember them).
2.1.Let the first partition have fat32 file system and be not larger than 32 GB. This first partition will be used for installing Puppy.
2.2.Configure the other partitions as you wish, but don't make fat16 volumes larger than 3.75GB each and fat32 ones larger than the limit mentioned in 2.1.
2.3.After the partitions are ready, right click on the first partition, choose "Manage flags" and click on "boot" (it must be selected). If the volume is larger than 4GB, you can also select "lba").
3.Start installing Puppy
3.1.Menu>Setup>Puppy Universal Installer
3.2.Choose the type of your hard drive (Internal ATA hard drive/SATA Internal Hard Drive)
3.3.Select which hard drive to be used
3.4.Click on the button corresponding to the first partition (/dev/hda1, hdb1, sda1, sdb1, etc.)
3.5.Follow the steps (point where are the Puppy files stored, choose a custom folder where Puppy to be installed)
4.Make the first partition bootable with syslinux.
4.1.Choose "console" from the desktop
4.2.Type syslinux /dev/?dX1, where:
4.2.1.? is the letter of the type of your storage device (h for internal ATA HDD, s for SATA one). In newer kernels h is replaced by s.
4.2.2.X is the indicator for primary master(a), primary slave(b), seconadry master(c), secondary slave(d)
5.Configure the boot
5.1.Mount /dev/?dX1, open the volume with ROX file manager, and somewhere click with the right mouse button on the white screen and choose New>Blank file
5.2.Rename the file to syslinux.cfg
5.3.Copy&paste this:

default puppy
label puppy
kernel linux\vmlinuz
append initrd=linux\initrd.gz pmedia=idehd psubdir=linux

6.Create blank files - "markers" for finding Puppy files
6.1.Open the volume with ROX file manager, and somewhere click with the right mouse button on the white screen and choose New>Blank file
6.2.Type either "idehd" or "satahd"

7.Notes
7.1.The code in 5.3. is valid if you installed Puppy to a subfolder "linux". You can change it to whatever you want depending on the folder you created. If you don't want to install Puppy to a subfolder, the code should be the following:

default puppy
label puppy
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=idehd

7.2.The value of pmedia can be either idehd or satahd for IDE or SATA HDDs.
7.3.I tested the method on a Internal ATA hard drive and it works!

[mojo558]

I downloaded Puppy 4.21 and did install from live-CD to a USB external disk. I used the pupinstaller provided with Puppy and as directed did the "mbr bin" install to a partition I had previously prepared for the install.
I run win-xp on 2 other drives in this machine and win 98 on a third with a 2nd external usb drive as a backup/storage drive for win-98 disk.
I boot from floppy using "Boot US" with bios set to look for
floppy
cdrom / dvdram
hd0
& then "other" devices.
I have been running this way flawlessy for quite some time now and I have to say I am very, VERY (as I have tried many other distros) impressed with Puppy.